Is there a role for prosody within register studies

Abstract

Abstract This article examines whether the incorporation of prosody within register studies can lead to a richer description of what speakers can mean in a specific environment. In order to situate how prosody resets the probabilities of contextual variables, a number of texts are examined and it is argued that prosodic systems at and above the rank of tone group are meaningful and situated on the content plane. The article concludes by suggesting some redrawing of the standard SFL stratification model by arguing that the view that meaning redounds with wording which in turn redounds with sounding needs some revision to incorporate the higher units of the phonological rank scale being situated on the content plane.