‘Register’ originated as a term in linguistics for contextual variation in language, or language as it is used in a particular communicative situation. This term and concept has become important across several intersecting disciplines, particularly in discussions of genre and approaches to language in written versus oral communication. As a consequence, ‘register’ has been used by folklorists, linguists and linguistic anthropologists with varying fields of inclusion and exclusion, ranging from the purely verbal level of communication to all features which have the capacity to signify (props, gestures, etc.). Uses of ‘register’ have become highly diversified within the scholarship of each field, and the different fields have not opened a discourse with one another on this topic. This colloquium is intended to bring together representatives of diverse perspectives in order to open cross-disciplinary discussion of the term and concept ‘register’.

Keynote speakers:
Asif Agha, Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Ruth Finnegan, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Open University, UK
John Miles Foley, Professor of Classical Studies and English, University of Missouri, USA
Jim Wilce, Professor of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, USA
Susanna Shore, Adjunct Professor of Finnish Language, University of Helsinki, Finland

We welcome participant presentations on register and variation from all disciplines. Presentations are requested to be accessible to participants from other fields and open to cross-disciplinary discussion. If you would like to take part in this event by presenting a paper, please send an abstract of no more than 500 words to Kaarina Koski (kaarina.koski@helsinki.fi) by Friday, 18th November 2011. Papers presentations should be twenty minutes in length allowing ten minutes for discussion. If you would like to participate without presenting a paper, please let us know by the end of February, and also whether you would be interested in moderating a session.

The colloquium is organized by Folklore Studies of the University of Helsinki and the research project “Oral and Literary Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region” of the Finnish Literature Society. The event will be held in the Great Hall of the Finnish Literature Society (2nd floor, Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki).