Register

Registers are present in every language.  In the US, you can hear the difference in the language when you listen to someone from New York and someone from Texas. Same language – two different dialects.

In Germany they all speak German, but there is quite a difference in the language between the northern part and the southern part of the country.

Register refers to the type of language you use for a given situation and can cut across language, dialect and accent. For example, compare the two sentences:

1.    1.    Some follow got run over and killed by a lorry in the high street yesterday.

2.     2.   A man died yesterday following a collision with a heavy goods vehicle in a busy town centre.

The first one would probably be said in a conversation by someone talking with friends. The other is the way it would probably be reported in a newspaper.

Intimate register is the highly informal language used among family members and close friends. It may include private vocabulary known only to two people or a small group.

Casual register is the informal language of a broader but still well-defined social group.  It includes slang, elliptical and elided sentences and frequent interruption.

Consultative register is moderately formal language that marks a mentor-protégé or expert-novice relationship, such as that between a doctor and a patient or a teacher and a student.

Formal register is language between strangers or in a technical context.

Frozen register is ritualistic or traditional, as in religious ceremonies or legal proceedings.

Formality scale
Very formal	← FORMAL	Normal	INFORMAL →	Very informal