Cultural Register

CULTURAL REGISTER Cultural register refers to the idea that people enact tradition when they perceive the situation to be appropriate. The concept is useful to designate folk activity not as a function of a socioeconomic level of society as much as a type of strategically performed knowledge. The term as applied to folklife study is adapted from sociolinguists who used it in the sense of “a form of language appropriate to a limited situation” or “the use to which the language is put on a given occasion.”