ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the methodology of multi-dimensional analysis, which has been followed by all the studies. It presents the dimensions of register variation found in the 1988 study of English speech and writing, and explains the reasons for applying those dimensions or for conducting new multi-dimensional (MD) analyses. The tagger used in Multi-dimensional studies marks the word classes and syntactic information required to automatically identify the linguistic features. The chapter discusses the procedures for identifying these factors and then interpreting them as dimensions of variation that are used to make comparisons among registers. It explains the interpretation of each of the factors as dimensions of variation, describing how each of the dimensions represents a continuum along which registers of English vary. Most studies applying the 1988 analysis of register variation have not included these two dimensions.
