ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on a typological study, not of particular linguistic features or particular languages, but of patterns of register realized by language. The data is a corpus of traditional stories in a range of languages around the world, illustrated in the chapter with texts from China, Australia and Africa. Analyses focus on units of structure known as story phases that realize elements of the fields of stories. Texts are analyzed for discourse patterns of ideation that relate phases as sequences of activities, and patterns of information that organize sequences of phases. Findings include general options across languages for types of stories at the level of genre that are realized in general options for structuring the registers of stories. This structuring is achieved by common options for story phases that contextualize and sequence the story plot and involve listeners by manipulating expectancy and emotion. Story phases also function to negotiate ideological positions through the perspectives of narrators and characters. More generally, the chapter offers suggestions for exploring register and its relations to language.
