The “SFB Register C02” project investigates how various factors in a conversational situation influence language. These include the social role, age, and gender of the conversation partners, the purpose of the conversation, and the location — such as at home, in the office, or at a police station. With the help of new technologies, such situations are simulated in a realistic manner to examine phonetic details such as pronunciation, intonation, speech rate, and vowel duration.

C02 is a subproject in area C "Register and cognition" of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center 1412 “Register”: Language Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation.

Project C02 experimentally explores various aspects of situational-functional variation. Our work focusses in particular on the effects of the social role of the addressee (superior, equal perceived social status) but also including age and gender of the interlocutors, the function of a discourse (i.e. request or casual conversation) and as a new aspect, the effect of a physical space (i.e. home vs. laboratory or police station vs. office) on the realization of fine phonetic detail.

Because our experimental setup is so complex and aspects of a situation – potentially having an effect on fine phonetic detail – have not yet been rigorously controlled and tested, methodological advances (immersive technology) of the sort proposed for phase II of the CRC are warranted. Statistical modelling of our results will allow for a better understanding of the contribution of the individual language external parameters to the outcome of a study.