Open Access

Inken Keim

• In (socio)linguistic as well as in anthropological and conversation analytic studies, linguistic heterogeneity and stylistic variation related to situational conditions are main research issues. In these studies, heterogeneity is investigated using concepts like “text type”, “register”, “genre” and “social” or “cultural style”. From a theoretical and methodological perspective, approaches to situation-specific heterogeneity can be differentiated into (a) approaches following the standard research methodology in sociolinguistics, where verbal behavior (the use of specific varieties, specific types of text or verbal activities) is considered as being determined by the situational variables; and (b) approaches using reflexive and dynamic concepts in order to grasp the creation of social meaning through language in the process of interaction. This article starts from traditional approaches of the relation between situation and stylistic variation using rather static concepts such as “text type” or “register”, and then focuses on approaches using more complex concepts such as “contextualization”, “genre”, and concepts of “social” or “cultural style”.