Margret Selting

• This paper investigates speech styles and style-shifting in the speech of the moderator of a German radio participation programme. Style-shifting is shown to affect several distinct linguistic levels: phonetic, morphophonemic, syntactic, and lexical. The functions of style-shifting are related both to the discourse context and the broader institutional context. Relying on listeners' co-occurrence expectations with respect to language use in contexts and exploiting listeners' evaluations of processes of speech convergence and divergence, the moderator uses stereotypic markers at different style levels in locally strategic functions in discourse. On the one hand, thematic development is controlled by reinforcing obligations on the addressee. On the other hand, global social reciprocity patterns are constituted and secured. Patterns of reciprocity vary with different types of addressees. The conversational analysis of language variation shows that variation is not only a quantitative correlate of regional, social and contextualThis paper investigates speech styles and style-shifting in the speech of the moderator of a German radio participation programme. Style-shifting is shown to affect several distinct linguistic levels: phonetic, morphophonemic, syntactic, and lexical. The functions of style-shifting are related both to the discourse context and the broader institutional context. Relying on listeners' co-occurrence expectations with respect to language use in contexts and exploiting listeners' evaluations of processes of speech convergence and divergence, the moderator uses stereotypic markers at different style levels in locally strategic functions in discourse. On the one hand, thematic development is controlled by reinforcing obligations on the addressee. On the other hand, global social reciprocity patterns are constituted and secured. Patterns of reciprocity vary with different types of addressees. The conversational analysis of language variation shows that variation is not only a quantitative correlate of regional, social and contextual parameters as predominantly conceived of in sociolinguistics. Language variation is furthermore used as a means to signal social and interactive meaning in conversations.…