A Study On Stylistic-register Perception And Influencing Factors

This study is interdisciplinary research on the innovative linguistic theory---Stylistic-Register Grammar.With methods adopted in psychology and information science,this study explores the psychological stylistic-register perception both in the first and second language and the correlation between linguistic features and psychological perception.Firstly,this research randomly collects text materials from Chinese corpora and English corpora respectively.The experimental texts are chosen from three different stylistic-registers,including oral,written and wrongly mixed style.The linguistic features of each text are manually tagged.A statistical method of factor analysis is carried out to extract principal components from those linguistic features of both Chinese and English texts.Secondly,this research designs psychological questionnaires and collects the data of the subjective stylistic-register perception when participants read texts of different stylistic-registers in Chinese and English.The data are also applied to a factor analysis to extract principal components of participants’ perception of Chinese and English stylistic-registers.Finally,a correlation analysis is conducted between these two sets of factors extracted from linguistic features and psychological perception to uncover the influencing factors underlying the stylistic-register perception.The results show that native Chinese have the perception of stylistic-register in their first language,mainly manifested in that participants can effectively distinguish three groups of Chinese texts in different stylistic-registers based on their perception of psychological distance,thus proving the psychological reality of SRG.It is also found that,apart from the perception of wrongly mixed style,the factors extracted from Chinese linguistic features do not directly influence the stylistic-register perception,that is,perception of native stylistic-registers is not directly triggered by native linguistic features.Unlike the first language,when Chinese English learners perceive English texts of different stylistic-registers,their perceptions are analyzed into factors about comprehension,and it is found that Chinese English learners fail to distinguish these three English stylistic-registers according to an analysis of variance.The correlation analysis indicates that English linguistic features directly influence the psychological perception of English texts.It means that Chinese English learners often focus more on comprehending English texts by decoding their linguistic features,lacking the ability to recognize the differences of various English stylistic-registers instead.