About the Journal

REALIS (Register Aspects of Language In Situation) is an open-access refereed journal and a forum for research pertaining to linguistic register studies. We understand the notion of register as part of an individual’s linguistic knowledge, reflecting the ways in which situational and functional dimensions of real-world contexts shape linguistic behaviour. We welcome interdisciplinary submissions (e. g. from computational linguistics, sociology, psychology and/or linguistic anthropology) which have the potential to broaden our understanding of the socio-cultural and cognitive constraints that shape language use across situational settings. This includes submissions in all theoretical frameworks and pertaining to all empirical phenomena, modalities and time-periods, insofar as they are conducive to the main goal of the journal.

We are especially interested in contributions that address methods and research questions which may be subsumed under the following headings (please note that this list is non-exhaustive):

Register knowledge and language structure

  • What is the relationship between register knowledge and knowledge of a language’s structure on various linguistic levels (e.g., phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, ...)?

Register knowledge and multilingual settings

  • How can the dynamics of language mixing in multilingual settings be understood in relation to register knowledge?

Register and social structure

  • How do sociolinguistic factors influence register knowledge and register distinctions?

Diachronic aspects of register variation

  • How does register variation emerge in diachrony (i.e. how do linguistic forms become associated with certain types of situations)?

Modelling register variation

  • How can we model the non-deterministic nature of register-related alternations?

Methodological challenges

  • What kinds of methodologies can bring us closer to understanding the dynamics of linguistic variation in situated contexts?

Resources for studying register variation

  • Which novel solutions for corpus or annotation methods and data processing explicitly incorporate situational dimensions?

In keeping with the goals outlined above, we accept guidelines and a number of article types, including the following:

  • articles
    • theoretical and empirical studies that advance our understanding of situationally-conditioned language use
    • innovative student (BA and MA) theses adapted to article format
  • guidelines
    • corpus descriptions
    • documentation
    • annotation guidelines

REALIS appears in annual volumes (e. g. 2025/1–X): submissions are published as soon as they are reviewed in a double-blind peer-review, formatted and processed.

Open access policy

REALIS is committed to the idea of open access. All contributions in the REALIS Journal are appear freely accessible without restriction under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

REALIS does not charge any fees for submitting, reviewing, editing or reading journal articles. The publications can be downloaded free of charge and without login or registration. The articles can be shared and edited under the condition of attribution.

Our authors retain the unrestricted rights to use their contributions.