Enregisterment

Enregisterment is a term in sociolinguistics describing the social process by which a linguistic feature, style, or variety becomes recognizable and valued as part of a language’s legitimate repertoire within a community. Through enregisterment, a form acquires social meaning and a sense of authority, allowing speakers to use it as an indexical resource that signals identity, stance, group membership, or social position.

The concept, associated with Michael Silverstein and developed in subsequent work, emphasizes how linguistic forms gain legitimacy beyond their purely grammatical or functional use. Enregisterment involves the interaction of indexicality, social practice, and ideology: communities articulate meanings for specific forms, institutions and media reinforce those meanings, and speakers incorporate them into everyday speech as recognizable styles or registers.

The process typically proceeds from variation in speech to public awareness and valuation. Features may be stigmatized or valorized, codified in educational or media contexts, and transmitted across generations, eventually becoming part of how a language or variety is publicly identified. Enregisterment can occur at many levels, from phonetic or phonological features to lexical choices and syntactic patterns, and it often interacts with broader language ideologies and power relations.

Examples are diverse, including features of regional or ethnic varieties that come to symbolize a community, or prestigious standards that index social status. Enregisterment helps explain why some forms are resisted or embraced in different social settings and how language change is linked to ongoing shifts in identity and social meaning.

See also: indexicality, sociolinguistics, repertoire, register, language ideology.