Additional terms such as diatype, genre, text types, style, acrolect, mesolect, basilect, sociolect, and ethnolect, among many others, may be used to cover the same or similar ground.
[2] These various approaches to the concept of register fall within the scope of disciplines such as sociolinguistics (as noted above), stylistics,[1] pragmatics,[3] and systemic functional grammar.
M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan[4] interpret register as "the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features—with particular values of the field, mode and tenor."
Field for them is "the total event, in which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer; includes subject-matter as one of the elements."
Tenor refers to "the type of role interaction, the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants involved".
Diatype is usually analysed in terms of field, the subject matter or setting; tenor, the participants and their relationships; and mode, the channel of communication, such as spoken, written or signed.