Register shift when explaining a school event to grandparents
Harleen, a Year 12 student, is asked to speak for three minutes at a family gathering in Perth about her school's Punjabi cultural night. Her grandparents, who migrated from a village near Jalandhar in the 1980s, will be present, along with her cousins aged 8-12 who mostly speak English. She has drafted a script in a fairly formal written style, using words such as 'ਅਯੋਜਨ' (organise/arrangement) and 'ਸਹਿਭਾਗਤਾ' (participation), full sentences, and no direct address. Her teacher has told her the script is accurate but will not connect with this audience. She must keep the factual content: 90 students performed, 400 people attended, funds raised were $2,300 for a local charity.
1. Identify two features of Harleen's draft that make it unsuitable for this audience, and explain what she should change and why.
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The draft uses a formal, written register drawn from school or official Punjabi rather than the spoken register her grandparents and young cousins use at home. Words like 'ਅਯੋਜਨ' and 'ਸਹਿਭਾਗਤਾ' are correct but belong to formal writing; in a family speech she would more naturally say 'ਤਿਆਰੀ ਕੀਤੀ' (made preparations) or 'ਹਿੱਸਾ ਲਿਆ' (took part). The second feature is the absence of direct address and interaction: a three-minute family talk needs vocatives such as 'ਬਾਬਾ ਜੀ', 'ਬੀਬੀ ਜੀ', and rhetorical questions to the cousins, because the audience is mixed-generation and partly English-dominant.
What she should change: keep the three numbers exact ($2,300, 400 attendees, 90 performers) but deliver them in short spoken clauses, add a brief English gloss for the cousins when a Punjabi word is likely unfamiliar, and use direct address and one or two questions. The reasoning is audience design, not simplification of content: the facts stay, the register and interactional structure change. Accuracy of Punjabi is preserved; only the variety (formal written versus colloquial spoken) shifts.
2. Harleen worries that using English glosses for her cousins will be seen as 'bad Punjabi'. Evaluate this concern.
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The concern confuses correctness with appropriateness. Code-mixing and glossing are normal in Punjabi-Australian family settings, especially with a mixed-generation audience where younger children are English-dominant. Using an occasional English word or short gloss does not make her Punjabi wrong; it makes it audience-appropriate. What would count as a weakness is abandoning Punjabi syntax and speaking English with Punjabi words inserted.
A defensible approach: deliver the main content in Punjabi, gloss only low-frequency or formal vocabulary once, and avoid glossing basic words the children already know. She should also avoid switching mid-sentence repeatedly, since that disrupts the flow for the grandparents. So the judgement is: glossing is acceptable and strategic when limited and purposeful, but excessive switching would undermine the goal of a Punjabi cultural speech. The answer hinges on purpose and audience rather than on a rule about purity.