What are the main features of formal language? All I can think of is formal language being less ambiguous, more likely to be planned and more likely to be aware of audience's interpretation.
Hey, peanut.
I agree that formal language is a little more difficult to discuss than informal language; if you're really struggling, though, you can always think about features of
informal language, and then basically use the opposite.
But I recommend trying to think of formal language specifically in regard to each subsystem. A really, really quick list to which you may wish to add:
Phonology and phonetics- Cultivated accent (more like Received Pronunciation/Queen's English)
- Clearer diction
- No yod-dropping
- Less consonant flapping
- Less assimilation (perhaps clearer word boundaries)
- More Standard pronunciation in general (so like, limited metathesis)
Morphology and lexicology- More 'conventional' lexemes (less slang)
- But perhaps more jargon, particularly in something like legalese
- Different pronouns (like, you would rarely use
one in very informal speech or writing)
- Less 'wordplay'
Syntax- Perhaps fewer sentence fragments
- Greater nominalisation
- Hypotaxis rather than parataxis
- More complex and compound-complex sentence structures
Discourse- Interesting stuff can be said about honorifics/greetings (so like, "hey man, wassup?" as opposed to "To Whom It May Concern")
- Debatably formal language is more prevalent in writing than speech
- Politeness features/hesitancy/hedging
- Clear coherence and cohesion
Semantics- Again, less wordplay (fewer metaphors, similes, puns, idioms etc.)
- Potentially more 'diluted' language to avoid taboo
- Perhaps less euphemism/dysphemism
You could also try going over the
metalanguage featured on pages 17-18 of the study design to see what you can apply. Those two pages are actually so, so useful.
Does that help at all?