Michael Halliday is an important figure in the development of British stylistics. His 1971 study "Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding's The Inheritors" is a key essay. One of Halliday's contributions has been the use of the term register to explain the connections between language and its context. For Halliday register is distinct from dialect. Dialect refers to the habitual language of a particular user in a specific geographical or social context. Register describes the choices made by the user, choices which depend on three variables: "field" ("what the participants... are actually engaged in doing", for instance, discussing a specific subject or topic), "tenor" (who is taking part in the exchange) and "mode" (the use to which the language is being put).