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Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation (e.g., more than one way of pronouncing the same phoneme or the same word), lexicon (e.g., multiple words with the same meaning), grammar (e.g., different syntactic constructions expressing the same grammatical function), and ...
A commonly studied source of variation is regional dialects. Dialectology studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Sociolinguists concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond to regional areas are often called dialectologists.
O'Grady et al. define dialect: "A regional or social variety of a language characterized by its own phonological, syntactic, and lexical properties." [ 5 ] A variety spoken in a particular region is called a regional dialect (regiolect, geolect [ 6 ] ); some regional varieties are called regionalects [ 7 ] or topolects, especially to discuss ...
In sociolinguistics, an accent is a way of pronouncing a language that is distinctive to a country, area, social class, or individual. [1] An accent may be identified with the locality in which its speakers reside (a regional or geographical accent), the socioeconomic status of its speakers, their ethnicity (an ethnolect), their caste or social class (a social accent), or influence from their ...
Dialects can be associated not only with place but also with particular social groups. Within a given English-speaking country, there is a form of the language considered to be Standard English : the Standard Englishes of different countries differ and can themselves be considered dialects.
Regional vocabulary within American English varies. Below is a list of lexical differences in vocabulary that are generally associated with a region. A term featured on a list may or may not be found throughout the region concerned, and may or may not be recognized by speakers outside that region. Some terms appear on more than one list.
The move away from traditional methods of language study, however, caused linguists to become more concerned with social factors. Dialectologists, therefore, began to study social, as well as regional variation. The Linguistic Atlas of the United States (the 1930s) was amongst the first dialect studies to take social factors into account.
Sociophonetics covers a broad range of topics between the quintessential fields phonetics and sociolinguistics. Studies have focused on differences in speech production, the social meaning of particular pronunciations, perception and perceivability of sociophonetic patterns, and the role of sociocultural factors in phonetic models of production among other topics. [6]