Lecture 4

Speakers have various ways of saying the same thing. It may arise from the
mechanical limitations of the speech organs for instance speaker may not be fully
under the speaker’s control. The choice of linguistically elements is done by
consciously or unconsciously. Two or more distinct but linguistically equivalent
variants represent the existence of a linguistic variable.
The terms of variety language are emerged due to different systems reflecting
different varieties of the human condition. Variety is a specific set of ‘linguistic
items’ or ‘human speech patterns’ (presumably, sounds, words, grammatical
features, etc.) which we can connect with some external factor apparently, a
geographical area or a social group (Hudson, 1996; Ferguson, 1972 and
Wardhaugh, 2006). Languages can be at variance in lexical, grammatical,
phonological and other ways depends on different social, geographical and other
circumstances determine what elements will be needed and, therefore developed,
and for that reason sociolinguistics believe that such unique sets of items or
patterns do exist.
1. Language variation No two speakers of a language speak exactly the same
way. No individual speaker speaks the same way all the time
2. Language Varieties Language variety refers to the various forms of
language triggered by social factors. Language may changes from region to
region, from one social class to another, from individual to individual, and
from situation to situation. This actual changes result in the varieties of
language.
3. Dialect A language variety, spoken by a speech community, that is
characterized by systematic features (e.g., phonological, lexical,
grammatical) that distinguish it from other varieties of that same language •
Idiolect: the speech variety of an individual speaker
4. Varieties Hudson (1980) a set of linguistic items with similar distribution
Ferguson (1971) anybody of human speech patterns which sufficiently
homogeneous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic
description and which has a sufficiently large repertory of elements and their
arrangements or process with broad enough semantic scope to function in all
normal context of communication.
Language vs. Dialect Language (prestige) and dialect (stigma). The
stigmatization of the term dialect 1. I don’t speak dialect 2. in reality, all
speakers of English speak some dialect, regardless of its social status. Most
speakers use a variety of different dialects or styles in different situations. •
Writing • Colloquial speech (with friends, family) • Formal speech (with
strangers, authority figures)