College of Education for Humanities 31 Jan, 2023

Subject: Sociolinguistics Linguistic varieties

Varieties of Language
Presented by Ali Shimal Kzar and Istabrq Noori Mahmood
Supervised by: ASST. Prof. Dr. Baidaa Abbas Alzubaidi
Introduction
Sociolinguistics is the branch of Linguistics which deals with the study of language
used in society and in sociocultural context. In addition, it is the study of the
linguistic indicators of culture and power (Wardhaugh & Fuller ). According to
Longman (2010) sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to the social
factors which are: social class, educational level and type of education, age, sex and
ethnic origin.
Language varies not only from one individual to another but also from one sub-
section of speech community (family, village, town, region. People of different age,
sex, social classes, occupation, or cultural groups in the same community will show
variation in speech . Thus, language varies in geographical and social space.
Sociolinguists say language is a code • Varieties exist within the code • Factors
which cause language variation • Nature of participants- their relationship,
Number of participants (two face-to-face, one addressing a large audience )
Physical setting (noisy/quiet, Public/private, family/formal gathering,
familiar/unfamiliar etc.
According to Trask (2007 pp.264-264), Labov defines it as the study of variation in
language, or more specifically, the study of variation within speech communities
since the purely geographical aspects of variation has been studied by students of
dialect geography and dialectology.
There are many kinds of linguistic varieties:
 Standard language
 Nonstandard language
 Dialect
 Register
 Diglossia
 Pidgin
 creole
 Style

It refers to a mode of usage of most educated speakers of a language and

established as the prestigious form of that language. This term is also used for that
variety of a language which is considered to be the norm. To give a language,
name of a standard language, planning and policies are made by the elite class and
government officials. These plannings and policies depend upon ideology. This
process of standardization is historical and remains in progress all the time.
Standard language strictly follows the grammar and pronunciation rules of the
language concerned. For example , the classical Arabic.
Nonstandard English differs from Standard English at the level of grammar (it does
not follow the grammar or pronunciation rules of standard language).
Dialect: the term used to refer to a particular way of speaking a language which is
associated with a particular region or social group there are three types of dialect (
Wardhuagh, 403: 2015)
Regional
Social
Individual dialect.
Regional dialect (Regiolect):
A regional dialect is a distinct form of a language spoken in a particular
geographical area. Also known as a regiolect. If the form of speech transmitted
from a parent to a child is a distinct regional dialect, that dialect is said to be the
child's vernacular. Some regional dialects have been given traditional names which
mark them out as being significantly different from standard varieties spoken in
the same place. By identifying this kind of dialect we can know that from which
region someone belongs.
Social Dialects (Sociolects):
In the social study of dialect, it is social class that is mainly used to define groups of
speakers as having something in common.
The two main groups are:
• Middle class: Those who have more years of education and perform non-
manual work.
• Working class: Those who have fewer years of education and perform
manual work of some kind.
Individual Dialect (Idiolect) :
An idiolect is the distinctive speech of an individual--a linguistic pattern regarded
as unique among speakers of a person's language or dialect. Although the unique
circumstances of every life result in each of us having an individual way of
speaking, a personal dialect or idiolect, we generally tend to sound like others with
whom we share similar educational background and/or occupations. For example:
people who went to college speak different than those who didn't.
Registers are those “varieties of language which correspond to different
situations, different speakers and listeners, or readers and writers, and so on. A
register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific
context, which may be identified as situational (e.g. in church), occupational (e.g. a
lawyer's language) or topical (talking about a specific topic e.g. linguistics,
psychology, literature). Every native speaker is normally in command of several
different language styles, called registers, which are varied according the formality
of the occasion, and the medium used (speech, writing, or sign).

Diglossia
A term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a situation where two very different
varieties of a language co-occur throughout a speech community, each with a
distinct range of social function. Both varieties are standardized to some degree,
are felt to be alternatives by native-speakers and usually have special names.
Sociolinguists usually talk in terms of a high (H) variety and a low (L) variety,
corresponding broadly to a difference in formality: the high variety is learnt in
school and tends to be used in church, on radio programmes, in serious literature,
etc., and as a consequence has greater social prestige; the low variety tends to be
used in family conversations, and other relatively informal settings ( Crystal,
2008:145).
The term 'diglossia' was introduced into the English-language literature on
sociolinguistics by Charles Ferguson (1959) in order to describe the situation found
in places like Greece, the Arabic-speaking world in general, German-speaking , and
Switzerland ( Hudson, 1994:49). In all these societies there are two distinct
varieties of which one is used only on formal and public occasions while the other
is used by everybody under normal, everyday circumstances. The two varieties are
normally called 'High' and 'Low', or 'standard' and 'vernacular'.
Speech Style and Style-shifting:
In sociolinguistics, a style is a set of linguistic variants to which specific social
meanings are attributed. The study of sociolinguistic variation examines the
relation between social identity and ways of speaking. Along with social class,
gender, age etc.., another factor which changes the way of speaking is the
formality of the situation. The way of speaking according to the formality level of a
situation is described as style or speech style. And shifting or changing style
according to formality level is called style-shifting.
Style has two kinds:
• Formal style: Formal style is when we pay more careful attention to how we
are speaking. We use formal style in official documents, books, newspapers, etc.
• Informal style :
Informal style is when we pay less attention. It is described as casual style. We use
it everyday in our conversation. A change of an individual from one style to
another is called style shifting. The middle class people tend to shift their style to
upper class speech to make it more 'formal'. So if someone is speaking 'car' in
careful speech in New York, s/he will try to use upper class style pronunciation
i.e. /ka:r/. Formal and informal style have other differences as well e.g. the use of
vocabulary items 'father' vs. "dad'. There are grammatical structures which are
more commonly used in formal style as compared to informal style.

Conclusion
variation: the idea that there are a variety of ways of saying things, and which
code, lexical item, pronunciation, and so on is used has social meaning
A range of linguistic varieties have been tackled including standard language ,
nonstandard language , 'languages', 'dialects' (both regional and social),
'registers', 'High' and 'Low' varieties in diglossia.
Reference list
Hudson, R. (1996). Sociolinguistics . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Wardhaugh, R. a. (1995). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics . LONDON : Willy
Blackwell.