What are some examples of language variation?

Defining Language Variations

  • Standard / Polite / Formal.
  • Colloquial / Informal.
  • Regional Dialect.
  • Social Dialect.
  • Lingua Franca.
  • Pidgin.
  • Creole.
  • Vernacular.

What are factors of language variation?

The factors that influence a speaker’s or writer’s choice of language vary, and they include the context that surrounds the speaker or writer, the age, gender, culture, etc. Very often, the choice of language is conscious, and the speaker can switch the language choice depending on such factors.

What is language change and variation?

Language variation and change is an integrated subfield of linguistics that includes dialectology (the study of regional variation in language), historical linguistics (the study of how languages change over time) and sociolinguistics (the study of social variation in language).

What is language variation in communication studies?

Language Variation or Dialectal Variation, refers to changes in language due to various influences. These include, social, geographic, individual and group factors. Dialect. This refers to the variety of language characteristic of a particualar group of people in a given speech community (country) or region.

What is variation in English language?

Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing. Speakers may vary pronunciation (accent), word choice (lexicon), or morphology and syntax (sometimes called “grammar”).

How significant is language variation in teaching and learning language?

The language variation is considered important in language teaching because its contribution of cultural values regards to the different ways of using the language functions or other aspects of language like vocabulary, pronunciation and so far so forth.

How does language variation affect communication in general?

People speaking the same language can have difficulty understanding each other if they are from different regions of the same country. Dialectical and accents differences, the use of slang and regional colloquialisms can create numerous problems that may lead to misunderstanding and gaps in communication.

How does language variation cause language change?

The difference between varying forms increases with time, due to a process known as phonologisation whereby small differences are exaggerated to make them distinct from other phonemic items in a language. Only a subset of any existing variations in a language at any point in time lead to actual later change.

What are grammatical features?

A grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include: tense, the placing of a verb in a time frame, which can take values such as present and past.

How many variations of English are there?

Specifically, there are 160 distinct English dialects throughout the world. There are a large array of different accents within primarily English speaking countries, like the US and England, and there are a large array of foreign English accents.

Why is it important to study language variation?

The study of language variation guides language development activities. For example, when developing a writing system it is desireable for it to be useful and acceptable to the largest number of speakers of the language. Therefore, it is important to identify the most unifying features of the language.

How does language vary based on its uses?

Languages can differ in many ways. They may use different sounds, they may make words in different ways, they may put words together to form a sentence in different ways, and that’s just for starters! Dialects of a language may vary in terms of accents, the words people use, the way people structure their speech.

What is variation in language called?

Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing. Speakers may vary pronunciation (accent), word choice (lexicon), or morphology and syntax (sometimes called “grammar”).

How do we study language variation?

Two important quantitative methods for studying language variation are lexicostatistics and intelligibility tests . The lexicostatistical method involves eliciting commonly used words from people in two or more different locations.

What is linguistic variety?

Variety (linguistics) In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself.

What is stylistic variation in language?

Stylistics is the description and analysis of the variability of linguistic forms in actual language use. The concepts of ‘style’ and ‘stylistic variation’ in language rest on the general assumption that within the language system, the same content can be encoded in more than one linguistic form.