Language and Regional variation
A Brief Summary of Gearge Yule
The Study of Language
Chapter 18
The standard Language
 Idealized variety: accepted official language of a community
or country.
 Standard English: printed in newspapers, books, widely used
in mass media, and taught at schools.
 It is the variety taught to those who want to learn English as a
second or foreign language
 It is clearly associated with education and broadcasting
 It is more easily described in terms of written language than
spoken language.
Accent and Dialect
 Accent: technically restricted to the description of aspects of
pronunciation that identify where an individual speaker is
from, regionally or socially.
 Dialect is used to describe features of grammar and
vocabulary as well as pronunciation
Dialectology
 There is a general impression of mutual intelligibility among
speakers of different dialect despite some differences.
 This is one of the criteria used in the study of dialects or
dialectology
 It is important to emphasize that none of the dialects is
inherently better than any other. They are simply different.
Regional Dialects
 All languages are spoken in different ways in different
regions.
 This led to the recognition of regional dialects.
Isogloss, dialect boundaries and The Dialect
Continuum
 If a vast majority of speakers in one area say they carry things
home from store a paper bag while the majority in another
area say they use a paper sack, then it is usually possible to
draw a line across a map separating the two areas.
 This line is called isogloss
 However, the drawing of isoglosses tends to obscure the fact
that at most dialect boundary areas, one dialect merges into
another. Thus, forming form a dialect continuum.
Bilingualism and Diglossia
 Bilingualism is a situation where two official languages are
used.
 Diglossia describes a situation involving two distinct
varieties.
 In diglossia, there is a low variety used for every day affairs
and a high variety learned ins schools.
Pidgin and Creoles
 A pidgin is a variety of language developed for some practical
purpose, such as trading among groups of people who had a
lot of contact but did not know each other’s language.
 When a pidgin develops beyond its role as a trade or contact
language and becomes the first language of a social
community, it is described as Creole.