This document discusses language and regional variation in sociolinguistics. It defines language variation as differences in pronunciation, grammar or word choice within a language that may be related to factors like region, social class, education level or formality of situation. Regional variation specifically reflects the geographical area a person comes from and is studied in dialectology. The document provides examples of regional variation in English between countries and within countries. It explains that regional dialects develop over time as geographical separation reduces communication between groups of language speakers, causing their speech to diverge. When studying regional variation, linguists collect data on pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary from various locations and enter the results on maps with isoglosses separating variants.

1. Sociolinguistics
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
University of Kerbala
College of Education for Human Sciences
Department of English
By :
Zahra Aamir Kamil.
Supervised by :
Dr.Hamid Gittan Jewad.
13th Mar. 2023 / 5th lecture.

2. Language variation & Regional variation

3. Every language has a lot of variation, especially in the way its spoken.
Variation in sociolinguistics means that people use one and the same
language differently depending on who they are (younger or older, males
or females, highly educated or not, etc.). Regional variation reflects where
a person comes from: which part of the language area.

4. If we just look at English, we find widespread variation in the way it is
spoken in different countries such as Australia, Britain and the USA. We
can also find a range of varieties in different parts of those countries.

5. ■ language variation is the differences in pronunciation , grammar, or word
choice within a language. Variation in a language may be related to region ,
to social class and /or educational background or to the degree of formality
of a situation in which language is used .
■ Sociolinguists today are generally more concerned with social variation in
language than with regional variation. However, if we are to gain a sound
understanding of the various procedures used in studies of social variation,

6. ■ we should look at least briefly at previous work in regional dialectology.
That work points the way to understanding how recent investigations
have proceeded as they have.
■ dialectology: the study of dialects

7. Regional variation is geographically based and shows which part of the
language area a person is from.
Regional variation is the aspect of variation in a language due to geographical
divisions. Virtually all languages have regional variation and regional dialects,
which is manifested in all subsystems of language: the pronunciation and
sound system (phonetics and phonology), the grammar (morphology and
syntax), and the vocabulary (lexicon and semantics).
Regional variation has traditionally been studied by dialectologists, who
record their findings in dialect atlases.

8. Many factors contribute to regional variation but the main reason is the
same why language families develop over time from one ancestor
language: some speakers of a language start to communicate less with
each other (due to geographical separation, for instance), and so any
new features of speech they develop will not spread to those speakers
that they do not communicate with, and this will make their speech
different from that of others in the long run. The first step in the
divergence process is the development of regional dialects, which can
grow into separate languages in time, if the separation continues and
the number of features that differentiate the dialects grows.

9.  The study of regional variation
When linguists want to study regional variation:
 They collect data from a great range of places in the given language area, and
about all subsystems of language: pronunciation, grammar, and the lexicon.
 Then they enter the results on maps, usually about one feature per map.
 The line that separates the occurrences of two variants of the same linguistic
variable (basically, a linguistic feature that has variation) on a map is called an
isogloss.