This document discusses several external and regional patterns that influence linguistic variation, including social class, gender, age, urbanization, migration, and social networks. It examines how variables like postvocalic /r/, the use of /ing/, and /h/ dropping patterns vary based on social factors. Style and formality of speech, as well as the influence of gender and age are also covered. The role of social networks and processes like standardization that can promote linguistic uniformity are summarized.

1. By Gabriela Quezada Cabezas

2. External Patterns Regional Patterns
 Social Class
 Gender  Urbanization
 Age  Migration
 Style
 Network

3. It is connected with an It tend to promote
increase in social
stratification.
linguistic diversity as well
as uniformity.
Urbanization
Incoming migrants from rural
areas often discard marked The net result is
dialect forms as part of the dialect levelling Migration
process of acommodation.

4. Social Class
Ocuppation
Income
Education

5. » Phonological variables:
A. Postvocalic /r/: shows a geographically as well as socially
significant distribution.
B. ing: Alveolar /n/ nasal /ŋ/ : It is a well-kown marker of
social status over most of the English-speaking world.
C. /h/ alternation between /h/ and lack of /h/: the lower a a
person’s social status, the more likely he or she is to drop hs.
» Grammatical variable:
• The variable concerns the use of non-standard third person singular
present tense verb form without –s e.g he go.

6. Style
Formal Informal
 The intersection of social and stylistic continua is one of the
most important findings of quantitive sociolinguistics
Working claas.
 Style can range from formal to informal depending on social
context, relationship of the participants, social class, sex, age,
physical environment, and topic.

7. Gender
Men Women
 Women tend to use higher-status variants more frequently than
men.
 There also strong correlations between patterns of social
stratification and gender.
 Women tend to hypercorrect more than men, especially in the
lower middle class.
 In the Victorian era “speaking properly” became associated with
being female.

8. Age
o The youngest speakers between the
ages of 7 and 16 use more standard
forms than the young adults between
the ages of 16 and 20.
o The Age distribution of a variable may be an important clue to
ongoing change in a community.

9. Social Network
Dense Network Multiplex Network
Is one in which the people Is one in which the
whoma given speaker individuals who interact
kown and interacts whit are tied to one another in
also know each other. other ways.
 It takes into account different socializing habits of individuals
and their degree of involvement in the local community.

10.  It is one of the main agents of inequality.
 This process converts one variety into a standard by
fixing and regulating its spelling, grammar. Etc.
 It is not an inherent , but rather and acquired or
deliberately and artificially imposed characteristic.
 Standard languages do not arise via “natural” course of
linguistic evolution or suddenly spring into existence .
They are created by concsious and deliberate planning,
which may spam centuries.