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Dialect Variation

By Husain Abdolhay

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Dialect 's Misconceptions Dialect ‘substandard Dialect ‘incorrect’ Dialect ‘slang’ Dialect variation Non-linguistics Regiona Historical political Linguistics Syntactic/grammatical Morphological Semantic/lexical Phonological (‘accent’) contributing Factors to variation Occupation Geography Education Social status/class Age Gender ethnicity

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Regional dialects Northern Midland Southern Western Dialect leveling Phonological differences syntactical differences Northern: ‘r-less dialects’ NY: ‘toidy-toid (33rd) street’ Midland: stress shift Southern: [ɛ] [ɪ]/ ___ nasals ‘t[ ]n o’clock’, [pɪn] ‘pin, pen’

Lexical differences

Words for ‘sweetened carbonated beverage’

‘Coke’ – CA, New Eng. ‘Soda’ – South

‘Pop’ – Northern, N.W. ‘Tonic’ – Boston

‘Cocola’ – Georgia, Tennessee coke pop soft drink soda tonic cocola Lexical differences

Southern French influence: armoire, bayou, bisque

Midland German influence: ‘dunk’, ‘spritz’, ‘schmear’

Elizabethan English: flapjack, greenhorn, reckon, ragamuffin

Western Spanish influence: patio, plaza, padre, mes

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Dialect lexical differences Grammatical differences British English American English Australian English lay by rest area petrol gasoline, lorry truck minerals soft drinks Northern American English Southern American English, etc. Idiolect Accent phonological features Dialects Standard Nonstandard vernacular Standard AmericanEnglish(| SAE ) Idealizations Prestige education literature social status political leadership Wealth

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. Sociolinguistics geographic perspective anthropological perspective sociological perspective regional dialects language, culture & thought social relations &language varieties

Variety dialects sociolects registers regional vari social background speech situation jargon profession topic age ethnic group Interlocutors sex education medium written language spoken language). Dialect geographical social ethnic gender age dialects .

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Traditional dialectology (middle of 19

century – middle of 20th

century)

Modern dialectology (1970s – present)

rural areas geographic variation phonology and vocabulary questionnaires, interviews

urban areas social variation phonology, vocabulary, grammar questionnaires, interviews, corpora, statistics