Variety (linguistics)
A
variety of a
language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently.
Variety is a wider concept than
style of prose or
style of language.
Some writers in
sociolinguistics use the term
lect, apparently a
back-formation from specific terms such as
dialect and
idiolect.
Examples of varieties are:
*
dialects, i.e. varieties spoken by
geographically defined speech communities**
idiom is a term neutral to the dialect–language distinction and is used to refer to the studied communicative system (that could be called either
a dialect or
a language) when its status with respect to this distinction is irrelevant (thus it is a synonym to
language in the more general sense);
*
sociolects, i.e. varieties spoken by
socially defined speech communities
*
standard language, standardized for education and public performance
*
idiolects, i.e. a variety particular to a certain person
*
registers (or
diatypes), i.e. the specialised
vocabulary and/or
grammar of certain activities or professions
*
ethnolects, for an ethnic group
*
ecolects, an idiolect adopted by a household
Varieties such as dialects, idiolects, and sociolects can be distinguished not only by their vocabulary, but also by differences in
grammar,
phonology and
prosody. For instance the tonal word accents of
Scandinavian languages has differing realizations in many dialects. As another example, foreign words in different sociolects vary in their degree of adaptation to the basic phonology of the language.
Certain professional registers such as
legalese show a variation in grammar from the standard language. For instance English journalists or lawyers often use
grammatical moods such as
subjunctive mood or
conditional mood, which are no longer used frequently by other speakers. Many registers are simply a specialised set of terms (see
technical terminology,
jargon).
It is a matter of definition whether
slang and
argot are to be considered included in the concept of
variety or of
style.Colloquialisms and
idiomatic expressions are usually understood as limited to variation of
lexicon, and hence of
style.*
List of language subsystems
