Chapter 19
Language and social variation
We focused on variation in language
use found in different geographical
areas. However, not everyone in a
single geographical area speaks in
the same way in every situation.
This chapter is about the traditional study of regional
dialects tended to concentrate on the speech of
people in rural areas, the study of social dialects has
been mainly concerned with speakers in towns and
cities. In the social study of dialect, it is social class
that is mainly used to define groups of speakers as
having something in common.