Language varieties

Emilio Lara Espinoza

Prestige

PrestigiousSpeakers

Education

Academic Writing

Taught as a Second

Language to foreigners

Public life

Science, Law, Politics, Religion.

Used by educated speakers

THE STANDARD LANGUAGEis associated to

Blimey! I dunno!

ACCENT DIALECT

Everybody speaks a dialect with an accent.These concepts may be close, but they are not the same.

Refers to

Grammatical features

Phonological features

Refers to

Phonological features

A variety

THERE ARE SOME VARIETIES THAT BECOME MORE PRESTIGIOUS THAN OTHERS, BUT THERE IS NO VARIETY BETTER THAN THE

OTHER: THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT.

Regional dialectsThey are known for having stereotyped pronunciation

Latin

OutbackWestern (US)

Isoglossesrefer to

The line that represents the

boundary between areas with

differences in the speech

ISOGLOSSES AND DIALECT BOUNDARIESThe more isoglosses you get,

the easier you identify a DIALECT BOUNDARY

*The dialect continuum:It is a group of dialects spoken in a geographical region that share linguistic features and possess mutual inteligibility. Nonetheless, that inteligibility dicreases when we move within the area, finding that, at one point, dialects are no longer similar.

Regional variation

Canada

Ex: English and French

Personal background

Personal experiences

Ex: Parents of different mother tongues

BILINGUALISMresult of

LANGUAGE PLANNING

Usually, countries are assumed to be monolingualThus, all language minorities can be included in society

Pidgin

It developes for trading purposes

It is the first step in the formation of a

language

It has no grammar structures, native speakers

nor a written form

It is just spoken

CreoleIt is what follows a Pidgin

It is a language used by a community

It has grammar structures and native

speakers

It is both spoken and written