Definition

In sociolinguistics, social dialect is a variety of speechassociated with a particular social

class or occupational group within a society. Also known as sociolect.
Douglas Biber distinguishes two main kinds of dialects inlinguistics: "geographic
dialects are varieties associated with speakers living in a particular location, while social
dialects are varieties associated with speakers belonging to a given demographic group
(e.g., women versus men, or different social classes)" (Dimensions of Register Variation,
1995).
See Examples and Observations below. Also see:

Anti-Language
Code Switching
Diglossia
Ethnic Dialect
Hyperlect
Idiolect
Isogloss
Language Variety
Lect
Legal English and Legalese
Linguistic Variation
Regional Dialect and Regionalism
Register
What Is a Dialect?

Examples and Observations:

"Even though we use the term 'social dialect' or 'sociolect' as a label for the
alignment of a set oflanguage structures with the social position of a group in a status
hierarchy, the social demarcation of language does not exist in a vacuum. Speakers are
simultaneously affiliated with a number of different groups that include region, age,
gender, and ethnicity, and some of these other factors may weigh heavily in the
determination of the social stratification of language variation. For example, among older
European-American speakers in Charleston, South Carolina, the absence of r in words
such as bear and court is associated with aristocratic, high-status groups (McDavid
1948) whereas in New York City the same pattern of r-lessness is associated with

working-class, low-status groups (Labov 1966). Such opposite social interpretations of

the same linguistic trait over time and space point to the arbitrariness of the linguistic
symbols that carry social meaning. In other words, it is not really the meaning of what
you say that counts socially, but who you are when you say it."
(Walt Wolfram, "Social Varieties of American English." Language in the USA, ed. by E.
Finegan. Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Language and Gender

"Across all social groups in Western societies, women generally use
more standard grammaticalforms than men and so, correspondingly, men use
more vernacular forms than women. . . .
"[I]t is worth noting that although gender generally interacts with other social factors,
such as status, class, the role of the speaker in an interaction, and the (in)formality of
the context, there are cases where the gender of the speaker seems to be the most
influential factor accounting forspeech patterns. In some communities, a woman's social
status and her gender interact to reinforce differential speech patterns between women
and men. In others, different factors modify one another to produce more complex
patterns. But in a number of communities, for some linguistic forms, gender identity
seems to be a primary factor accounting for speech variation. The gender of the
speaker can override social class differences, for instance, in accounting for speech
patterns. In these communities, expressing masculine or feminine identity seems to be
very important."
(Janet Holmes, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 4th ed. Routledge, 2013)

Standard British English as a Sociolect

"The standard variety of a given language, e.g. British English, tends to be the upper
classsociolect of a given central area or regiolect. Thus Standard British English used
to be the English of the upper classes (also called the Queen's English or Public School
English) of the Southern, more particularly, London area."
(Ren Dirven and Marjolyn Verspoor, Cognitive Exploration of Language and
Linguistics. John Benjamins, 2004)

LOL-SPEAK
"When two friends created the site I Can Has Cheezburger?, in 2007, to share cat

photos with funny, misspelled captions, it was a way of cheering themselves up. They
probably werent thinking about long-term sociolinguistic implications. But seven years
later, the 'cheezpeep' community is still active online, chattering away in LOLspeak, its
own distinctive variety of English. LOLspeak was meant to sound like the twisted
language inside a cats brain, and has ended up resembling a down-South baby talk
with some very strange characteristics, including deliberate misspellings (teh, ennyfing),
unique verb forms (gotted, can haz), and word reduplication (fastfastfast). It can be
difficult to master. One user writes that it used to take at least 10 minutes to read adn
unnerstand a paragraph. (Nao, itz almost like a sekund lanjuaje.)
"To a linguist, all of this sounds a lot like a sociolect: a language variety thats spoken
within a social group, like Valley Girlinfluenced ValTalk or African American Vernacular
English. (The worddialect, by contrast, commonly refers to a variety spoken by a
geographic groupthink Appalachian or Lumbee.) Over the past 20 years, online
sociolects have been springing up around the world, from Jejenese in the Philippines to
Ali G Language, a British lingo inspired by the Sacha Baron Cohen character."
(Britt Peterson, "The Linguistics of LOL." The Atlantic, October 2014)

Slang as a Social Dialect

"If your kids are unable to differentiate among a nerd ('social outcast'), a dork ('clumsy
oaf') and ageek ('a real slimeball'), you might want to establish your expertise by trying
these more recent (and in the process of being replaced) examples of
kiduage: thicko (nice play on sicko), knob, spasmo (playground life is
cruel), burgerbrain and dappo.
"Professor Danesi, who is author of Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence,
treats kids' slang as a social dialect that he calls 'pubilect.' He reports that one 13-yearold informed him about 'a particular kind of geek known specifically as a leem in her
school who was to be viewed as particularly odious. He was someone "who just wastes
oxygen."'"
(William Safire, "On Language: Kiduage." The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 8, 1995)