sociolinguistics, the study of language as it affects and is affected by social relations.

Sociolinguistics encompasses a broad range of concern, pidgin and creole languages , and other ways that language use is influenced by contact among people of different language communities (e.g., speakers of German, French, Italian, and Romansh in Switzerland).
Sociolinguists also examine different dialects, accents, and levels of diction in light of social distinctions among people. Although accent refers strictly to pronunciation, in practice a dialect can usually be identified by the accent of its speakers as well as by distinctive words, usages, idiomatic expressions, and grammatical features. Dialects reflect and may reinforce class, ethnic, or regional differences among speakers of the same language. In some cases difference of dialect shades into difference of language. Where the line between them is not clear, groups that are linguistically distinct are considered to speak different dialects of the same language if they can generally understand each other, although what constitutes this mutual intelligibility is itself not always clear. For example, someone speaking Mandarin may not be able to understand the spoken form of another Chinese dialect but can read it, since the written form of all Chinese dialects is universal; Serbs and Croats, on the other hand, speak essentially the same language but use different alphabets to write it. Individuals sometimes deliberately change their dialect as a means of improving their social status. Speakers of any dialect or any language may modulate their vocabulary and level of diction according to social context, speaking differently in church, for example, than on the playground; social activities that tend to shape the language of those engaging in it are sometimes called registers.

dialect, a variety of a language that signals where a person comes from. The notion is usually interpreted geographically (regional dialect), but it also has some application in relation to a persons social background (class dialect) or occupation (occupational dialect). The word dialect comes from the Ancient Greek dialektos discourse, language, dialect, which is derived from dialegesthai to discourse, talk. A dialect is chiefly distinguished from other dialects of the same language by features of linguistic structurei.e., grammar (specifically morphology and syntax) and vocabulary. In morphology (word formation), various dialects in the Atlantic states have clim, clum, clome, or cloome instead of climbed, and, in syntax (sentence structure), there are sick to his stomach, sick at his stomach, sick in, sick on, and sick with. On the level of vocabulary, examples of dialectal differences include American English subway, contrasting with British English underground; and corn, which means maize in the United States, Canada, and Australia, wheat in England, and oats in Scotland. Nevertheless, while dialects of the same language differ, they still possess a common core of features.

Although some linguists include phonological features (such as vowels, consonants, and intonation) among the dimensions of dialect, the standard practice is to treat such features as aspects of accent. In the sound system of American English, for example, some speakers pronounce greasy with an s sound, while others pronounce it with a z sound. Accent differences of this kind are extremely important as regional and class indicators in every language. Their role is well recognized in Great Britain, for example, where the prestige accent, called Received Pronunciation, is used as an educated standard and differences in regional accent, both rural and urban, are frequent. There is far less accent variation in Canada, Australia, and large parts of the United States. The term dialect (from the Greek Language word dialektos, ) is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect; a regional dialect may be termed a regiolect or topolect. The other usage refers to a language socially subordinate to a regional or national standard language, often historically cognate to the standard, but not a variety of it or in any other sense derived from it. This more precise usage enables distinguishing between varieties of a language, such as the French spoken in Nice, France, and local languages distinct from the superordinate language, e.g. Nissart, the traditional native Romance language of Nice, known in French as Niard. A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect. Other speech varieties include: standard languages, which are standardized for public performance (for example, a written standard); jargons, which are characterized by differences in lexicon (vocabulary); slang; patois; pidgins or argots. The particular speech patterns used by an individual are termed an idiolect.

Standard and non-standard dialect

A standard dialect (also known as a standardized dialect or "standard language") is a dialect that is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include government recognition or designation; presentation as being the "correct" form of a language in schools;

published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a "correct" spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature that employs that dialect (prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.). There may be multiple standard dialects associated with a single language. For example, Standard American English, Standard Canadian English, Standard Indian English, Standard Australian English, and Standard Philippine English may all be said to be standard dialects of the English language. A nonstandard dialect, like a standard dialect, has a complete vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, but is not the beneficiary of institutional support. An example of a nonstandard English dialect is Southern American English or Newfoundland English. The Dialect Test was designed by Joseph Wright to compare different English dialects with each other. The term dialect is used in two distinct ways.

"Dialect" or "language"
There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing a language from a dialect. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. Some linguists do not differentiate between languages and dialects, i.e. languages are dialects and vice versa. The distinction is therefore subjective and depends on the user's frame of reference. Note also that the terms are not always treated as mutually exclusivethere is not necessarily anything contradictory in the statement that "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German". However, the term dialect always implies a relation between languages: if language X is called a dialect, this implies that the speaker considers X a dialect of some other language Y, which then usually is some standard language. Language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages:

if they have no standard or codified form, if the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own, if they are rarely or never used in writing (outside reported speech), if they lack prestige with respect to some other, often standardised, variety.

Anthropological linguists define dialect as the specific form of a language used by a speech community. In other words, the difference between language and dialect is the difference

between the abstract or general and the concrete and particular. From this perspective, everyone speaks a dialect. Those who identify a particular dialect as the "standard" or "proper" version of a language are in fact using these terms to express a social distinction. Often, the standard language is close to the sociolect of the elite class. The status of language is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects. An opposite example is the case of Chinese, whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages, despite their mutual unintelligibility, because the word for them in Mandarin, fngyn, was mistranslated as "dialect" because it meant "regional speech" In linguistics, an accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation. An accent may identify the locality in which its speakers reside (a geographical or regional accent), the socio-economic status of its speakers, their ethnicity, their caste or social class, their first language (when the language in which the accent is heard is not their native language), and so on. Accents typically differ in quality of voice, pronunciation of vowels and consonants, stress, and prosody. Although grammar, semantics, vocabulary, and other language characteristics often vary concurrently with accent, the word 'accent' refers specifically to the differences in pronunciation, whereas the word 'dialect' encompasses the broader set of linguistic differences. Often 'accent' is a subset of 'dialect'

Development
Children are able to take on accents relatively quickly. Children of immigrant families, for example, generally have a more native-like pronunciation than their parents, though both children and parents may have a noticeable non-native accent however these generally differ: the parents' accent tends to be influenced by the sound system of their native language whilst the child is more inclined to apply hyper-pronunciation resulting from their need to correct their parents' shortcomings in fluency. Accents seem to remain relatively malleable until a person's early twenties, after which a person's accent seems to become more entrenched.

All the same, accents are not fixed even in adulthood. An acoustic analysis by Jonathan Harrington of Elizabeth II's Royal Christmas Messages revealed that the speech patterns of even so conservative a figure as a monarch can continue to change over her lifetime.

Non-native accents
Pronunciation is the most difficult part of a non-native language to learn. Most individuals who speak a non-native language fluently speak it with an accent of their native tongue. The most important factor in predicting the degree to which the accent will be noticeable (or strong) is the age at which the non-native language was learned. The critical period theory states that if learning takes place after the critical period (usually considered around puberty) for acquiring native-like pronunciation, an individual is unlikely to acquire a native-like accent. This theory, however, is quite controversial among researchers. Although many subscribe to some form of the critical period, they either place it earlier than puberty or consider it more of a critical window, which may vary from one individual to another and depend on factors other than age, such as length of residence, similarity of the non-native language to the native language, and the frequency with which both languages are used. Nevertheless, children as young as 6 at the time of moving to another country often speak with a noticeable non-native accent as adults. There are also rare instances of individuals who are able to pass for native speakers even if they learned their non-native language in early adulthood. However, neurological constrains associated with brain development appear to limit most non-native speakers ability to sound native-like. Most researchers agree that for adults, acquiring a native-like accent in a non-native language is near impossible.

Social factors
When a group defines a standard pronunciation, speakers who deviate from it are often said to "speak with an accent". However, everyone speaks with an accent. People from the United States would "speak with an accent" from the point of view of an Australian, and vice versa. Accents such as BBC English or General American or Standard American may sometimes be erroneously designated in their countries of origin as "accentless" to indicate that they offer no obvious clue to the speaker's regional or social background.

Being understood

Many teachers of English as a second language neglect to teach speech/pronunciation. Many adult and near-adult learners of second languages have unintelligible speech patterns that may interfere with their education, profession, and social interactions. Pronunciation in a second or foreign language involves more than the correct articulation of individual sounds. It involves producing a wide range of complex and subtle distinctions which relate sound to meaning at several different levels. Teaching of speech/pronunciation is neglected in part because of the following myths:

Pronunciation

isn't

important:

"This

is

patently

false

from

any

perspective."

Speech/Pronunciation forms the vehicle for transmitting the speaker's meaning. If the listener does not understand the message, no communication takes place, and although there are other factors involved, one of the most important is the intelligibility of the speaker's pronunciation.

Students will pick it up on their own: "Some will learn to pronounce the second language intelligibly; many will not."

Inadequate instruction in speech/pronunciation can result in a complete breakdown in communication. The proliferation of commercial "accent reduction" services is seen as a sign that many ESL teachers are not meeting their students' needs for speech/pronunciation instruction. The goals of speech/pronunciation instruction should include: to help the learner speak in a way that is easy to understand and does not distract the listener, to increase the selfconfidence of the learner, and to develop the skills to self-monitor and adapt one's own speech. Even when the listener does understand the speaker, the presence of an accent that is difficult to understand can produce anxiety in the listener that he will not understand what comes next, and cause him to end the conversation earlier or avoid difficult topics. A lingua franca, according to most definitions, is a language used to communicate between people who speak different languages natively. Because there are different ideas people want to communicate, different languages fill this role. Currently, English is the language which fills the most roles.

The definition of lingua franca accepted by most sources is a common language used by people who normally speak other languages. While the words actually mean 'Frankish language', from the Italian language, the concept is much older than Italia

n, or even Latin. Before the rise of Rome, Greek was the language of educated men, from the philosophers of Greece to Alexander the Great. Because Alexander conquered most of the 'known' world, most important documents were copied in Greek, even if they were written in other countries. As the Roman Empire began to conquer the world, Latin spread where ever the legions went. For a while, educated Roman citizens had their children taught by Greek tutors, and even after the fall of Rome to barbarians in the fifth century, the Byzantine Empire, which saw itself as the surviving Rome, kept Greek alive as an essential language. Latin, however, had spread far beyond where Greek had gone, and as the language of the Catholic church, stayed of primary importance. Monasteries had precious libraries of Latin scrolls and then books, and it was the language of scholarship. When universit

ies were established in the middle ages, the men of many countries who attended them were taught in Latin, and they wrote the fruits of their scholarship in Latin as well. Even today, Latin is not only the lingua franca of the Catholic church, but is the official language of the Vatican. Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he continued, "It seems that one ought to begin by composing this language, but people begin by speaking and writing and the language remains to be composed."[1] In earlier times, the term jargon would refer to trade languages used by people who spoke different native tongues to communicate, such as the Chinook Jargon. In other words, the term covers the language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest. Much like slang,[2] it can develop as a kind of short-hand, to express ideas that are frequently discussed between members of a group, though it can also be

developed deliberately using chosen terms. A standard term may be given a more precise or unique usage among practitioners of a field. In many cases this causes a barrier to communication with those not familiar with the language of the field. As an example, the words RAM, bit, byte, CPU, and hexadecimal are jargon terms related to computing.
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often used as a euphemism and may use informal lexicon to identify with one's peers.

Slang is different from jargon, which is the technical vocabulary of a particular profession, and which meets only the second of the criteria given above. Jargon, like many examples of slang, may be used to exclude nongroup members from the conversation, but in general has the function of allowing its users to talk precisely about technical issues in any given field.[citation needed]

[edit] Extent and origins of slang

Slang can be regional (that is, used only in a particular territory), but slang terms are often particular instead to a certain subculture, such as music or video gaming. Nevertheless, slang expressions can spread outside their original areas to become commonly used, like "cool" and "jive." While some words eventually lose their status as slang (the word "mob", for example, began as a shortening of Latin mobile vulgus[2]), others continue to be considered as such by most speakers. When slang spreads beyond the group or subculture that originally used it, its original users often replace it with other, less-recognised terms to maintain group identity. One use of slang is to circumvent social taboos, as mainstream language tends to shy away from evoking certain realities. For this reason, slang vocabularies are particularly rich in certain domains, such as violence, crime, drugs, and sex. Alternatively, slang can grow out of mere familiarity with the things described. Among Californian wine connoisseurs (and other groups), for example, Cabernet Sauvignon is often known as "Cab Sav," Chardonnay as "Chard" and so on;[3] this means that naming the different wines expends less superfluous effort; it also helps to indicate the user's familiarity with wine. Even within a single language community, slang, and the extent to which it is used, tends to vary widely across social, ethnic, economic, and geographic strata. Slang may fall into disuse over time; sometimes, however, it grows more and more common until it becomes the dominant way of saying something, at which time it usually comes to be regarded as mainstream, acceptable language (e.g. the Spanish word caballo or the English word ain't), although in the case of taboo words there may not be an expression which is considered mainstream or acceptable. Numerous slang terms pass into informal mainstream speech, and sometimes into formal speech, though this may involve a change in meaning or usage. Slang very often involves the creation of novel meanings for existing words. It is common for such novel meanings to diverge significantly from the standard meaning. Thus, "cool" and "hot" can both mean "very good," "impressive," or "good-looking".