Sociolinguistic Quiz 1

group of people who are in habitual contact with one another, who share a language variety and social conventions or sociolinguistic norms about language use.

way of grouping people by traits that are relatively fixed  OR open to active performance. characteristics such as class, gender, ethnicity --> fixed. open to active performance and construction: identity.

how each of us, as social beings, adapt our language to suit the sitation and the audience. Often contrasted with social characterstics, the socially relevant traits that we are seen to posses.

a different or distinct form or version of something. i.e. a change of vowel, realisation of phoneme. important for language variation: it is always patterned and socially and historically determined. variation can occur in all fields of linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, practices.

free variation: speakers choice between variants is completely arbitrary and unpredictable.

structured variation: speakers choice between variants is linked to other factors.

competence: refers primarily to what sepakers know about language

performance: what speakers actually produce when speaking (might be full uf false starts, uhms, etc).

-individual: style (casual, careful, formal)

-situational (setting, paricipants, ends, norms, genres)

-social (class, sex, age)

-regional (varieties, "dialects")

Any linguistic unit realized by more than one norm.