Language Variation

Carmen Solis
Engl
Dr. Hughes


Thomason, Sarah. "Language Variation and Change". Linguistic Society of America. November 19, 2009. <http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-change.cfm>.


In the Linguistic Society of America, Mrs. Thomason explains that language is always changing. There are various examples of this fact which one of them is the mother tongue which is Latin. Latin is the mother tongue of the Roman Language, Spanish, French, and Italian. With time, language has change and has brought many new variations and words into the language. Currently, researchers are trying to connect the origin of all the languages but it is difficult to accomplish this since languages are changing rapidly. There are people who are bilingual and multilingual while others only speak a language they might be able to speak in a dialect. As we look on our own society and community, we can distinguish the different variations that people today are speaking. Those people talk differently when they are around their boss, friends, family, and elderly people. Also in this website, it shows us that people are coming up with new words, and changing the meaning of the words. While we progress, we find and make up words that seem to be naturally correct, and here is where “Language change inevitably leads to variation, and variation within a speech community often leads to social valuation of particular features as 'good' or 'bad'.” We tend to group words as been correct or standard or as been incorrect and have negative reactions. One of those words is the word “ain’t.” Most people deceived this word as being illogical. Also, grammatical constructions change; we have come to replace the word “thou,” which was used in Old English, with the word “you.” I planned to used this website to explain that there has always been a change in language and that there are different types of language variations.



Gibbon, Dafydd. Language Variation. May 7, 1996. Web. 20 Nov. 2009. <http://coral.lili.unibielefeld.de/Classes/Summer96/textdesc/node8.html>.


This website explains the various dimensions that a language has. There is a difference between how a people speak base on the environment and their class. Basically, there are three dimensions which are the regional social, and functional. The regional is a dialect within their community; social is the way that someone speaks based on their social standard or class; and functional is how someone speaks either formal or informal. Many people respond in a regional or social variation meaning that they would tend to respond back based on this terms because it is whom they are and where they come from. But on the other hand, the function variation can be switch on and off within a conversation. For instance, someone can be speaking to a boss and they might be speaking on their social dialect but the functional variation is turn on causing that someone to speak in a formal way. Contrary, someone might be speaking to a friend and they might be talking to his friend on their social dialect but the functional variation is turn off causing them to speak in an informal way. The way someone communicates depends on whom one is talking to and the use of the words rather than where the user comes from. I tend to use this website to explain that people should keep their origin which makes them unique and have diversity in this country, but, also, they should incorporate the Standard in the way they communicate to be able to succeed in the world.