Sociolinguistics is fundamentally interested in how language tends to vary from one social group to another, hence regional dialect being one of its main concerns. Regional dialectology can be best defined as; a form of a specific language that is mainly spoken by a particular group of people within a given geographical set-up. In some circumstances, regional dialect can be referred to as a regiolect or topolect.
Dialect is merely a diverse social or somewhat regional languages that are different from the other languages through their use of grammar, vocabulary as wells as pronunciation. Dialect is majorly used to show how some people speak significantly differs with the standard language that is expected. Some of the key points concerning dialect, therefore, include: Many people, especially the sociolinguists tend to believe that every dialect spoken by individuals are equal. This is because anyone's way of speaking is justified as long as it carries meaning in it.
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Nevertheless, some of these sociolinguists tend to disagree with the whole idea of equality in the dialects since they consider the variety used by a specific community may be more advantageous than another community. This can be through their use of vocabulary. Last but not least, many times there has been the confusion of the definition of an accent with a dialect. In the real sense, these two are different even though accent can be used as part and parcel of the definition of the dialect.
Some of the examples of a dialect include: In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee , he uses illiterate characters to show dialect;
Walter : “Reckon I have. Almost died the first year I come to school and et tem pecans- folks say he pizened ‘em and put ‘em over on the school side of the fence”
Example two: In Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain , he uses dialect extensively so as to bring a distinction between his characters.
Jim : “We’s safe, Huck. We’s safe! Jump up and crack yo’ heels. Dat’s de good ole Cairo at las’, I jis knows it”….then Huck replies;
Huck : “I’ll take the canoe and go see, Jim. It mightn’t be, you know.”
Example three: In the poem “ Poor Bit of a Wench” by D.H Lawrence ;
“Will no one say hush! To thee,
Poor lass, poor bit of a wench?
Will never a man say: Come, my pigeon
Come an’ be still wi’ me, my own bit of a wench!”
Social dialectology, on the other hand, can be best defined as a study that entails looking into the variations of language with reference to the social status of a person as well as other social relationships within a society. It shows the social differentiation of speech between specific communities.
Labov is an American Linguist who complexly studied the language. With reference to his case study 3; Sociolinguistic Variation in New York City, this was his most influential of all the studies he made. Using the example of New York, he says that two subgroup speakers put together will exhibit different use of linguistic variables. This is because, in some communities, we find that for instance, the vowel r is either absent or present. This proves that the patterns of variations are in existence and are unavoidable.
Additionally, Labov wanted to prove his study and went ahead to conduct a pilot study. He surveyed some main three sites that he believed would show the pattern variations. He, therefore, used some well-known department stores in Manhattan where he invented to be a customer. He was explicitly interested in the pronunciation of the vowel /r/. Therefore he kept on asking the salespeople on the things he would find on the "fourth floor," making the sale persons to pronounce these two words more often, and these two words have vowel /r/ in it. At the end of it all, he was able to gather quite information from all the salespeople and this significantly contributed to confirming this particular study as indeed true.
