SECTION TWO

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 Variation in Language
English is spoken today on all five continents as a result of colonial expansion in
the last four centuries or so. English language has become the third most spoken
language next to Chinese and Hindi. English is used as an official and often native
language in many of the former colonies along with more or less strongly diverging
varieties which arose in particular socio-political conditions, so-called pidgins which
in some cases later developed into creoles. English language has become the lingua
Franca, the language used for communication between people living in different
countries in the world. English has also come to play a central role as an international
language. It exists in culture, business, diplomacy, communication, science, and the
Internet. However, though as the global lingua franca, English varies on how it is
used, either written or spoken. Its widespread use and prominence around the world
are attributed to the colonization and expansion of the British Empire that ruled in
many parts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the political influence and
economic dominance of USA from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
The following pie chart showing the percentage of native English speakers living in
inner circle English speaking countries. Native speakers are now substantially
outnumbered worldwide by second-language speakers of English.

5%

5%

4%

American

16%

British

70%

Canadian
Ausralian
Other

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_dialects.png
So, we can use the term variety to mean a language, a dialect, an idiolect or an
accent; it is a term which encompasses all of these. The term variety is an
academic term used for any kind of language production, whether we are viewing
it as being determined by region, by gender, by social class, by age or by our own
inimitable individual characteristics.
Language variety refers to the various forms of language triggered by social
factors. Language may changes from region to region, from one social class to
another, from individual to individual, and from situation to situation. This actual
changes result in the varieties of language. Hudson (1980: 24) refers to language
variety as a set of linguistic items with similar distribution. . Ferguson (1971: 30)
states that variety of language is anybody of human speech patterns which
sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic
description and which has a sufficiently large repertory of elements and their
arrangements or process with broad enough semantic scope to function in all

normal context of communication. Wardaugh (1988: 20) defines language variety

as a specific set of linguistic items or human speech patterns (presumably,
sounds, words, grammatical features) which we can uniquely associate with some
external factors (presumably, a geographical area and a social group)

2.1.1 Dialect
All languages consist of dialects (a language is a group of dialects; to speak a
language is to speak a dialect of that language) Therefore, everyone speaks at least
one dialect. Dialect differences are usually minor and dialects of a language are
usually mutually intelligible. Dialects are geographically, socially, politically
determined. Dialect is the most accurate kind of diversity in a speech community
and it is different from each other because it is influenced by many factors, including
geographical location, age, occupation, socio-economic status, ethic group and sex.
Generally, a dialect is associated with a particular geographical area. The word
dialect refers to far greater difference than mere pronunciation. Dialects differ
from each other in sound system, syntax and vocabulary.
Unlikely, in every day usage, the term dialect is often confused with word accent
.it is obvious that accent refers only to difference in pronunciation. While dialect is
a variety of language used by a group whose linguistic habit pattern both reflect and
are determined by shared regional, social, or cultural perspectives. Herk (2012: 201)
defines dialect as a term that tends to refer to sub-varieties of a single language.
Non-linguistics use the term as a synonym for accent, though dialects can differ
in terms of not only pronunciation but also words, word, sentence structure and
meaning. Meyerhof (2011:31) refers to dialect as a term widely applied to what
are considered sub-varieties of a single language. Generally, dialect and accent
are distinguished by how much of the linguistics system differs. Dialects differ on

more than just pronunciation, i.e. on the basis of morph syntactic structure and/
or how semantic relation are mapped into the syntax