Functional Varieties of Language

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FUNCTIONAL VARIETY OF LANGUAGE The study of language variation is an important part of sociolinguistics, to the extent that it requires reference to social factors. Languages vary from one place to another, from one social group to another, and from one situation to another. The term variety is the label given to the form of a language used by any group of speakers or used in a particular field. A variety is characterized by the basic lexicon, phonology, syntax shared by members of the group. There are two major varieties of language based on the terms of the users and the use which are the standard variety, dialects (regional/ geographical and socioeconomics) and registers (functional varieties). The standard variety is the form of a language used by the government and communication media, taught in schools and universities and is the main or only written form. The standard variety is the most widely used in a community. It is more fixed than other varieties, allowing less variation in pronunciation, spelling/writing and grammar. In the following sections of the text, the explanation of other varieties of languages such as dialects and register will be provided. DIALECTS A regional, temporal or social variety within a single language is known as dialect. It is the product of individual's geographical and class origin. A dialect is the collection of attributes (phonetic, phonological, syntactic, morphological, and semantic) that make one group of speakers noticeably different from another group of speakers of the same language. It differs in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary from the standard language, which is in itself a socially favored dialect. So a dialect is a variation of language sufficiently different to be considered a separate entity, but not different enough to be classed as separate language. There is no clear qualitative linguistic
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