Distinction From Dialect
The term dialect has two distinct meanings in linguistics. The first usage refers to a variation of a language that is characteristic of a particular group who speak the language. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a "sociolect" and a regional dialect may be termed a "regiolect" or "topolect". The second usage refers to a language socially subordinate to a regional or national standard language, often historically cognate to the standard but not a variation of it or in any other sense derived from it. A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
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Famous quotes containing the words distinction and/or dialect:
“At sundown, leaving the river road awhile for shortness, we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the night. This, like most of the localities bearing names on this road, was a place to name which, in the midst of the unnamed and unincorporated wilderness, was to make a distinction without a difference, it seemed to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)