Dialect, Idiolect, Accent, and Speech Community

Dialect

The dialect and language are both ambiguous terms to be explained (Haugen, 19661) and even some of the linguists do not differentiate them. While language can be used to refer either to a single linguistic norm or to a group of related norms, dialect is used to refer to one of the norms. The term dialect is actually derived from the Greek language word dialektos. However, dialect is a subordinate variety of language or any variety of a language which is characterized by systematic differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary from other varieties of the same language. It is used in two ways; one usage of dialect refers to a variety of a language which is characteristic of particular groups of the language’s speakers. Socialdialect is the tern used to describe the differences in speech related with various social groups or classes.

Idiolect

Idiolect can simply be defined as a dialect which is spoken by one individual. Deeper, an idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. Every person has at  least small differences between the way they talk and the way their colleagues, families, friends, talk or in creating a “minimal dialect” and it is manifested  by patterns of vocabulary or idiom selection (the individual’s lexicon), grammar, or pronunciations that are unique to the individual.

 Accent

An accent is a certain form of a language spoken by a subgroup of speakers of that language which is defined by phonological features. It can also be defined as a manner of pronunciation which is associated with the region in which its speakers reside (a geographical or regional accent), ethnicity, caste, or social classes, etc. In simply defined, an accent is the way of pronuncing the words of a language that shows which area the  person/speker comes from.

Speech Community

Before knowing what exactly speech community is, we should return first to the concept of group as aby set of individuals united for a common end, that end being quite distinct from ends pursued by other groups. Further, speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of a language.

The speech community is usually tends to involve varying degrees of emphasis on the following: