Deviation from standard language

The diagram shows variation in English by region (the bottom axis) and by social class (the side axis). The higher the social class, the less variation (See the table below).

Bristolian Dialect	....	Standard English
I ain't done nothing	....	I haven't done anything
I done it yesterday	....	I did it yesterday
It weren't me that done it	....	I didn't do it

Any native speaker of English would immediately be able to guess that Speaker 1 is likely of a different social class than Speaker 2. The differences in grammar between the two examples of speech show the differences between social class dialects or sociolects. It is also notable that, at least in England and Australia, the closer to Standard English a dialect gets, the less the lexicon varies by region, and vice-versa.

Covert prestige generally assumes that non-standard is a low-prestige language. However, in certain groups, such as traditional working class neighborhoods, standard language may be considered undesirable in many contexts. This is because the working class dialect is a powerful in-group marker, and especially for non-mobile individuals, the use of non-standard varieties expresses a neighborhood pride, group, or age solidarity.

One can see different types of age-based language variation within the British population. They are: vernacular of a subgroup with the membership typically characterized by a specific age range, age-graded variation, and indications of linguistic change in progress. For example, people tend to use linguistic forms that were functioning when they reached adulthood. Examining the speech across several generations of a single family, sociolinguists found that the grandparents' generation would never or rarely merge (не различать) two vowel sounds caught and cot; their children's generation may on occasion, particularly in quick or informal speech merge them; while their grandchildren's generation would merge these two vowels uniformly. This is the basis of the apparent-time hypothesis where age-based variation is taken as an indication of a linguistic change in progress.

Geography differences cause the distribution of language or its constituent elements. There are two principal fields of study within the geography of language: the "geography of languages", which deals with the disposition of languages through history and space, and "linguistic geography", which deals with regional linguistic variations within languages.

To quote P. Trudgill, "linguistic geography has been geographical only in the sense that it has been concerned with the spatial distribution of linguistic phenomena”. In recent times greater emphasis has been laid upon explanation rather than description of the patterns of linguistic change. In these studies scholars have paid attention to the social use of languages, and to the dialect variety within languages in regard to social class or occupation. In England, linguistic geography has traditionally focused upon Rural English, rather than Urban English.

Men and women, on average, tend to use slightly different language styles. These differences tend to be quantitative rather than qualitative. That is to say, that women make more minimal responses than men. Robin Lakoff’s initial identification of a women's register stated that the women's style of language served to maintain an inferior role in society.

A later development of this argument was that gender differences in language reflect a power difference (Atkins’ dominance theory, 1980). However, more recently Deborah Tannen has proved that gender differences in language are more similar to 'cultural' differences. Comparing conversational goals, she argued that men have a report style, aiming to communicate a factual information, whereas women have a rapport (friendly) style, which is more concerned with building and maintaining relationships. 

Communication styles are always a product of context, and as such, gender differences tend to be most pronounced in single-gender groups. One explanation of this is that people accommodate their style towards the language of the person they are interacting with. Thus, in a mixed-gender group, gender differences tend to be less pronounced. A similarly important observation is that this accommodation usually aims towards the language style, not the gender of the person.

One of the ways in which the communicative competence of men and women differs is in their use of minimal responses, i.e. paralinguistic features such as ‘mhm’ and ‘yeah’ associated with collaborative language use (Carli, 1990).  Men, on the one hand, generally use yeah, mhm less frequently, and if they do, it is usually to show agreement in conversation. Female linguistic behavior expresses a desire to take turns in conversation with others.

Men and women differ in their use of questions in conversations. For men, a question is usually a genuine request for information whereas for women it can often be a rhetorical means of being engaged into the conversation or acquiring attention from the interlocutors (Barnes, 1971). Therefore women use questions more frequently. In writing, however, both genders use rhetorical questions as literary devices.

According to Dorval (1990), in his study of same-sex friendly interaction, males tend to change subject more frequently than females. This difference may well be at the root of the conception that women chatter and talk too much, and may still trigger the same thinking in some males. In this way lowered estimation of women may arise. Incidentally, this attitude towards women as chatterers arguably arose from the idea that any female conversation was too much talking according to the patriarchal consideration of silence as a womanly virtue common to many cultures.

Female tendencies toward self-disclosure, i.e. sharing their problems and experiences with others to offer sympathy (Dindia & Allen, 1992; Tannen, 1991) contrasts with male tendencies to non-self disclosure and professing advice or offering a solution when confronted with another’s problems.

Men tend to be more verbally aggressive in conversing (Labov, 1972), frequently using threats, profanities, yelling and name-calling (verbal abuse, especially as a substitute for reasoned argument in a dispute). Women, on the whole, deem this to disrupt the flow of conversation and not as a means of upholding one’s hierarchical status in the conversation. Where women swear, it is usually to demonstrate to others what normal behavior for them is.