Language Variation In Language

Language plants its own seeds of change, and social background offers fertile ground for its growth. Bhatti (2013) asserts that if structure is at the heart of language, then variation defines its soul. As Sapir (1921) puts it “Everyone knows that language is variable.” Furthermore, variation allows us to differentiate individuals, groups, communities, states and nations. The study of language variation is pivotal to the solution of basic problems in linguistic theory (Labov 1966, 2001). Variability is prevalent in language; one of the amazing facts about human communication is the demonstrated ability to normalize the inherent variation within every spoken or written message in processing the linguistic signal. Generally speaking, interest in language variation focusses on differences that have some social significance in terms of community rather than personal idiosyncrasies, though socially meaningful aspects of individual speaker performance are of interest to those interested in language variation. Like other sociolinguistics, our purpose is to unfold and demonstrate the sense and systematicity behind the apparent idiosyncrasy of surface patterns of language use and attitudes about language. Labov (2001) elaborates that only variation that is distributed along social dimensions can be considered relevant to linguistics structure. According to many linguists like Crystal (2003), the idea of variation within structural units has often been pointed out as “free