"One language sets you in a corridor for life, two languages open every door along the way" -Frank Smith

A definition I like: "Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing. Speakers may vary pronunciation, word choice, or morphology and syntax. The term linguistic variation (or simply variation) refers to regional, social, or contextual differences in the ways that a particular language is used"

From: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-linguistic-variation-1691242

✿Post #3:

Sources (so far!)

The sources below are informative scholarly articles that will be useful point for aspect 1 and 3 of my project, i.e. the main causes and the main consequences/reactions of language varieties.

Source 1: DeStefano, Johanna S., and Victor M. Rentel. “Language Variation: Perspectives for Teachers.” Theory Into Practice, vol. 14, no. 5, Dec. 1975, p. 328. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00405847509542595.

This source brings up interesting points about language variation, like how students speak a certain language at home with their families, but then at school teachers tell them that that's all wrong, which is challenging for both parties. I will definitely be mentioning this because it shows one issue/cause of negative reactions when it comes to language variation

Source 2: Heylighen, Francis, and Jean-Marc Dewaele. “Variation in the Contextuality of Language: An Empirical Measure.” Foundations of Science, vol. 7, no. 3, Sept. 2002, pp. 293–340. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1023/A:1019661126744.

This mainly discusses how in certain languages, speakers can mean different things depending on the context of the words. That is why some language variations can create misunderstandings between speakers as well as negative reactions where they think that the other person is wrong/not speaking the proper language.

Source 3: Hay, Jennifer. “Sociophonetics: The Role of Words, the Role of Context, and the Role of Words in Context.” Topics in Cognitive Science, vol. 10, no. 4, Oct. 2018, pp. 696–706. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/tops.12326.

One of the causes of language variation is that "speech carries social meaning", meaning that one of the causes of language variation is that people create new words and expressions based on their surroundings, their country, their resources, etc. That is why even though there can be a "standard" of a language, it is inevitable that new variations will appear once that language crosses into other countries.

Wright, Richard, and Pamela Souza. “Comparing Identification of Standardized and Regionally Valid Vowels.” Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, vol. 55, no. 1, Feb. 2012, pp. 182–193. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0278).

Source 4: Hornsby, David. Linguistics: A Complete Introduction. Teach Yourself, 2014.

One part of the chapter on social variation explains the concept of dialectology, particularly how in even one country there can be variations of the same language when people stop developing accents, which is simply a change in pronunciation. They're also impacted by sociolinguistic factors like gender, age and social class. There are thus different speech communities in single areas. I find that interesting because we often assume that people living in the same country must/do absolutely speak the same way .

Source 5: “Language Variation and Change.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-variation-and-change.

What I like about this source is that "Language Variation and Change is the only journal dedicated exclusively to the study of linguistic variation and the capacity to deal with systematic and inherent variation in synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Sociolinguistics involves analysing the interaction of language, culture and society; the more specific study of variation is concerned with the impact of this interaction on the structures and processes of traditional linguistics. Language Variation and Change concentrates on the details of linguistic structure in actual speech production and processing (or writing), including contemporary or historical sources"

Source 6: Yule, George. The Study of Language. 6th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2017.

I read the subchapters of the two chapters about language variation (regional versus social), but what caught my attention is that it talks about pidgins and creoles which I've learned a bit about before as well as diglossia, which I will need to understand/describe for one of my examples in Aspect 2. I like this book because when we used it for Introduction to Linguistics it was easy to read but still very informative.

Source 7: Nerbonne, John, et al. “Introduction: Language Variation Studies and Computational Humanities.” International Journal of Humanities & Arts Computing: A Journal of Digital Humanities, vol. 2, no. 1–2, Mar. 2008, pp. 1–18. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3366/E1753854809000287.

I did not explore this article with as much depth as the other sources, but what I did understand is that it tries to explain causes for language variation by using humanities. I think that that could be an interesting take on it. Computational humanities is actually "involved in the creation of software, providing "environments and tools for producing, curating, and interacting with knowledge that is 'born digital' and lives in various digital contexts".

Source 8: Wieling, Martijn, et al. “Quantitative Social Dialectology: Explaining Linguistic Variation Geographically and Socially.” PLoS ONE, vol. 6, no. 9, Sept. 2011, pp. 1–14. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023613.

This article mainly takes examples from Dutch to explore the social and geographical features of language variation. I like this one because I've talked the evolution of Dutch before in Intro to Linguistics, so I think that will help me. For example, the article says that there a lot of conflicts concerning standard Dutch and variations of Dutch within the same region, yet even "standard Dutch" has gone through phonetic changes. Some regions have kept those changes, some haven't, and that is a part of the dilemma of language variation.

The sources below are interesting examples of language variations that will be important for aspect 2 of my project.

~~Update:

For "Diglossia and Language Variation in North Africa (Source 10)", I did a project in French class where I had the research the impact of the French language in the region of Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania). What I learned from that project that I can use to describe that example is that Maghreb French is a regional variety of French. It is grammatically identical to French in France and undergoes variations of the latter. In the French of the Maghreb, there are however not many creole tendencies because French is only the mother tongue of a small minority of Maghrebis, the Maghreb being essentially bilingual. However, there is simultaneous use of a dialect, rather Maghrebian or Berber Arabic, and French by a code-switching action. In Algeria, for example, some people who have studied French, use this language in a moderate way by using logical connectors (so, therefore, but in addition ...), a sentence made up of 80% dialect Arabic or Algerian Berber and 20% French, either dialect French expressions to Algerian to give a meaning that could be hard to express in local Arabic. For example, the sentence "I will record it" can be said: "rah n'rijistrih (or" n'rigistréh "according to the pronunciation of the speaker)", for "rah ns'jjlou" (or "nsejjlou"), in Berber "ath uregistrigh".

Project update: Around the beginning of March, after coming up with my topic sentences, I had not done as much for the project as I would have liked to simply because of improper management of my time. However, now, especially with the outline being in the works, I feel much more certain on which direction my paper is taking and I am pretty pleased with that. There are 3 specific ideas that I want to talk about and connect and it is clear enough now.

In addition, I want to try a bit every day/week, i.e going step-by-step (introduction, then each paragraph, then conclusion) because I think that will be a much more effective method to ensure that the information is properly explained and for time management of course.