Dialect and accent (idiolect)

Editor's Notes

• #4: The term dialect refers, strictly speaking to differences between kinds of language which are differences of grammar and vocabulary as well as pronunciation. The term accent refers solely to differences of pronunciation. For example, the dialect known as Standard English is that variety of English which is used in print, and which is normally taught in schools and to non-natives learning the language. It is also the variety spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other similar situations. The difference between standard non standard has nothing to do with differences between formal and colloquial languages. Historically speaking, the standard variety developed out of the English dialects used in and around London, as these were modified through the centuries by speakers at the court, by scholars from universities, by writers and, later on by schools. The language used by the upper classes in the capital city came to diverge from the one used by the other social classes and came to be regarded as the model. Within Standard English, there are regional differences, for example Standard Scottish English vs. Standard English English vs. Standard American English.
• #8: Forensic linguists can use idiolects to decide if a certain person did or did not produce a given piece of writing (or transcribed speech). The supposed confession of Derek Bentley was inconsistent with his idiolect, and modern analysis of the confession led to a posthumous pardon. The family of the Unabomber recognized his idiolect and informed the police of their suspicions.While often passing unnoticed in speech, some idiolects, particularly unusual ones employed by famous individuals, are immortalized in the form of nicknames. A famous example is the nickname of Willy Mays ("the Say-Hey Kid"), who frequently used "say hey".Every speaker has a very large active vocabulary built up over many years, which will differ from the vocabularies others have similarly built up not only in terms of actual items but also in preferences for selecting certain items rather than others. Thus, whereas in principle any speaker/writer can use any word at any time, speakers in fact tend to make typical and individuating co-selections of preferred words. This implies that it should be possible to devise a method of linguistic fingerprinting – in other words that the linguistic ‘impressions’ created by a given speaker/writer should be usable, just like a signature, to identify them. So far, however, practice is a long way behind theory and no one has even begun to speculate about how much and what kind of data would be needed to uniquely Between 1978 and 1995, someone living in the United States, who referred to himself as FC, sent a series of bombs, on average once a year, through the post. At first there seemed to be no pattern, but after several years the FBI noticed that the victims seemed to be people working in Universities and Airlines and so named the unknown individual the Unabomber. In 1995 six national publications received a 35,000 manuscript, entitled Industrial Society and its Future, from someone claiming to be the Unabomber, along with an offer to stop sending bombs if the manuscript were published.  
• #9: Every language user speaks with an accent: some speakers have very distinct or easily recognized types of accent, while others have a more subtle or less noticeable accent. Technically, the term 'accent' is restricted to the description of aspects of pronunciation that identify where an individual speaker is from, regionally or socially. It is different from the term 'dialect', which is used to describe features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation. Example 1You don't know what you're talking about. Example 2Ye dinnae ken whit yerhaverin' aboot. We recognize that sentence 1 will generally 'look' the same whether spoken with an American accent or a Scottish accent. Both speakers will be using Standard English forms, but have different pronunciations. However the next sentence, sentence 2, has the same meaning as the first, but has been written out in approximation of what a person who speaks one dialect of Scottish English might say. There are differences in pronunciation (e.g. whit, aboot), but there are also examples of different vocabulary (e.g. ken, haverin') and a different grammatical form (dinnae).