Variation or variety - common term to show diversity or assortment

David (1992: 76) defines variety as a system of linguistic expression whose use is governed by situational variables, such as regional, occupational or social class.

For example, a geographically defined variety is known as a dialect, a variety with a social basis as a sociolect, a functional variety as jargon, a situational variety as a register.

Dialect refers to any regional, social or ethnic variety of a language. All languages spoken by more than one small homogeneous community are found to consist of two or more dialects. Dialect may occur on any level of language, i.e pronunciation, grammatical, semantic, and language use differences.

Regional dialect refers to the language variety used in a geographical region.

When enough differences give the language spoken in a particular region its own "flavor," that version of the language is called a regional dialect.

A regional dialect differs from language in that the former is considered a distinct entity, yet not distinct enough from other dialects of the language to be regarded as a different language.

Describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes. Social dialects originate among social groups and are related to a variety of factors. Could be further distinguished by gender, age, ethnic group, religion, and class. For example, in India, caste, one of the clearest of all social differentiators, quite often determines which variety of a language a speaker uses.In Malaysia, royalty and common mass use different social dialect.

Refers the functional variety of language that is defined according to use of language in context.A medical doctor may use technical terms when he is talking with his fellow physicians, but he may use ordinary vocabulary when he is talking to his patients.When talking about salt, a chemist may use "NaCl" in writing, but he may use the word "salt" before a preschool child.

People in specific communication situations tend to use similar vocabularies and ways of saying.

Dialect spoken by idiots?The language variety unique to a single (individual) speaker of a language. Your idiolect includes the vocabulary appropriate to your various interests and activities, pronunciations reflective of the region in which you live or have lived, and variable styles of speaking that shift subtly depending on whom you are addressing. (Thomas P. Klammer,2007)

Regional phonological or phonetic differences Refers to the characteristics of speech that convey information about the speakers dialect.Accent reveals what country or part of country a person belongs.Accent also refers to speech of individual who speaks a language nonnatively, e.g French accent, Chinese accent.

Simplified and varied grammar that allows rapid learningCombine their native language with other language(s) using the lexical items and grammar of both.Not adopted by a community

Advanced pidgin adopted by a community as its native tongue.May continue to develop over several generationsHatian Creole, Gullah, Tok pisin

Colloquial language informal styleNew words by recombining old words into new meaningsCan be totally new wordsCan also be new meanings to old words

Every profession has its own set of wordsSometimes called profession slang or technical languagee.g business jargon, engineering jargonWhat are some of the TESL jargon?