Linguistic Variation in English: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This paper aims to review the study of linguistic variation in English. The paper examines three main parts: the founding and significance of linguistic variation and its compartmentalization, the dialectical variation in lexical, phonological, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic facets, and linguistic registers. The first part investigates how linguistic variation thrives as a systematic and theoretical study and how it plays an important role in current linguistic study, especially in initiating the sociolinguistics study. Then, the various variations are reviewed progressively in four dimensions: phonology, lexis, morphology, and syntax. The second part examines the dialectal variation in lexical, phonological, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic angles, each of which is vital to drawing the outline and fulfilling the connotation of dialectal variation. The third part discovers the definition and variation of registers. Registers are a prevalent linguistic phenomenon and occur in miscellaneous situations as an indexical indicator to imply the sociocultural background of individuals. This paper is of high value as a systematic review of the differentiable forms and functions of linguistic variation in English, be that variation lexical, phonological, morphological, or syntactic, and could further be a cornerstone contributing less or more to the future variationist research, via offering rudimentary modules to sketch out a framework, inspiring resourceful perspectives of exploring all sorts of variations or imparting a succession of enlightening experience.