ABSTRACT
Language use varies not only dialectally or sociolectally, but also according to individual speaker characteristics. These constitute the speaker’s idiolect, defined as a form of speech shaped by the categories of the specific language used, the personality of the speaker, and the sense of identity that the speaker brings to social interaction. The study of idiolectal speech constitutes a broad area of sociolinguistic research, especially since identity construction in social media venues offers significant insights into the relation among personality, identity, and language. This chapter examines how idiolectal speech is researched by sociolinguists generically. And how identity is now constructed in Internet venues.
