ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Do you speak the same way that you write? Would you write a love letter the same way as a note to the milkman? Do you use language the same way as your grandparents, or even as your parents? Do you address your teachers the same way as you do your friends? Do you use language now the same way that you did when you were three years old? We could keep asking this sort of question for pages. We might wager you answered ‘No’ to them all and we would also hope that some of you may even have thought ‘Of course not – don’t be so stupid!!’. Why? Because appropriately different ways of using language are absolutely everywhere – and that is what this unit is about: variety in language.
