ABSTRACT
Language varies in space, according to social groups, and in different communication situations. These three parameters are the main dimensions of linguistic variation: diatopic, diastratic, and diaphasic differences can be found in every language. Now, the history of the European reflection on language can also be reconstructed as the history of a continuous criticism of language variation, and, consequently, also as a history of proposals to change this lamentable situation. The dimension of variation Dante Alighieri studies primarily is Space. He travels through the ytalia silva, and remarks on the spatial, the diatopic differences. The world of linguistic variation is a world of noise, of ugly sound. The structural linguistic feature, in which the horror of variation is situated, is sound. This is not astonishing since language is fundamentally sound for Dante; a semantic conception of language will only arise in the sixteenth century.
