ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the constitution of language variation in conversation as the choice and constitution of interactively meaningful speech styles. It also analyses data from a conversation in a German Sozialamt in the western part of the Ruhr area. Speech styles were defined quantitatively with reference to the probability of the occurrence of selected linguistic variables dependent upon extralinguistic context and linguistic environment. Both in sociolinguistics and in stylistics variation in spoken language has been primarily analysed as a dependent variable. In sociolinguistics, the systematic empirical investigation of speech styles began with Labov's famous studies of stylistic and social stratification of speech variables. In most sequences, standard and colloquial cues are used side by side to signal an unmarked colloquial style intermediate between the poles. Finally, the chapter analyses the constitution and alteration of speech styles as signalling cues to constitute the 'global institutional' and the 'local conversational' context.
