ABSTRACT
Recent developments in linguistics have emphasised the importance of language varieties and many linguists are now of the opinion that it is not really possible to describe even the formal levels of language without taking sociological factors into consideration. Part of the skill in using language in conversation or debate is to be able to monitor such feedback constantly and to make good use of it in the cut and thrust of verbal interchange at whatever level it takes place. The variety of language we use is more permanently influenced by such factors as our age group, sex, geographical, educational and social background. The study of regional dialects can tell us a great deal about the historical development of the language, and by recording and analysing numerous examples of local pronunciation, vocabulary and grammatical forms the dialectologist is able to plot regional variation and trace trends in development.
