ABSTRACT
Fundamentally, sociolinguistics studies language variation in all kinds of spaces-geographical, social, cultural, pragmatic. Traditionally, the study of variation came under two branches of linguistics: (1) dialectology, or the study of dialects; and (2) contact linguistics, or the investigation of languages in contact (such as Spanish in contact with English in the US, producing what is commonly called “Spanglish,” a mixture of Spanish and English). The study of dialects and contact phenomena is becoming especially relevant in the current internet age, since these notions are changing and evolving in online media. A dialect is dened as a variant of a language, showing different features (phonological, grammatical, lexical, pragmatic) according to where it is spoken and who speaks it. But the line between a “language” and a “dialect” is rarely clear-cut. What we call English turns out to be a complex term, since English varies not only across nations (British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, and so on), but also within a nation-Southern English, Midwestern English, and so on. In effect, English is made up of dialects, spoken in territories that achieved nationhood at some point after British colonization, but we do not call them dialects any longer. American, Canadian, and Australian English are called national languages, because they are spoken in territories that have political autonomy. Only variants within each are now called dialects (Cajun American, Newfoundland Canadian, and so on).
