ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 introduces the second section of the book where the focus moves to language variation in monolingual communities. People often use a language to signal their membership of particular groups and to construct different aspects of their social identity. This chapter clarifies the distinction between accent and dialect, and between regional and social accents and dialects. Isoglosses which separate regional dialects are illustrated and the concepts of dialect chain and vernacular dialect are discussed. Examples are provided of the ways that individuals linguistically signal their social group affiliation and index their social identity. The standard methodology used in social dialect research since its foundation in the 1960s is briefly described. The chapter ends with a summary of a range of other methods of collecting data on regional and social dialects, including online digital sources.
