ABSTRACT
In areas where English has been introduced, such as Australia and New Zealand, there seems to be less regional variation – though there is evidence of social variation. The high level of intra-national communication, together with the relatively small populations, may have inhibited the development of marked regional differences in these countries. People can be grouped together on the basis of similar social and economic factors. Their language generally reflects the groupings – they use different social dialects. Dialect chains are very common across the whole of Europe. In social terms, linguistic forms which are not part of Standard English are by definition non-standard. Social dialect research in many different countries has revealed a consistent relationship between social class and language patterns. Pronunciation and vocabulary differences are probably the differences people are most aware of between different dialects of English, but there are grammatical differences too.
