What is social variation?
【正确答案】：While an individual from a particular geographical area speaks with an accent, that person’s speech may also contain a number of features which are not related in any way to regional variation. Two people who were born and brought up in the same town and speak the same regional dialect may speak differently because of a number of social factors. This is especially the case when they are members of different
social groups. Consciously or unconsciously，their social backgrounds exert a shaping influence on their choice of linguistic features that are appropriate to their social identities. Thus people’s sociolects are defined by linguistic differences associated with respective definable social groups even within the same geographical location.
Social variation gives rise to sociolects which are subdivisible into smaller speech categories which reflect their socioeconomic, educational, occupational and ethnic background, as well as their sex and age.
