Dialect levelling
Definition
The process by which distinctive dialect features reduce over time, typically through contact with speakers of other varieties, mobility, and education. Levelling complicates origin inference because a speaker's current speech may not reflect their childhood community.
Related terms
- Dialectology
- The systematic study of regional and social language varieties, mapping how pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary differ across geographic areas and communities.
- Idiolect
- The language variety specific to an individual, comprising their characteristic vocabulary, syntactic preferences, spelling habits, punctuation patterns, and discourse-level style. Authorship attribution...
- Linguistic profiling
- Broadly, any use of linguistic features to infer a speaker's identity or background. In its pejorative sense, the discriminatory use of accent...
- Phonological feature
- A systematic pattern in the sound system of a speaker or dialect: vowel quality, consonant realisation, intonation contour, rhythm, and connected-speech processes...
- Sociolect
- A variety of language associated with a particular social group, such as an occupational community, age cohort, or ethnic group, rather than...
Explained in
- Linguistic Profiling and Dialectology as EvidenceThe process by which distinctive dialect features reduce over time, typically through contact with speakers of other varieties, mobility, and education. Levell...