Personal variation

Individuality in language is a complex matter, arising from variations in sex, physical condition, personality, background, interests, and experience. Physical condition is important, for example, in the way it can influence a person's voice quality. Personality can play a part in voice quality too, and, if the graphologists are correct, is especially important in relation to handwriting. A particular blend of social and geographical backgrounds, increasingly common in a mobile society, may produce a distinctive accent or dialect. Educational history, occupational experience, and personal skills or tastes (hobbies, leisure pursuits, literary preferences, etc.), will foster the use of habitual words and turns of phrases, or certain kinds of grammatical construction. Also noticeable will be favorite discourse practices - a tendency to develop points in an argument in a certain way. Some people, are evidently, 'good conversationalists', 'good story tellers', "good letter writers', 'good speech makers'. What actually makes them such is the subject of a fascinating and ancient field of enquiry: rhetoric. For the most part, individualistic features are unimportant in the act of communication. When we listen to what people are saying, we do not spend much time paying attention to what about is their language that makes them different. Indeed, differences, once noticed, can get in the way of meaning. A deviant voice quality, a persistent use of a particular idiom, or a tendency to finish off what someone else is saying.

Stylistic variation

The choice of grammatical structure and vocabulary will vary with the situation in which people are speaking. On a formal occasion someone might say 'the person to whom I wrote', while less formally they might say 'the chap I wrote to'. One phrase is not more correct than the other. When even highly educated people are chatting with friends, their speech is very different from textbook conversations. They begin a sentence, then they change their mind; they hesitate, then start again, differently; they muddle one grammatical structure with another. They omit various words, forget others, if necessary they will invent words just for the occasion. In a relaxed atmosphere they do not feel constrained to speak carefully, to plan what they are going to say.

PART XI

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