[3] Linguists speak of both standard and non-standard (vernacular)[4] varieties as equally complex, valid, and full-fledged forms of language.
[2] O'Grady et al. define dialect: "A regional or social variety of a language characterized by its own phonological, syntactic, and lexical properties.
[12] Sociolinguists Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet explain: "Some communities of practice may develop more distinctive ways of speaking than others.
[14] Many languages have a standard variety, some lect that is selected and promoted prescriptively by either quasi-legal authorities or other social institutions, such as schools or media.
Standard varieties are accorded more sociolinguistic prestige than other, nonstandard lects and are generally thought of as "correct" by speakers of the language.
It is general social acceptance that gives us a workable arbitrary standard, not any inherent superiority of the characteristics it specifies.
[16] In some cases, an authoritative regulatory body, such as the Académie Française,[17] maintains and codifies the usage norms for a standard variety.
For example, Trudgill suggests the following sentence as an example of a nonstandard dialect that is used with the technical register of physical geography: There was two eskers what we saw in them U-shaped valleys.
After the caller identifies herself, the receptionist recognizes that she is speaking to a friend, and she shifts to an informal register of colloquial Cuban Spanish.
[22] An individual's idiolect may be affected by contact with various regional or social dialects, professional registers and, in the case of multilinguals, various languages.
For scholars who regard language as a shared social practice, the idiolect is more like a dialect with a speech community of one individual.