Regional pragmatic variation

It is a well-known fact that language use is influenced by a range of socio-cultural factors. These include situation-specific contextual factors such as the relationship between participants in an interaction, as well as factors relating to participants’ identities and their membership of different social and cultural groups. One of the largest of these groupings is the nation-state with which national varieties of languages and cultures are associated, although with immigration, globalization and technological developments in communication, there are more and more groupings that transcend national/geographical boundaries. Other groupings include sub-cultures linked to age, ethnicity, region, gender and social class, as well as to particular professions and organizations. Certain patterns of language use are associated with these and other groupings, or may even be constitutive (in part) of some of them. Language use and variation in language use can thus be examined in relation to a range of factors. This chapter focuses on the impact of region on language use, or regional pragmatic variation. It starts with a definition of regional pragmatic variation, followed by a consideration of the genesis and development of this area as well as the levels and domains in which regional pragmatic variation can be studied. Some findings from studies published primarily in English are provided for the purposes of illustration, and some trends in the study of regional pragmatic variation are sketched out. The chapter also considers some methodological issues in the study of regional pragmatic variation as well as some prospects for the future