Introducing English Linguistics

speaker vari-
ables
: particular characteristics of speakers that affect how they use lan-
guage. Other speaker variables include geographic mobility, age, social
class, ethnicity, education, and social networks. The study of speaker vari-
ables is the cornerstone of research done in sociolinguistics, an area of lin-
guistics concerned with the study of social variation in language.
Although speaker variables appear to be mutually exclusive categories,
they overlap considerably. While age and social class are not related, social
class and education are more clearly connected, since the social class of
which one is a member will very often determine the amount of educa-
tion that individual receives. In addition, some of the variables are exceed-
ingly difficult to define. Commenting on sociolinguistic treatments of
gender, Cameron (1995: 15–16) remarks: