Variation occurs within any language due to the way people use their

language or because of the contact with other languages and cultures. Languages

differ from each other with regard to different aspects of their structure, that is,

in relation to their syntax, morphology, phonology, lexicon, and so on. According

to Wolfram

WHAT IS LANGUAGE VARIATION?

According to Complexity Theory (LARSEN-FREEMAN; CAMERON, 2007),

language is considered a dynamic complex system, which is in constant evolution

to supply its speakers’ communicative necessities. As speakers shape their

language in order to achieve an efficient communication, language may suffer

processes of variation and change across the centuries.

[…] we take language as a dynamic system that is being continually

transformed by use. A language at any point in time is the way it is

evolving, system rather than a closed one, then concepts such as

“end-state” grammars become anomalous since open systems are

constantly undergoing change, sometimes rather rapidly (LARSENFREEMAN; CAMERON, 2007, p. 230).

In spite of languages have been changing, they continue organized and offering

to their speakers the necessary resources to the circulation of meanings

(FARACO, 2005, p. 14). It means that, although language is open to all kinds of

influences and is constantly changing, it still by some manner maintains an

identity as the “same” language (LARSEN-FREEMAN; CAMERON, 2007, p. 231).

Those changes are slow and do not cause any damage to the structure of the

language.

A speaker can choose the words and the structures (that are called linguistic

conventions) to communicate a situation based on the previous use of these

communication, but, in this case, the hearer’s knowledge of previous uses of the

conventions may not be the same as the speaker’s. Then the new situation being

communicated is unique and subject to different interpretations. During this

procedure, language may undergo processes of linguistic variations.

In a complex system, there is «massive variation in all features at all

times» (Kretzschmar, 2009: 8; see also de Bot et al., 2007). As

applied to language use, the variation is attributable to the fact that

language users dynamically adapt their language resources to the

context, and the context is always changing. Because of the dynamic

interplay between a language user and context, the separation

between the two, while possible for analytic purposes, requires the
untenable assumption that the two are independent (van Geert and

Steenbeek, 2005) (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 2016, p. 20)

Therefore, variation is a result of the language use, i. e., individuals’ linguistic

interactions may transform and modify the system of language. Variability may

arise in every level of a language grammar, in every variety of a language, in

every style, dialect, and register of a language, in every speaker, and even in the

same sentence in the same discourse (KRUG; SCHLÜTER, 2013). The examples

below demonstrate variation occurring in different levels of the grammar in

several languages:

a) lexical level: in Spanish-speaking countries, people call the seeds of a

climbing plant, which are eaten as a vegetable, in different ways: for

example, in Spain, this vegetable is called judías; in Argentina,

porotos; and in Mexico, frijoles.

phoneme / l / as [ ɫ ] ~ [ w ] in syllable-final position: ca[ɫ]da ~

ca[w]da; so[ɫ] ~so[w].

c) semantic level: in English, the word bitch means a female of dog ~ an

offensive way of referring to a woman.

d) morphosyntactic level: in French, there is the deletion of the

negation particle ne in the negative structure “ne (proclitic) … pas

(general marker of negation)”: Je ne vois pas ~ Je Ø vois pas.

e) pragmatic-stylistic level: in Brazilian Portuguese, according to the

social interaction and the level of formality among the speakers, they

may say “queiram se sentar, por favor” ~ “vamo sentá aí, gente”.

Thus, taking into consideration the premises that language is a social

efficient communication, it is reasonable to assume that variation is everywhere,

all the time. As Crystal (1963, p. 09) states: “A language is what all its users make

it; it is a social, not just an academic phenomenon”.

Moreover, other relevant issue is the necessity of teaching variation in

language class, independently if the language is a mother tongue, a second, a

third or a foreign one. It is through language variation teaching, teachers can help

students to avoid pronunciation problems and misinterpretation in

second/foreign language context, for example.

When we communicate, we do so in ways that are influenced by

many factors, including historical and social context, the

communities we live in, the institutions and social organizations we

participate in, and the backgrounds, cultures and identities of

behavior; it is both innate and learned. Being a good communicator depends on using language in
acceptable, appropriate and effective

ways (CHARITY HUDLEY; MALLINSON, 2014, p. 13-14)

Language Variation

Everyone speaks at least one language, and probably most people in the world speak more than one.
Even Americans, most of whom speak only English, usually know more than one dialect. Certainly no
one talks exactly the same way at all times: You are unlikely to speak to your boss in the style (or
vocabulary) that you'd use in talking to the idiot who just rammed your car from behind. All dialects
start with the same system, and their partly independent histories leave different parts of the parent
system intact. This gives rise to some of the most persistent myths about language, such as the claim
that the people of Appalachia speak pure Elizabethan English. Non-Appalachians notice features of
Shakespeare's English that have been preserved in Appalachia but lost in (for instance) Standard English,
but only Appalachian fans of Shakespeare would be likely to notice the features of Shakespeare's English
that have been preserved in Standard English but lost in the Appalachian dialect.

Types of Language Change

What kinds of language change are there? First, there's vocabulary change. Slang terms, in particular,
come and go every few years. In a 1990 Beetle Bailey cartoon, for instance, Sarge chews Beetle out with
a string of symbols ending in #!!, and Beetle laughs, "#?? Nobody says # anymore!" Sarge, deflated,
sighs, "Gee, I always thought # was all-time classic cussing." Sarge is embarrassed because with a very
few exceptions—notably the genuinely classic four-letter English words, at least one of which has a
pedigree that includes a Latin obscenity written on the walls of ancient Pompeii—using last year's slang
spells social disaster. Meanings of words change, too. English and German both inherited a word that
refers to a person of high rank in English ('knight') but to a servant or even a slave in German ('Knecht').
(Thanks to evidence from other Germanic languages, we know that the German meaning is closer to the
original.)

Grammatical constructions also change. A passage in the Old English Lord's Prayer reads, in literal
translation, 'not lead thou us into temptation', in sharp contrast to Modern English 'don't lead us into
temptation'. Nowadays, 'not' must follow an auxiliary verb 'do' (often contracted to 'don't'), there is no
pronoun subject in the sentence, and if there were one it would be 'you'--'thou' has entirely disappeared
from the modern language.

Last but not least, sounds change. Everyone realizes this, in a way, when dialect variation causes
communication breakdown. If you go into a Chicago store and ask for 'sacks' in an East Coast accent you
may get socks instead, and Bostonians sometimes have trouble understanding Alabamans even when
both are using Standard English grammar. People are usually surprised, though, to discover that sound
change is highly regular: if a sound 'x' changes to a sound 'y' in one word, 'x' will change to 'y' in
comparable contexts in every word it appears in. As a result, the form of a word often reveals part of its
history. Consider French 'coup' and English 'coup': They look alike, sound alike, and have similar
meanings, but they can't both have been inherited independently from the same Proto-Indo-European
(PIE) word, because the sound [k] doesn't come from the same PIE source in French and English. PIE
(and, later, Latin) [k] did give rise to French [k], but original PIE [k] ended up as [h] in English. So there
are pairs of words inherited from PIE in which French [k] corresponds to English [h], e.g. French 'coeur'
and English 'heart', or French 'canevas' and English 'hemp'; but the reason the English words 'coup' and
'canvas' look like their French counterparts is that they were borrowed into English from French.

Change and Language Values

Language change inevitably leads to variation, and variation within a speech community often leads to
social valuation of particular features as 'good' or 'bad'. 'Good' variants are typically believed to be
characterized by logical superiority or venerability, or both; 'bad' variants must then be illogical and/or
recent inventions by the vulgar.

But neither logic nor great age plays a significant role in the labeling of variants. Consider 'ain't', which
may be the English word most despised by schoolteachers and pundits. Far from being illogical or
recent, 'ain't' is a legitimate phonological descendant of 'amn't', which was the original contraction of
'am not'. It isn't clear how 'ain't' fell into disrepute, but once there, it left an awkward gap in the system
of negative contractions: We have "You're going, aren't you?", "She's going, isn't she?", and so on, but
surely no real person actually says "I'm going, am I not?". Instead, people say "I'm going, aren't I?", in
part because they have been taught to avoid 'ain't' like the plague; and here logic shudders, because
while "You are going, She is going," etc., are fine, "I are going" is impossible for native speakers of
English. The point of this example is not to urge rehabilitation of ain't'—legislating language change is
generally a losing proposition—but to illustrate the linguistically arbitrary nature of social valuation of
the results of language change.