[ilds] idiolects

[Charles Sligh]

Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
> Would Charlie ever talk about idiolects? 
>
>   
I do not believe that he would.  As a rule, he fears those big words 
that make us so unhappy.  He might talk about Scobie's "voice" and 
"character," or he might call it Durrell's "prose style."  He is rather 
fussy about these things. . . .

That said, he does have access to the Online OED:

        IDIOLECT (n.)
>         The linguistic system of one person, differing in some details
>         from that of all other speakers of the same dialect or language.
>         1948 B. BLOCH in Language XXIV. 7 The totality of the possible
>         utterances of one speaker at one time in using a language to
>         interact with one other speaker is an idiolect. 1948 R. A.
>         HALL Jr. in Studies in Linguistics VI. ii. 31 Language exists
>         in individuals, as a set of habits which each individual
>         possesses (an idiolect). 1953 C. E. BAZELL Ling. Form 96 It
>         must not be supposed that such [linguistic] systems are
>         necessarily less determinate than for instance that of a
>         single idiolect as recorded over a short space of time. 1953
>         J. B. CARROLL Study of Lang. ii. 10 Indeed each member of a
>         speech community may be said to possess his own idiolect, his
>         own personal variety of the language system. 1953 Internat.
>         Jrnl. Amer. Ling. XIX. ii. Suppl. 40 Hockett defined
>         ‘idiolect’ as the individual's total repertory of speech
>         habits over a short period of time. 1958 A. A. HILL Introd.
>         Ling. Struct. ii. 13 The English which is described in the
>         personal dialect of a single speaker or, to use the technical
>         term, a single idiolect. 1964 M. A. K. HALLIDAY et al. in J.
>         A. Fishman Readings Sociol. of Lang. (1968) 158 A person's
>         idiolect may be identified, through the lens of the various
>         registers, by its grammatical and lexical characteristics.
>         1964 R. H. ROBINS Gen. Ling. ii. 51 The lower limit of dialect
>         division comes down to the individual speaker, and for this
>         limiting case of dialect the term idiolect (the speech habits
>         of a single person) has been coined. 1970 W. LABOV in Rep.
>         20th Round Table Meeting on Ling. & Lang. Stud. 89 So we are
>         dealing not with the idiolect of the investigator, but the
>         idiolect of one isolated boy whose position in the community
>         is quite uncertain.



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Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
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