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In order to understand how language variation descriptors are used, we first must understand what language variation is. We can say that the U.S. is linguistically diverse because of the multitude of languages spoken here, but we can also find ....

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... patterns. People tend to seek out others like themselves. Regional variations tend to become more pronounced as the speech community is more isolated by physical geography, i.e. mountain ranges, rivers. Linguists have done extensive studies on regional dialects, producing detailed Linguistic Atlases. Many linguists can tell where a person is from just by knowing whether a person carries groceries home from the supermarket in a paper bag or from the grocery store in a paper sack (Yule 184). And the person who comes home from the supermarket with a paper sack serves to remind us that language variation is not a discrete, but rather a con ...