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tags:language
Idiolect is an individual’s unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people.
Greek idio- (meaning own, personal, private, peculiar, separate, distinct) -lect, abstracted from dialect from “I speak.”
According to this view, a language is an “ensemble of idiolects… rather than an entity per se”. According to Niedzielski and Preston, many of their subjects believe that there is one “correct” pattern of grammar and vocabulary that underlies Standard English, and that individual usage comes from this external system.