Language Variation and Sex

In the previous chapter, we considered the relationship between individuals and groups, and we examined different ways of grouping speakers in the study of sociolinguistic variation. That chapter focused on the large-scale social structures the have traditionally been used to group individuals in terms of their linguistic behaviour, such as social classsocial class, which consists of indicatorsindicator of status such as level of educationeducation, occupationoccupation and incomeincome.