Topic-204: The Study of Variety The varieties of English (or many other major languages such as Urdu, Punjabi and Pashto, for that purpose) may also be viewed as potential areas of research in the domain of phonetics and phonology. Such a study would include comparisons and contrasts (similarities and differences) among the accent (varieties) of the subject languages) – e.g., differences at phonetic and phonological levels and the study of segmental and suprasegmental features – indifferent varieties. Differences among accents of English have already been discussed in this course under various headings (such as vowels in other accents of English. Similarly, English dialectology has already been explored by a number of studies with particular focus on the geographic differences (in the recognition of various forms of English – or Englishes. There are now many well-known data gathering techniques used infield linguistics (such as the sociolinguistics of English varieties) like variations paradigm. Fieldworkers are particularly trained for data gathering and their expertise are developed for large scale studies related to the studies of varieties.
