Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is a study of language in social contexts. There are different areas of study within the field itself which range from smallscale studies to very large ones. The field has its own terminology. A speech community is a community of speakers who share some characteristics of language use. It can vary in size but it has to be identifiable on the basis of its linguistic and social characteristics.Another term in sociolinguistics is speech variety – the form of language used by any identifiable group of speakers. 

Regional dialects 

The study of regional dialects is called dialectology. A dialect is a variety which is associated with a particular geographic area and differs from other varieties mostly because of its phonological and lexical features. 

Sociolects

 The social stratification of language reflects the way people speak because of their membership in various social groups. Often the socioeconomic status (SES), related to the income, occupation, education, and housing, is used to determine the social group. 

Slang 

is informal, nonstandard vocabulary used by a particular group of people to establish contact, to mark their identity as a group, to create an effect, etc .

Jargon 

refers to words and technical terms used by specialists of a profession or a group of people sharing a certain activity, hobby or occupation. 

Argot  is a special vocabulary used by a secretive social group with the aim to protect its members from outsiders.