Antedating of "Sociolect"

[Shapiro, Fred]

sociolect (OED3 1965)

1963 Mervin Alleyne in _Caribbean Studies_ July 27 (JSTOR)  The term _sociolect_ is coined by analogy with _dialect_ and _idiolect_, the former referring to geographical variation of language, the second to some corpus of speech or speech habits identifiable with an individual.  I am using sociolect to refer to the language material of a social group or class which may serve as a "marker" of that group or class.


Fred Shapiro

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