Dialect Diversity and Social Change: New Approaches in Sociolinguistics

Abstract

This study examines how contemporary social changes – including urbanization and the rise of social media – reshape dialect diversity in English. Adopting a third-wave sociolinguistic perspective, we synthesize findings from recent qualitative and quantitative studies (2015–2025) that explore new English vernaculars and communication contexts. The analysis compares corpus-based investigations of dialect features on social media with ethnographic studies of urban and online communities. Key results indicate that dialect variation is not diminishing but transforming: urban multiethnolects and digital subculture styles are emerging, code-switching and hybrid language practices are widespread identity resources, and dialect leveling occurs alongside the enregisterment of new linguistic repertoires. We discuss how third-wave approaches foreground speakers’ agency in constructing social meaning and how digital enregisterment and hybrid vernaculars challenge traditional boundaries between dialects. The article concludes with implications for sociolinguistic theory and social identity, arguing for integrative methodologies that bridge quantitative scale and qualitative depth in understanding dialect diversity amid social change.