Social Variation.
As for the accents, they refer to the varieties in pronunciation, which convey information about a persons geographical origin. These varieties are partly explained by social mobility and new patterns of settlement.
Distinct groups or social formation within the whole may be set off from each other in a variety of ways by gender, by age, by class, by ethnic identity.
Particular groups will tend to have characteristic ways of using the language-characteristic ways of pronouncing it for example - and these will help to mark off the boundaries of one group from another. They belong to different social groups and perform different social roles.
A person might be identified as a woman, a parent, a child, a doctor, or in many other ways. Many people speak with an accent, which shows the influence of their place of work. Any of these identities can have consequences for the kind of language they use. Age, sex, and socio-economic class have been repeatedly shown to be of importance when it comes to explaining the way sounds, constructions, and vocabulary vary. I think the best example to show it is the famous play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw touched upon social classes, speech and social status of people using different types of accents and dialects.
One of the ideas was that it is possible to tell from a persons speech not only where he comes from but what class he belongs to. But no matter what class a person belongs to, he can easily change his pronunciation depending on what environment he finds himself in. The heroine Liza aired his views, saying When a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country.
I have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours. 13, p.64 . So some conclusions about the kinds of social phenomena that influence change through contact with other dialects can be made a dialects differ from region through the isolation of groups of speakers b dialects change through contact with other dialects c the upper classes reinforce Standard English and RP through education. 9.