Academic linguists have, on the whole, done a poor job of communicating to the public what terms like “language” and “dialect” actually mean from a narrowly linguistic perspective. Which is to say, nothing. (1/) https://twitter.com/stefanocoretta/status/1291657901577252864

This is not to say that these terms/concepts aren’t important. On the contrary! Like many important concepts in the organization of society (race, gender, etc.), “language” and “dialect” are social constructs. (2/)

For the purposes of identity and ideology they are of massive importance. What most people don’t realize is that the only meaningful definition they have is social and political. Actual differences play only a very minor role in deciding what is a “language”. (3/)

Actual linguistic differences, that is. (Classic example: why are Norwegian and Swedish considered separate languages while Cantonese and Mandarin are widely considered dialects of Chinese?) (4/)

A pithy way of putting it is usually attributed to Max Weinreich: “a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot”. That is, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” (5/)

But this isn’t the whole story, as @StefanoCoretta’s quoted thread shows. For one thing, “dialect” and related words have subtly different meanings in different languages. That already makes the term unhelpful. (6/)

Implicit in the thread but also important (h/t) @RobertaArielli on Facebook): unlike “language”, the term “dialect” is a relational noun, at least in English. In other words, if “dialect” is mentioned out of context, it’s fair to ask: dialect of what? (7/)

Whereas “language of what?” is meaningless. Dialects are always constructed in this relationship of belonging to a higher-order entity, a language. The sociopolitical implications of this are obvious. (8/)

If we as a discipline want to keep using the term “dialect” out of sheer laziness, we should at least do it only in places that are out of the public eye. “Variety” is almost always better. (9/9)