Concept
Idiolect
Overview
Idiolect is an individual's unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses a person's active vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people.
The term is etymologically derived from the prefix idio-, from Ancient Greek ἴδιος, ídios, 'own, personal, private, peculiar, separate, distinct'; and -lect, abstracted from dialect, ultimately from Ancient Greek λέγω, légō, 'I speak'.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first formers of language. What are called the personal pronouns, it may be observed, are among the last words of which children learn to make use. A child, speaking of itself, says, _Billy walks_, _Billy sits_, **instead of _I walk_, _I sit_.
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Idiolect is.
But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language. And being hereby forced to disperse themselves into severall parts of the world, it must needs be, that the diversity of Tongues that now is, proceeded by degrees from them, in such manner, as need (the…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
States what Idiolect is.
The same diffusion over the Earth's surface which has led to differentiations of race, has simultaneously led to differentiations of speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the distinct dialects found in separate districts. Thus the progress of Language conforms to the general law, alike in the evolution of languages, in the evolution of families of words, and in the evolution of parts of…
Herbert Spencer, Essays
Close in meaning to Idiolect; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Direct and indirect realism.