heteroglossia


het·er·o·glos·si·a

H5182400 (hĕt′ə-rō-glô′sē-ə, -glŏs′-)n. The existence, within a society or literary description of a society, of many varieties of a single language, such as regional dialects and varieties associated with class and gender, that are acted upon by social forces that compete to assimilate the varieties to a standard or to maintain or increase differentiation among them.
[hetero- + Greek glōssa, tongue, language; (translation of Russian raznorečie : raznyĭ, different, various + reč', speech + -ie, abstract n. suff).]