Idiolect - the language or speech pattern of one individual at a particular period of life (Merriam-Webster dictionary)
An idiolect is an individual’s personalized language. Think of it as a hyper-personalized dialect.
I have a habit of being long-winded and overly precise in my speech & writing. This has been the source of amusement and gentle mocking by my friends & coworkers since I was a teenager.
One of my high school teachers had a particular intonation & habit of saying “oh well” which concisely conveyed “you’ve completely screwed yourself over in this matter, but that’s not my problem.” It was widely known and imitated among his students.
A very well-spoken and well-educated friend of mine habitually pronounced “anecdote” as “ancedote” or “an-sa-dote” for many years because she had transposed the “c” and “e” when reading it, but hadn’t often heard it spoken.
The term itself appears to be somewhat controversial among academic linguists. Its related concepts are nevertheless used to infer the identities of authors & speakers. To some extent idiolect overlaps with the speaker’s personal history and usage of multiple dialects reflecting the places they have lived and worked, gender, ethnicity, membership in different social groups, fields of interest, academic background, and words that we’ve picked up from friends & family.
I’m introducing the term here because I want to use a handful of my own words in describing the political and social issues I address elsewhere in the blog.