“After the acquisition of their vernacular variety has started, peo...

“After the acquisition of their vernacular variety has started, people often also go on to acquire various non-vernacular specialist varieties of language used for special purposes and activities. For example, they may acquire a way of talking (and writing) about fundamentalist Christian theology, video games, or bird-watching. Specialist varieties of language are different—sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large ways—from people’s vernacular varieties of language. One category of specialist varieties of language is what we can call academic varieties of language: that is, the varieties of language connected to learning and using information from academic or school-based content areas (Gee 2002; Schleppegrell 2004; Schleppegrell and Cecilia Colombi 2002). The varieties of language used in (different branches) of biology, physics, law, or literary criticism fall into this category.”