Avariety of nonstandard english spoken by members of regional ethnic or social group is called?
a. idiom
b. overgeneralization
c. dialect
d. colloquialism

Its dialect The term dialect is used in two distinct ways to refer to two different types of linguistic phenomena.One usage—the more common among linguists—refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers Despite their differences, these varieties known as dialects are closely related and most often mutually intelligible, especially if close to one another on the dialect continuum. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect, a dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed as ethnolect, and a regional dialect may be termed a regiolect. According to this definition, any variety of a given language constitutes "a dialect", including any standard varieties. In this case, the distinction between the "standard language," or the "standard" dialect of a particular language, and the "nonstandard" dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations. In a similar way, the definition of the terms "language" and "dialect" may also overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary and/or sociopolitical motives.