An Englishwoman runs screaming into an Atlanta police station: "There's a dead body in my boot!" Officer Johnson looks at her askance and turns his attention to her feet: "Lady, you're wearing flip flops!" Aggravated, she drags him out to her car to introduce him to the corpse in her car trunk, which she again calls her boot. The breakdown in communication here that required visual clarification was caused by which type of linguistic variation:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The variation present in this scenario is lexical, as in Britain, where the woman is from, "boot" is used to mean the trunk of a car, while in America, where the officer is from, "boot" commonly refers to footwear.

An Englishwoman Runs Screaming into an Atlanta Police Station: "There's