In deference to the non-structural sense of "dialect" as a type of speech which may itself be heterogeneous, some linguists have broken down the object of description even further to the "idiolect" level. This term has been used in the United States to denote "the total set of speech habits of a single individual at a given time". The term has been seriously criticized on two grounds: (1) constancy of speech patterns may be more easily stated for two persons in a dialogic situation (a kind of 'dialecte à deux') than for a single individual; (2) there are differences even within an "idiolect" which require that it be broken down further (e.g. into "styles"). "Idiolect" is the homogeneous object of description reduced to its logical extreme, and, in a sense, to absurdity.
- Weinreich (1954), Pag. 389