Sociolinguistics 1, Exercise 1: inter or intra? Two speakers in the same town pronounce -ing differently: inter-speaker variation (different speakers choose differently). One speaker says -in' at home and -ing at a job interview: intra-speaker variation (the same speaker chooses differently on different occasions). The second case is also an example of formality (register) conditioning variation, which later chapters take up. Source: Wikipedia, Variation (linguistics).