The article reveals the problem of different dimensions of language variation, as well as the factors of the appearance of territorial and social language variants. The realization of language variants is directly related to the territorial and socio-cultural environment of the speaker. Thus, the problem of connection of the language variation with the geographical area and a certain sociolinguistic situation in which the speaker implements his speech, remains topical. It was found that variation in linguistics is interpreted as a general social property and a way of existence of the language system and language norm. Variation is more obvious on the lexical level, which is the most open to new borrowings. As a result of modern linguistic sources analysis it was defined that each language can be considered in horizontal and vertical planes. Horizontal division is explained with the presence of territorial variability in the language (territorial dialects and subdialects), and the vertical one is due to the existence of separate groups in society, which use one or another sociolect. Due to the fact that the language is considered to be a collection of its varieties, taking into account the territorial, social and other types of stratification, variation continues to be an extremely important language phenomenon, which is open for further study.