These two terms are confusing me, for me both of them are alike in meaning. It was in sociolinguistics class when my lecture started explaining the different of these two terms, but I did not get any sense of the definition. Finally, I did surfing in the internet to find clear definition and help me understand.
Linguist use the term accent to refer to the sound of a variation of speech, while dialect refers to accent, language change and word choice.
Accent
is a particular way of pronouncing a word. Every one has an accent, for instance people from different region has different way of pronouncing the same words. In other words, accent is a matter of sound.
Dialect
is a regional or social variety of a language. It refers to the change of accent, grammar, and vocabulary in different regions. In English we have more then one standard of dialect, the most familiar to me is British English (BrE) and American English (AmE). The different between two include spelling, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and other things. For example the word "cookie" in American, it became "biscuit" in British English.