Standard and Non-standard English

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the

degree of BA in Linguistics and the English Language

By
Layla Ammar
Sana Ibrahim

Supervisor
Asst. Lecturer Noora Sadeq Habeeb Al-Jadiri

College of Art/ Department of English Language and Literature

Baghdad University
30th May 2020
 Acknowledgments

First, we would like to thank our supervisor, Asst. Lecturer Noora Sadeq
Habeeb Al-Jadiri, for her guidance through the stages of the process.

We also want to thank all our professors, who helped us reach this far, for
their massive efforts in teaching and helping us.

And of course, a thousand thanks for our parents, without them we wouldn’t
be here, granted this fine opportunity.
 Abstract
The subject of Standard English is very wide and not easy to define, In this
dissertation, we tried to summarize some of the matters related to it, we wrote
a simple introduction about how language is important to all human beings
and how the English Language is important on an international scale, then we
explained in short definitions the meaning of Standard and Non-standard
English and how to recognize the difference between a standard and a non-
standard variety of language. And we talked about the varieties of Language
and how there are different manifestations of it. We moved later to explain the
standard languages and how society helped in developing them and the
processes each standard language has passed through. Then we gave a simple
definition to the term Dialect and the ways to distinguish between Language
and Dialect, a small description of the types of dialect was also written by us
from the perspective of George Yule followed with a discussion about the
English Language as a native and a second Language. And just as there are
varieties of language, there are also varieties of Standard English, in this
dissertation, we tackled the most comprehensible to speakers of English, the
British and the American English and discuss the difference between them
along with examples for clarification.
 Table of Contents
1. introduction 5

2. Literature Review 7

2.1. The Definition of standard English 9

2.2. Meaning and Use of Standard Language 9

2.3. What is meant by Language Standardization? 9

2.4. The Difference between Standard English and Non- 10

Standard English

2.5. Varieties of Language 11

2.6. Standard Languages 12

2.7. What is Dialect? 14

2.8. Language and Dialect 14

2.9. Types of Dialect

16
2.9.1 Regional Dialects

2.9.2 Social Dialects

2.10. Native and Second Language 17

2.11. National Standards of English

18
2.11.1. British and American English

3. Conclusion 21

References 22
 1. Introduction
Language is many things; it can be a system of communication, a medium for
thought, a vehicle for literary expression, a matter for political controversy, a
catalyst for nation-building (O’Grady & Dobrovolsky, and Aronoff, 1989: 1)
The existence of language can’t be separated from human life. It can be seen
from the fact that all activities related to interaction among people necessitate
a language.
The English Language is probably the most widely used language in the world,
with around 400 million native speakers and a similar number of bilingual
speakers in several dozen partially English-speaking countries, and hundreds
of millions more users in other countries where English is widely known and
used in business, government, or media. (Huddleston and Pullum, 2005) And
according to Huddleston, a language so widely distributed naturally has many
varieties. These varieties are known as dialects. everyone speaks a dialect, and
in this dissertation, we will concentrate on one central dialect that is
particularly important: the one that we call Standard English. According to Bex
and Watts, editors of the widening debate 1999, Standard English may be the
most important variety of English, in all sorts of ways: it is the variety of
English normally used in writing, printing, and is associated with the education
system in all the English-speaking countries of the world, and it is the variety
taught to non-native learners. Therefore, Nelson and Greenbaum assume that
Standard English has prestige because people connect it with education and
with higher-income groups. It is not intrinsically better than other dialects,
though many believe it is. One of its major advantages is that it has developed a
range of styles to suit different kinds of uses of the language, particularly in
writing. (Nelson and Greenbaum, 2002:19) Any dialect of English other than
Standard English is referred to with the term ‘Non-standard English’, this
specific dialect tends to be restricted to people from a particular region or from
a particular social group or to social groups within a region. Many people
speak more than one dialect, perhaps using different dialects at home and at
work. (Nelson and Greenbaum, 2002:19) After giving some meaning of what
Standard and Non-standard English is, we will start discussing Language
standardization and how it is the process by which conventional forms of a
language are established and maintained. Standardization may occur as a
natural development of a language in a speech community or as an effort by
members of a community to impose one dialect or variety as a standard. Then
we will explain the difference between those two varieties of language.
Trudgill points out in his book Introducing Language and Society, that
Nonstandard dialects of English differ from Standard English most importantly
at the level of grammar. Standard and Non-standard English are not the only
varieties of the English Language, there are others, a variety of a language is
like a manifestation of it, varieties of language develop for a number of reasons,
differences can come about for geographical reasons among other. many
external elements can factor in the process of language change. For a language
to become standard, it has to pass through several processes that we will
tackle. Later we will explain another variety of language referred to as a
“Dialect” which is associated with a particular region and / or social class and
we will give a simple description to its types which are regional and social
dialects. Just like a person has a native language and a second language, the
English language is considered to be the native language for many people and
the second language for a greater proportion of people and in many countries,
we will talk about this subject in more detail in its section. In 2.11 we will end
the dissertation by distinguishing between the most known varieties of
standard English.
2. Literature Review
In the entry for "Standard English" in The Oxford Companion to the English
Language (1992), Tom McArthur observes that this "widely used term . . .
resists easy definition but is used as if most educated people nonetheless know
precisely what it refers to." For some of those people, Standard English (SE) is
a synonym for good or correct English usage. Others use the term to refer to a
specific geographical dialect of English or a dialect favored by the most
powerful and prestigious social group. As for the term “Non-standard English”
it’s sometimes used disapprovingly by non-linguists to describe "bad" or
"incorrect" English.
A lot of authors discussed this subject yet few of them tried to narrow it. it's
difficult to define its concepts in one domain because many external factors
affected the formation and development of this specific variety of language.
The most influential factor in the rise of Standard English was the importance
of London as the capital of England, the history of Standard English is almost a
history of London English. And It is in fact a great pity that the standard
English conception is marred by the sort of notional confusions and political
posturing. I think there are genuine questions to be asked about what we
might mean by "standards" in relation to speech and writing. There is a great
deal to be done in this respect and proper arguments to be made, but one thing
is clear for sure. The answer does not lie in some simple-minded recourse to
the practice of the "best authors" or the "admired literature" of the past,
though that writing is valuable, nor does the answer reside in "rules" for
speech laid down by either the "educated" of any official body held to be able
to guarantee spoken "correctness." The answers to the real questions will be
found to be much more complex, difficult than those currently on offer.
Most of who I relied on their references are pioneers in the field of linguistics
such as David Crystal, George Yule, Peter Matthews, and Hudson in addition to
many books and other references that dealt with the chosen topic. Trying to
narrow this topic is hard but I did the research and I will write about most of
the topics related to this subject such as the basic definitions of the standard
and non-standard English and how to differentiate between them and how the
language can become standard. then we will move to explain the term "Dialect"
and how it is another variation of the language and what are its types in a clear
and simple passage. After that, we will move on to speak about the English
language as a native language and as a second language in many countries and
for many learners and then we will conclude the research by mentioning the
most well-known variation of the standard English language and what is the
difference between them.
2.1 The Definition of Standard English
The term Standard English refers to both an actual variety of language and an
idealized norm of English acceptable in many social situations. As a language
variety, Standard English is the language used in most public discourse and in
the regular operation of American social institutions. The news media, the
government, the legal profession, and the teachers in our schools and
universities all view Standard English as their proper mode of communication,
primarily in expository and argumentative writing, but also in public speaking.
As a norm, writers and editors look at Standard English as the model of
language in which they work. Their decisions both are based on and help shape
the rules and conventions of Standard English. Standard English is thus
different from what is normally thought of as speech in that Standard English
must be taught, whereas children learn to speak naturally without being
taught. Of course, Standard English shares with spoken English certain features
common to all forms of language. It has rules for making grammatical
sentences, and it changes over time. (Mifflin, H., 2005:18)
2.2 Meaning and Use of Standard Language
Standard Language is a “prestige variety used within a speech community,
providing an institutionalized norm for such purposes as the media and
language teaching. Linguistic forms or dialects that do not conform to this
norm are often called Sub-standard or (more usually, within linguistics) and
Non-standard”. (Crystal,1992:366)
2.3 What is meant by Language Standardization?
Language Standardization is “the process, often in part at least deliberate, by
which standard forms of a language are established; also, of an 'ideology' seen
as underlying it. Forms and varieties which are not standard are simply 'non-
standard’”. (Matthews, 2007:380)
2.4 The Difference between Standard English and Non-Standard
English
To give some idea of how Standard English differs from other non- standard
dialects of the language, we should highlight that because of its history and
special status. Standard English has a number of grammatical peculiarities that
distinguish it from most other varieties. These include:
1. Standard English does not distinguish between the past tense forms of the
auxiliary verb to do and those of the main verb to do. The past tense form in
Standard English is did in both cases: You did it, did you? But in most non-
standard dialects, all over the English-speaking world, did is the past tense of
the auxiliary, but the main verb has the past tense form done: You done it, did
you? (Trudgill and Hannah, 2013:2-3)
2. Standard English does not have a grammatical feature that is called negative
concord. In most non-standard varieties, negative forms agree grammatically
with one another throughout a clause as in I couldn't find none nowhere, where
all the words that can take a negative form do so. In Standard English,
grammatical agreement or concord of this type does not occur: I couldn't find
any anywhere. (Trudgill and Hannah, 2013:2-3)
3. Standard English has an irregular way of forming reflexive pronouns, with
some forms based on the possessive pronouns: myself, yourself, ourselves,
yourselves; and others based on the object pronouns: himself, themselves. Many
non-Standard dialects have a regular system using possessive forms
throughout i.e. myself, yourself, hisself, ourselves, yourselves, theirselves.
(Trudgill and Hannah, 2013:2-3)
4. Standard English has irregular past forms of the verb to be, distinguishing
between singular and plural, something which does not happen with other
verbs: I was, he was but we were, they were. Most non-Standard dialects have
the same form for singular and plural: I was, she was, we was, you was, they
was; or I were, he were, we were, you were, they were. (Trudgill and Hannah,
2013:2-3)
5. For many irregular verbs, Standard English redundantly distinguishes
between past tense and perfect verb forms by using distinct past tense and
past participle forms as well as the auxiliary verb have: I have seen him, I could
have gone versus I saw him, I went. Many other dialects have no distinction
between the past tense and past participle forms, and rely on the presence
versus absence of have alone: I have seen him, I could have went versus I seen
him, I went. (Trudgill and Hannah, 2013:2-3)
2.5 Varieties of Language
If one thinks of ‘Language’ as a phenomenon including all the languages of the
world, the term VARIETY OF LANGUAGE can be used to refer to different
manifestations of it, in just the same way as one might take ‘music’ as a general
phenomenon and then distinguish different `varieties of music’. What makes
one variety of language different from another is the linguistic items that it
includes, so we may define a variety of language as a “set of linguistic items
with similar social distribution”. This definition allows us to call any of the
following `varieties of language’ i.e.: English, French, London English, the
English of football commentaries, the languages used by the members of a
particular long-house in the north-west Amazon, the language or languages
used by a particular person. It will be seen from this list that the very general
notion `variety’ includes examples of what would normally be called languages,
dialects, and register (a term meaning roughly `style'). This conclusion may
seem rather radical, but the definition of `variety` given above, and the
examples given in the list, suggest even greater departures from the linguistic
tradition.
It will be noticed that it is consistent with the definition to treat all the
languages of some multilingual speaker, or community, as a single variety,
since all the linguistic items concerned have a similar social distribution-they
are used by the same speaker or community. That is, a variety may be much
larger than a lay `language`, including a number of different languages.
Conversely, according to the definition, a variety` may contain just a handful of
items, or even in the extreme case a single item, if it is defined in terms of the
range of speakers or circumstances with whom it is associated. For instance,
one might define a variety consisting of those items used solely by some
particular family or village. Thus, a variety can be much smaller than a
`language`, or even than a `dialect`. The flexibility of the term `variety` allows
us to ask what basis there is for postulating the kinds of `package` of linguistic
items to which we conventionally give labels like `language`, `dialect` or
`register`. The bundles into which linguistic items can be grouped are quite
loosely tied, and it is easy for items to move between them, to the extent that
bundles may in fact be muddled up. In conclusion, discussions of language in
relation to society will consist of statements which refer, on the `language`
side, to either individual linguistic items or varieties, which are sets of such
items. There are no restrictions on the relation among varieties-they may
overlap and one variety may include another. The defining characteristic of
each variety is the relevant relation to society-in other words, by whom and
when the items concerned are used (Hudson,1996:22-23).
2.6 Standard languages
Standard languages are interesting in as much as they have a rather special
relation to society-one which is quite abnormal when seen against the context
of the tens of thousands of years during which language has been used.
Standard languages are the result of direct and deliberate intervention by
society. This intervention called `Standardization` producers a standard
language where before there were just `dialects` (i.e. non-standard varieties).
The notion `standard language` is somewhat imprecise, but a typical standard
language will have passed through the following processes:
1. Selection – somehow or other a particular variety must have been
selected as the one to be developed into a standard language. It may be an
existing variety, such as the one used in an important political or
commercial centre, but it could be an amalgam of various varieties. The
variety necessarily gains prestige and so the people who already speak it
share in this prestige. However, in some cases, the chosen variety has
been one with no native speakers at all – for instance, Classical Hebrew in
Israel and Bahasa Indonesia.
2. Codification – some agency such as an academy must have been written
dictionaries and grammar books to fix the variety, so that everyone
agrees on what is correct. Once codification has taken place, it becomes
necessary for any ambitious citizen to learn the correct forms and not to
use in writing any `incorrect` forms he may have in his native variety,
which may take literally years of a child's school career.
3. Elaboration of function – it is possible to use the selected variety in all
the functions associated with central government and with writing, for
example in parliament and law courts, in bureaucratic, educational and
scientific documents of all kinds, and of course in various forms of
literature. This may require extra linguistic items to be added to the
variety, especially technical words, but it is also necessary to develop new
conventions for using existing forms – how to formulate examination
questions, how to write formal letters, and so on.
4. Acceptance - the variety has to be accepted by the relevant population as
the variety of the community – usually, in fact, as the national language.
Once this has happened, the standard language serves as a strong
unifying force for the state, as a symbol of its dependence of other states
(assuming that it’s standard is unique and not shared with others) and as
a maker of its difference from other states. It is precisely this symbolic
function that makes states go to some lengths to develop one. This
analysis of the factors typically involved in standardization has been
widely accepted by sociolinguists. However, there is ample scope for
debate and disagreement about the desirability of certain aspects of
standardization. For instance, it is not essential either that
standardization should involve matters of pronunciation as well as of
writing or that the standard language should be presented as the only
`correct` variety. Moreover, a policy suitable for one community may not
fit another, so great care, sensitivity, wisdom, and knowledge are needed
for success in any standardization programme (Hudson,1996:32-34).
2.7 What is a Dialect?
Dialect is “any distinct variety of a language, especially one spoken in a specific
part of a country or other geographical area”. The criterion for distinguishing
'dialects' from 'languages' is taken, in principle, to be that of mutual
intelligibility, E.g. speakers of Dutch cannot understand English unless they
have learned it, and vice versa; therefore, Dutch and English are different
languages. But a speaker from Amsterdam can understand one from Antwerp:
therefore, they speak different dialects of the same language. But (a) this is a
matter of degree, and (b) ordinary usage often contradicts it. E.g. Italian
'dialects' (dialetti") are so-called though many from the north and south are
not mutually intelligible. By contrast, Danish and Norwegian are called
languages' though speakers understand each other reasonably well. There are
also conventions among linguists themselves: e.g. the dialects' of "Indo-
European are the original branches of the family: *Germanic, *Italic, etc.
(Matthews, 2007:103)
2.8 Language and Dialect
Now we turn our attention to the most widely recognized types of language
variety: `language`, `variety`, and `register`. These three types are extremely
problematic, both from the point of view of finding a general definition for
each one which will distinguish it from the others and also from the point of
view of finding criteria for delimiting varieties. We first need to consider the
concept `language`. We may or may not wish to take `language` as a technical
term, and say how it is used in sociolinguistics. We shall want to do so if we
find that popular usage reflects some kind of reality to which we should like to
refer in sociolinguistics, but if we come to the conclusion that popular usage
reflects no such reality, then where will be no point in defining `language`
more explicitly in order to use it as a technical term.
We should also mention the importance of studying popular usage of the term
`language` simply as part of English vocabulary along with `well-spoken`,
`chat` and other vocabulary which reflects the parts of the culture which are
related to language and speech. We can make two separate destinations to use
the terms `language` and `dialect` and we may draw conclusions from this fact
about the culturally inherited view of language. We may see the distinction
between language and dialect as due to the influence of Greek culture, for
example, there was no distinction made until the term dialect was borrowed
as a learned word from Greek in the renaissance. Since the distinction was
developed in Greek because of the existence of a number of clearly distinct
written varieties in use in classical Greece, each associated with a different
area and used for a different kind of literature. Thus, the meanings of the
Greek terms which were translated as language and dialect were in fact quite
different from the meanings these words have in English now. Their
equivalents in French are perhaps more similar, since the French word
dialecte refers only to regional varieties which are written and have a
literature, in contrast with regional varieties which are not written.
There are two separate ways of distinguishing between language and dialect.
There is a difference of size because language is larger than a dialect. That is a
variety called a language contains more items than one called a dialect. This is
the sense in which we may refer to English as a language, containing the sum
total of all the terms in all its dialects with standard English as one dialect
among many others (Yorkshire English, Indian English, etc.), hence the greater
size of the language English. The other contrast between language and dialect
is a question of prestige, a language having prestige which a dialect lacks. If we
apply the terms in this sense, Standard English is not a dialect at all, but a
language, whereas the varieties which are not used in formal writing are
dialects. Whether some variety is called a language or a dialect depends on
how much prestige one thinks it has, and for most people this is a clear-cut
matter, which depends on whether it is used in formal writing. Accordingly,
people in Britain habitually refer to languages which are unwritten (or which
they think are unwritten) as dialects, or mere dialects, irrespective of whether
there is a (proper) language to which they are related. The fact that we put so
much weight on whether or not it is written in distinguishing between
language and dialect is one of the interesting things that the terms show us
about British culture (Hudson,1996: 30-32).
2.9 Types of Dialect
2.9.1 Regional Dialects
The existence of different regional dialects is widely recognized and often the
source of some humour for those living in different regions. Some regional
dialects clearly have stereotyped Pronunciations associated with them. Going
beyond stereotypes, those involved in the serious investigation of regional
dialects have devoted a lot of survey research to the identification of consistent
features of speech found in one geographical area compared to another. These
dialects surveys often involve painstaking attention to detail and tend to
operate with the very specific criteria in identifying acceptable informants.
Consequently, the informants in the major dialect surveys of the twentieth
century tended to be NORMS or “non-mobile, older, rural, male speakers.”
Such speakers were selected because it was believed that they were less likely
to have influences from outside the region in their speech. One unfortunate
consequence of using such criteria is that the resulting dialect description
tends to be more accurate of a period well before the time of investigation
(Yule, 1985:224-242).

2.9.2 Social Dialects

Whereas the traditional study of regional dialects tended to concentrate on the
speech of people in rural areas, the study of Social Dialects has been mainly
concerned with speakers in towns and cities. In the social study of dialect, it is
a social class that is mainly used to define groups of speakers as having
something in common. The two main groups are generally identified as
“middle class”, those who have more years of education and perform non-
manual work, and “working class,” those who have fewer years of education
and perform manual work of some kind. So, when we refer to “working class
speech,” we are talking about social dialect. The terms “upper", and “lower” are
used to further subdivide the groups, mainly on an economic basis, making
“upper-middle-class speech” another type of social dialect or sociolect. As in
all dialect studies, only certain features of language use are treated as relevant
in the analysis of social dialects. These features are pronunciations, words or
structures that are regularly used in one form by working-class speakers and
in another form by middle-class speakers. In Edinburgh, Scotland, for example,
the word home is regularly pronounced as [heim], as if rhyming with name,
among lower-working-class speakers, and as [hom], as if rhyming with foam,
among middle-class speakers. It's a small difference in pronunciation, but it's
an indicator of social status (Yule,1985:254-255).
A more familiar example might be the verb ain't, as in I ain't finished yet, which
is generally used more often in working-class speech than in middle-class
speech. When we look for other examples of language use that might be
characteristic of a social dialect, we treat class as the social variable and the
Pronunciation or word as the linguistic variable. We can then try to
investigate the extent to which there is systematic variation involving of the
linguistic variable. This isn't usually an all-or-nothing situation, so studies of
social dialects typically report how often speakers in a particular group use a
certain form rather than find that only one group or the other uses the form
(ibid:254-255).

2.10. Native and Second Language

English is spoken as a native language by more than 300 million people, most
of them living in North America, the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand, the
Caribbean and South Africa. In several of these countries, English is not the
sole language: the Quebec province of Canada is French-speaking, most South
Africans speak Afrikaans or Bantu language, and many Irish and Welsh people
speak Celtic languages. But those whose native language is not English will
have English as their second language for certain governmental, commercial,
social or educational activities within their own country.
English is also a second language in many countries where only a small
proportion of the people have English as their native language. In about
twenty-five countries English has been legally designated as an official
language: in about ten (such as Nigeria) it is the sole official language, and in
some fifteen others (such as India) it shares that status with one or more other
languages. Most of these countries are former British territories. Despite the
association of the English language with the former colonial rulers, it has been
retained for pragmatic reasons: where no native language is generally
acceptable, English is a neutral language that is politically acceptable, at least
at the national level, for administrative and legal functions; and as an
international language for science and technology it is desirable for higher
education. English is an official language in countries of such divergent
background as India, Nigeria and Liberia, while in numerous other countries
(Burma, Thailand, South Korea and some Middle Eastern countries) it is used
in some higher education. In Sri Lanka, English at one time lost its official
status, while retaining its social, cultural and economic importance, but it has
been re-established as an official language; indeed, as a result of the increase
in secondary education more people today learn English there than at any time
during the colonial period. It has been estimated that English is a second
language for well over 300 million people: the number of second language
speakers may soon exceed the number of native speakers (Quirk, Greenbaum,
Leech and Svartvik,1985:4-5).

2.11. National Standards of English

2.11.1. British and American English
What we are calling national standards should be seen as distinct from the
standard English which we have been discussing and which we should think of
as being supernatural, embracing what is common to all. Again, as with
orthography, there are two national standards that are overwhelming
predominant both in the number of distinctive usages and in the degree to
which these distinctions are institutionalized: American English <AmE> and
British English <BrE>. Grammatical differences are few and the most
conspicuous are known to many users of both national standards: the fact that
AmE has two past participles for ‘get’ and BrE only one, for example, and that
in BrE either a singular or a plural verb may be used with a singular collective
noun:
 1) The government {is/are} in favour of economic sanctions.

Whereas in AmE a singular verb is required here. Some are less familiar, but
are unlikely to hamper communication. For example, AmE may use the simple
past in informal style in contexts where BrE normally requires the present
perfective, as in:

2) Sue just/ Sue's just} finished her homework.

And BrE tends to use the construction with should where AmE generally uses
the present subjunctive:

3) I insisted that he {should take/take} the documents with him.

Lexical examples are far more numerous, but many of these are familiar to
users of both standards: for example, railway <BrE>, railroad <AmE>; tin
<BrE>, can <AmE>; petrol <BrE>, gas(oline) <AmE>. Some items may confuse
most speakers of the other standard because they are unfamiliar, at least in the
relevant meaning: boot <BrE>, trunk <AmE>; rubber <BrE>, eraser <AmE>;
drawing pin <BrE>, thumbtack <AmE>. Public school in AmE is a school
maintained by public funds, but in BrE it applies to certain fee-paying schools.
Cider (unless further specified, as in hard cider) is usually non-alcoholic in
AmE, but (unless further specified, as in sweet cider) it is alcoholic in BrE
(Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik,1985:19-20).
School in I'm going to school includes colleges and universities in AmE, but
excludes them in BrE. Floors are numbered form ground level in AmE, so that
first floor is generally levelled with the ground, but in BrE it above the ground
floor. In some instances an item that is normal in one standard is used in the
other in restricted contexts: BrE shop (AmE store) is used in AmE for a small
and specialized store, e.g.: barber shop, shoe-repair shop, and sometimes for a
high-class establishment or one that has pretensions to be considered, eg:
clothing shop/store, jewellery shop/store; BrE chips (esp AmE French fries) now
occurs in AmE, as a recent borrowing from BrE, in the combination fish and
chips. More recent innovations in either area tend to spread rapidly to the
other. Thus, while radio sets have had valves in BrE but tubes in AmE,
television sets have tubes in both, and transistors and computer software are
likewise use in both standards. Mass communication neutralizes differences;
the pop music culture, in particular, uses a `mid-Atlantic` dialect that levels
differences even in pronunciation.
The United States and Britain have been separating political entities for two
centuries; for generations, thousands of books have appeared annually; there
is a long tradition of publishing descriptions of both AmE and BrE.
These are important factors in establishing and institutionalizing the two
national standards, and in relative absence of such conditions, other national
standards are both less distinct (being more open to the influence of either
AmE and BrE) and less institutionalized.
One attitudinal phenomenon in the United States is of sociolinguistic interest.
In affirming the students’ right to their own varieties of language, many
American educationalists have declared that standard American English is a
myth, some asserting the independent status (for example) of Black English. At
the same time, they have acknowledged the existence of a written standard
dialect, sometimes termed ‘Edited American English`. (ibid:19-20).
 3. Conclusion
In everyday usage, standard English is taken to be the variety most widely
accepted and understood within an English-speaking country or throughout
the English-speaking world. It is more or less free of regional, class, and other
shibboleths, although the issue of a 'standard accent' often causes trouble and
tension. It is sometimes presented as the 'common core', a view that remains
controversial because of the difficulty of deciding where core ends and
peripheries begin. Linguists generally agree on three things:
(1) The standard is most easily identified in print, whose conventions are more
or less uniform throughout the world, and some use the term print standard
for that medium.
(2) Standard forms are used by most presenters of news on most English
language radio and television networks, but with regional and other variations,
particularly in accent.
(3) The use of standard English relates to social class and level of education,
often considered (explicitly or implicitly) to match the average level of
attainment of students.
As a conclusion to this dissertation, we may say that we partially managed to
review some of the matters affiliated to standard English such as the process of
making a standard language and the usage of such variety and the obvious
differences between standard and nonstandard English along with an
explanation of what dialect means and what are its types. we also explained
the English language as the mother tongue and a second language and the fact
that the vast majority of speakers are not 'native'. Of the approximately 1.5
billion people who speak English, less than 400 million use it as a first
language. That means over 1 billion speak it as a secondary language. then we
sum the differences between specific varieties of standard English which are
American and British English.
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