Language in Society

Link 1.3: 
Visit http://americanenglishwiley.com/ to hear a discussion of the relation-
ship between older forms of English and current Appalachian speech.
As we see, the popular uses of the term “dialect” strongly reflect the attitudes about 
language differences that have developed in the United States over the centuries. For 
this reason, some groups of educators and language scientists prefer to avoid the use 
of the term “dialect,” using terms such as “language difference,” “language variety,” 
or “language variation” instead. Regardless of the label, we still have to confront the 
significant discrepancy between the public perception of linguistic diversity and the 
linguistic reality. In fact, given popular attitudes about dialect diversity, there is a good 
chance that whatever euphemism we use will eventually take on the kinds of pejorative 
connotations that are associated with the current popular uses of the term “dialect.” 
Throughout this book, we will use the term “dialect” in its linguistically neutral sense 
and confront the issue of public education about language diversity as a separate matter. 
For the time being, it is sufficient to set forth the technical and popular uses of the dialect 
label and see how its popular uses have come to reflect some predominant attitudes and 
beliefs about dialect diversity in American society.
1.4 Standards and Vernaculars
In the preceding discussion, it was difficult to avoid some reference to the dialect of 
English often referred to as S
tandard
A
merican
E
nglish
(sae)
or 
m
ainstream
a
merican
e
nglish
(mae)
. The notion of a widespread, normative variety, or 
standard
dialect
, is an important one, but it is not always easy to define in a precise way – especially 

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10
Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars
for American English. In some countries, such as France and Spain, language academies 
have been established and these institutions are responsible for determining what forms 
are considered acceptable for the normative “standard.” They determine, for example, 
which new words are allowed to be included in official dictionaries and which grammatical 
forms and pronunciations are to be recognized as standard. In the United States we do 
not have such an institution, and various attempts to establish this type of agency have 
failed repeatedly (Heath 1976). Labels such as “standard English” and popular terms 
such as “correct English,” “proper English,” or “good English” are commonly used but 
not without some ambiguity. At best, we can discuss how the notion of Standard 
American English, or Mainstream American English, is used and then offer a reasonable 
definition of the term based on how it seems to operate practically in our society.
Before we get too far into this discussion, we should note that language standardization 
of some type seems inevitable, whether or not there are specific institutions for establish-
ing language norms. Ultimately, we can attribute this to underlying principles of human 
behavior in which certain ways of behaving (dressing, speaking, treating elders, and so 
forth) are established as normative for a society.
As a starting point, it is helpful to distinguish between how the notion of standardness 
operates on a formal and an informal level. In formal standardization, language norms are 
prescribed by recognized sources of authority, such as grammar and usage books, diction-
aries, style guides produced by publishers, and institutions like language academies. In the 
United States, we don’t have a language academy, but we have many grammar and usage 
books and internet grammar sites that people turn to for the determination of “proper” 
forms. The keywords here are “prescribed” and “authority,” so that the responsibility for 
determining standard forms is largely out of the hands of most ordinary speakers of the 
language. Whenever there is a question as to whether or not a form is considered standard 
English, we can turn to an “authoritative” guide. If, for example, we have a question such 
as where to use 
will
versus 
shall
, we simply look it up in our usage guide, which tells us