Standard Language Ideology and Variations in English

Posted on Jan 5, 2025 in Language

Standard Language Ideology in the Inner Circle

The term “Standard Language” refers to the variety considered to be the norm:

  • Considered optimum for educational purposes because there is just one.
  • A prestige variety, associated with ideology, spoken by a minority of people within a society (positions of power).
  • Life and power on its own, from which other dialects deviate.
  • Prescriptive languages have rules taught in education.
  • Dynamicity of language leads to changes of rules over time.
  • The language changes are not welcomed by promoters of standard language ideology.

Standardizing Progress: 4 Stages

  1. Selection: One variety is chosen over the rest, often one that already has political or economic importance.
  2. Codification: The variety chosen has to be ‘fixed’ in grammar books and dictionaries in order to use the language ‘correctly’.
  3. Elaboration of Function: Used in institutions (government, law, education, science, literature), new lexical items are added, and new conventions developed.
  4. Acceptance: (Imposition). If not economic or political power, it is considered ‘inferior’.

What is Standard English?

  • Not a language.
  • Not an accent.
  • Not a style.
  • It is similar to Spanish, French, and Italian.

Trudgill wrote ‘Standard English: What it Isn’t’ (1999). His conclusion: It has great prestige. It is not a register. It does not respond to geographical matters. It is not a prescriptive rule. It is a purely social dialect.

Standard English Features in the Inner Circle

Mainly British English (BrE) and US English (USE) have not so many differences.

A) Vocabulary

The most external level of divergence (in any variety).

  1. Settlers named new things and discoveries. Extension in meaning of existing English words. (Grain BrE, Maize AmE). AmE: borrowings from the Native Americans (moccasin, squash).
  2. After separations, further divergences occurred:
  • Technological innovations: USE: windshield, boot, trunk. BrE: windscreen, boot, bonnet.

Differences

  1. Same word, different meaning: Pavement in BrE is a sidewalk, in AmE it is the road surface.
  2. Same word, additional meaning in one variety:
    • Regular: consistent, habitual + in USE average, normal.
    • Smart: intelligent + in BrE in USE average, well-groomed.
  3. Same word, difference in style, connotation, frequency of use: Autumn BrE is common, USE is poetic or formal (“fall”).
  4. Same concept, different word: BrE pavement, USE sidewalk.

B) Grammar

Verbs

  • Morphology: past and participle endings: BrE dived, sneaked, got. USE dove, snuck, gotten.
  • Auxiliaries: epistemic “must” in negatives:

BrE: He can’t be in – his car has gone. USE: must not

Nouns

  • -ee, -ster, frequent in USE: Retiree, draftee, teamster, gamester.
  • Different derivational endings morphology: BrE candidature, centenary. USE candidacy, centennial.
  • USE: greater tendency for verbs as nouns: USE a shut-in (“an invalid”), a try-out (“an audition”).

Adjectives and Adverbs

  • BrE different from (to). USE different than.
  • Just/yet/already: BrE + present perfect. USE + past simple:

I’ve just had lunch. I just had lunch.

Have you read it yet? Did you read it yet?

He has already left. He already left.

Prepositions

  • Different forms: BrE behind. USE in back of:

I put it behind / in back of the shed.

  • Expressions of time: BrE: I haven’t seen him for ages/weeks. USE: I haven’t seen him in ages/weeks.
  • Clock time: BrE twenty to three, five past eight. USE twenty of/ till three, five after eight.
  • In, on: BrE to live in a street. USE to live on a street.

Standard and Non-Standard (“Dialect”)

Britain

Differences mainly based on accent rather than grammar. British working-class speech morphosyntactic features:

  1. Multiple negation: I didn’t do nothing.
  2. Ain’t as negative of auxiliary have: I ain’t got one.
  3. Never used to refer to a single occasion in the past: I never done it (SE: I didn’t do it).
  4. 3rd person -s extended to 1st and 2nd person verb forms: I wants, you wants, he wants.
  5. Regularization of be: We was, you was, they was.
  6. Regularization of some irregular verbs: I draw, I drawed, I have drawed. I go, I went, I have went. I come, I come, I have come.
  7. Optional -ly on adverbs: He writes real quick.
  8. Unmarked plurality of nouns of measurement after numerals: Twenty year, ten pound.
  9. Different forms of the relative pronoun: The man as / what lives here.
  10. Regularization of reflexive pronouns: Myself, yourself, hisself, ourselves, theirselves.
  11. Distinction between main and auxiliary verb do: (You done it, did you?) (SE: You did it, did you?)

US

Traditionally, standardness was not an issue in the US to the same extent as it is in Britain. The real fact is that attitudes towards standardness really exist but are connected in the US with race rather than class. Dialects spoken by speakers of Hispanic English and Black English. (AAVE: African American Vernacular English is the most highly stigmatized).

Main Features

The Verb Phrase
  1. Irregular verbs: (North and South).
    • Past as participle form: I had went down there.
    • Participle as past form: He seen something out there.
    • Bare root as past form: She come to my house yesterday (some Southern rural vernaculars).
    • Different irregular form: Something just riz (rose) up right in front of me.
  2. Completive “done”: (South and AAVE) “done” emphasizing a completed action or event.
  3. Habitual “be”: on -ing forms: She usually be home in the evening.
  4. A-prefixing: (some Southern and many other rural varieties).
    • Prefix on -ing forms functioning as verbs: He was a-coming home. He starts a-laughing.
    • Constraints: a) not with -ing forms as nouns or adjectives. b) forms with stressed 1st syllable, preferably with initial consonant.
  5. Double modals: (some vernaculars): I might could go there. You might oughta take it.
Adverbs

-ly absence (South): they answered wrong. She enjoyed life awful well.

Negation

Multiple negation and ain’t, main features in vernaculars.

  1. Multiple negation: (several types).
  2. Ain’t: be + not: she ain’t here now.
Pronouns

(Most vernacular dialects):

  • Regularization of reflexive forms: He hit hisself on the head. They shaved theirselves.
  • Object forms in co-ordinate subjects: me and him will do it.
  • 2nd plural form: Y’all won the game (Southern). Youse won the game (Northern). You’uns/ Yinz (you ones) won the game (Southern Appalachia to Pittsburgh).
  • Object forms as demonstratives: Them books are on the shelf (also in Britain) (South).
  • Dative use of object pronoun (= ethical dative): I got me a new car.