Standard and Non-standard English
By
Layla Ammar
Supervisor
Dr. Nassier Al-Zubaidi
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 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 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 work. (Nelson and
Greenbaum, 2002:19)
This report will tackle the definition of standard English, and discuss 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. I will conclude by explaining the difference between these 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.
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 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)
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)
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)
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 some 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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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’
(what is left when all regional and other distinctions are stripped away), 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 who have finished
secondary-level schooling. (STANDARD ENGLISH | Encyclopedia.com)
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 a great pity that the standard
English conception is deformed by the sort of notional confusions and political situations. I
think there are genuine questions that we should about what we might mean by "standards"
concerning speech and writing. There is a great deal to be done in this matter, 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.
References
Bex, T., and Watts (Ed.), R., 1999. Standard English. The Widening Debate. London:
Routledge, p.131, 292.
Crystal, D., 1992. Introducing Linguistics. Penguin Books, p.366.
Encyclopedia.com. STANDARD ENGLISH | Encyclopedia.Com. [online] Available at:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-
maps/standardenglish#:~:text=A%20general%20definition,throughout%20the
%20English%2Dspeaking%20world.
Matthews, P., 2007. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. 2nd ed. Oxford
University Press, p.380.
Mifflin, H., 2005. The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style.
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, p.18.
Nelson, G., and Greenbaum, S., 2002. An Introduction to English Grammar. 2nd ed.
London: Routledge, p.19.
O'Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M., and Aronoff, M., 1989.Contemporary linguistics: An
introduction. New York: St. Martin's, p.1.
Trudgill, P., and Hannah, J., 2013. International English. 5th ed. New York: Routledge,
pp.2-3.
