Universität Mainz
PS: Regional and Social Varieties of American English
SS 2004, fourth semester

Standard American English: Socially Distinguishing?

by: Daniela Daus

Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction  1

2.0 A Brief History of American English 2

3.0 Standard American English

3.1 An Approach to a Definition of “Standard American English” 4
3.2 “Standard” – Socially Promoting, or Socially Distinguishing ?  5

4.0 Conclusion 10

5.0 Bibliography  11

1.0 Introduction

Language variation could also be called „. . .the most basic and fundamental of human socialisation tools.”¹ You need language to express yourself, to learn things, to communicate and to get educated. Without language, an independent life is hardly to live. As long as people speak, there always have been dialects and individual ways of speaking in one language. British English for example, during the twelveth and thirteenth century, was spoken in four varieties, besides French and Latin. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the more unified Great Britain needed some kind of “Standard”, to cope with official tasks and affairs.² So, at some point, it seems necessary to compromise on one way of speaking for official matters

This paper will focus on “Standard American English” as a sociolinguistic tool: A brief history of American English will be given and definitions of “Standard American English” will be discussed. The central question of this paper will be: Why there is a need for the so-called “Standard”? Whom does it serve? Is it an “ideology”³ of the upper classes to distinguish them also linguistically from the lower classes? Or is the function of “Standard American English” solely to enable the American people to communicate on an even level, despite the various dialects? Further, the example of New York City speech will be given, to show that “Standard” seems to be necessary for “upward mobility”.

2.0 A Brief History of American English

When the Jamestown colonists settled in 1607, their speech actually more resembled today’s American English, than today’s British English. Within this period of English – referred to as “Early Modern English” - the language consisted of many variations that the early settlers took with them from Great Britain to the New World. Phonologically innovations in British English did not arrive at the colonies, so the colonists stayed with the traditional pronunciations, of for example “dance” and “path”, with a low front vowel. Former British word meanings were also still used in the colonies, like the word “mad”, meaning “angry” in American English. In British English it is used as “. . . mentally unbalanced.”⁴ In addition, some syntactic structures that were changed in British English over the times stayed the same in the new communities. Especially the use of “gotten” and “done” represented relics of Early Modern English.⁵

Although dialect variety existed among the settlers, many of them came from Southeastern Britain with its cultural center London. In London, which could also be considered the most powerful center of all Britain, a “London” or a “British Standard” developed around the mid-1700s. This standard speech was prevalent in Eastern New England, with its r-lessness. In other regions, like New York State and Western New England, the speakers were r-pronouncing, according to their British dialect heritage, or to language change.⁶ Further, Westwards movement, inmigration and independent lifestyles, not connected to Britain anymore, pushed the development of new words.⁷

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1 Rosina Lippi-Green, English with an Accent. Language, Iedeology, and Discrimination in the United States (London, New York: Routledge, 1997 ) 59.

2 Charles Carpenter Fries, American English Grammar. The Grammatical Structure of Present-Day American English with Especial Reference to Social Differences or Class Dialects (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1940) 12.

3 Lippi-Green 59.

4 Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes, American English: Dialects and Variation, Language in Society 24 (Malden, Massachusetts, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) 93.

5 Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 93.

6 Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 93-94.

7 Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 97.