Understanding Standard English: Definition & Usage
What is Standard English?
In his entry for “Standard English” in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), Tom McArthur notes 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, 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. Some linguists argue that there really is no single standard of English.
From the dozens of definitions [of Standard English] available in the literature on English, we may extract five essential characteristics. SE is a variety of English—a distinctive combination of linguistic features with a particular role to play. . . .
Key Features of Standard English
- The linguistic features of SE are chiefly matters of grammar, vocabulary, and orthography (spelling and punctuation).
- It is important to note that SE is not a matter of pronunciation.
- SE is the variety of English which carries most prestige within a country. In the words of one US linguist, SE is “the English used by the powerful.”
- The prestige attached to SE is recognized by adult members of the community, and this motivates them to recommend SE as a desirable educational target.
Usage and Prevalence
Although SE is widely understood, it is not widely produced. Only a minority of people within a country actually use it when they talk. Similarly, when they write—itself a minority activity—the consistent use of SE is required only in certain tasks (such as a letter to a newspaper, but not necessarily to a close friend). More than anywhere else, SE is to be found in print.
Based on this, we may define the Standard English of an English-speaking country as a minority variety (identified chiefly by its vocabulary, grammar, and orthography) which carries most prestige and is most widely understood. (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003)
What Standard English Is Not
It’s also important to clarify what Standard English is *not*:
- It is not an arbitrary, a priori description of English, or of a form of English, devised by reference to standards of moral value, or literary merit, or supposed linguistic purity, or any other metaphysical yardstick. In short, ‘Standard English’ cannot be defined or described in terms such as ‘the best English,’ or ‘literary English,’ or ‘Oxford English,’ or ‘BBC English.’
- It is not defined by reference to the usage of any particular group of English-users, and especially not by reference to a social class. ‘Standard English’ is not ‘upper class English’ and it is encountered across the whole social spectrum, though not necessarily in equivalent use by all members of all classes.
- It is not statistically the most frequently occurring form of English, so that ‘standard’ here does not mean ‘most often heard.’
- It is not imposed upon those who use it. True, its use by an individual may be largely the result of a long process of education; but Standard English is neither the product of linguistic planning or philosophy (for example as exists for French in the deliberations of the Academie Francaise, or policies devised in similar terms for Hebrew, Irish, Welsh, Bahasa Malaysia, etc); nor is it a closely-defined norm whose use and maintenance is monitored by some quasi-official body, with penalties imposed for non-use or misuse. Standard English evolved: it was not produced by conscious design.