ABSTRACT

Comments on Standard English and criticisms of non-standard speakers are commonplace in both Britain and the United States, but the most contentious public debates about language are framed rather differently in the two countries. It is difficult to imagine a long-running controversy in the United States with all the ingredients of the great grammar debate which we alluded to in Chapter 8. Equally, it is hard to imagine the British press focusing over many years on an English Only movement or on whether British Black English should be taught as a separate language, as in the Ebonics debate. In this final chapter we shall consider some social and historical factors underpinning these somewhat different manifestations of the standard language ideology. We begin by looking more closely at the term ‘Standard English’ when used in reference to a spoken norm.