ABSTRACT
The English language was in crisis and a special debate was held in the House of Lords to address the problem. The usual suspects were rounded up: Pronunciation was getting worse, slang was spreading, bureaucratic jar-gon was taking hold. Particular concern was expressed that the standard language was being influenced by an upstart nonstandard dialect. Lord Somers was moved to declare, “If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth…, I should like to know what it is.” Another peer named this dialect as the cause of increasing long-windedness and ambiguity of ex-pression. The time was 1978 and the hideous language was American Eng-lish (McCrum, Cran, & MacNeil, 1986, p. 343).
