ABSTRACT
In order to understand some of the differences between standard and non-standard forms of language, it's convenient to begin by looking at the process of standardization. We must emphasize that this is indeed a process and that it is permanently in progress in any language that undergoes it. That is to say that it didn’t terminate at some time in the past - the English language was not finally standardized once and for all in, say, the eighteenth century, and then stabilized in that final form. Standardization is a process that is never complete, but it aims at uniformity and values this above all things.
