ABSTRACT
The poet Walt Whitman (1888/2004), writing about American English, stated that language “is not an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground” (p. 445). Implicit in this statement is recognition that language exists in different varieties, ranging from that of the educated elite to that of the common man. In linguistics, we refer to these different varieties as dialects.
