one another so far as grammar and vocabulary are concerned. Indeed, Standard English is so powerful that it exerts a tremendous pressure on all such local varieties; we will return to this topic in chapter 13 in our discussion of language planning and policy. However, differences in the spoken varieties exist and are found everywhere in the world that English is used and, while these differences may have been reduced somewhat in the British Isles, they may actually have increased almost everywhere else, for example, within new English‐speaking countries in Africa and Asia.
The standard–dialect hierarchy
Because of the sociopolitical salience of the standard, is it often seen as the language itself, while regional or social varieties are considered subordinate to the standard. Some people are also aware that the standardized variety of any language is actually only the preferred dialect of that language: Parisian French, Florentine Italian, Beijing Mandarin, or the Zanzibar variety of Swahili in Tanzania. It is the empowered variety. As a result, the standard is often not called a dialect astandard is often not called a dialect at all, but is regarded as the language itself. It takes on an ideological dimension and becomes the ‘right’ and ‘proper’ language of the group of people, an attitude which has social consequences. One consequence is that all other varieties have none of the status and power of the standard. Of course, this process of standardization and stigmatization usually involves a complete restructuring of the historical facts.
We see a good instance of this process in Modern British English. The new standard is based on the dialect of the area surrounding London, which was just one of several dialects of Old English, and not the most important since both the western and northern dialects were once at least equally as important. However, in the modern period, having provided the base for Standard English, this dialect exerts a strong influence over all the other dialects of England so that it is not just first among equals but rather represents the modern language itself to the extent that the varieties spoken in the west and north are generally regarded as its local variants. Historically, these varieties arise from different sources, but now they are viewed only in relation to the standardized variety. Thus, regardless of the actual history of a language, the standard is often regarded as the original language and the dialects as deviations from it.
Regional Dialects
Regional variation in the way a language is spoken is likely to provide one of the easiest ways of observing variety in language. As you travel throughout a wide geographical area in which a language is spoken, and particularly if that language has been spoken in that area for many hundreds of years, you are almost certain to notice differences in pronunciation, in the choices and forms of words, and in syntax. There may even be a very local character to the language which you notice as you move from one location to another. Such distinctive varieties are usually called regional dialects of the language.
Dialect geography
When a language is recognized as being spoken in different varieties, the issue becomes one of deciding how many varieties and how to classify each variety. Dialect geography is the term used to describe attempts made to map the distributions of various linguistic features so as to show their geographical provenance. For example, in seeking to determine features of the dialects of English and to show their distributions, dialect geographers try to find answers to questions such as the following. Is this an r‐pronouncing area of English, as in words like car and cart, or is it not? What past tense form of drink do speakers prefer? What names do people give to particular objects in the environment, for example, elevator or lift, carousel or roundabout? As discussed in the last chapter, we call such features variables, as there are variable (i.e., varied and changing) ways of realizing them (the variants we discussed in chapter 1). For example, the past tense of drink might be drank or drunk, or the words for the fuel you put in an automobile could be petrol or gas.
Sometimes maps are drawn to show actual boundaries around such variables, boundaries called isoglosses, so as to distinguish an area in which a certain feature is found from areas in which it is absent. When several such isoglosses coincide, the result is sometimes called a dialect boundary. Then we may be tempted to say that speakers on one side of that boundary speak one dialect and speakers on the other side speak a different dialect. We will return to this topic in chapter 5.
However, complicating this picture of dialect regions is the idea of the dialect continuum, in which there is gradual change of the language (Heeringa and Nerbonne 2001); we discussed this above with the example of German and Dutch in the northern regions of those countries. Over large distances the dialects at each end of the continuum may well be mutually unintelligible, although speakers can easily understand people in neighboring areas; but the borders between dialect areas are not clear‐cut lines as implied by the concept of the dialect boundary.
Everyone has an accent
The term dialect, particularly when it is used in reference to regional variation, should not be confused with the term accent. Standard English, for example, is spoken in a variety of accents, often with clear regional and social associations: there are accents associated with North America, Singapore, India, Liverpool (Scouse), Tyneside (Geordie), Boston, New York, and so on. However, many people who live in such places show a remarkable uniformity to one another in their grammar and vocabulary because they speak Standard English and the differences are merely those of accent, that is, how they pronounce what they say. While we will focus on variation and attitudes about English accents in this section, please keep in mind that the general points here are relevant for all languages!
One English accent has achieved a certain eminence, the accent known as Received Pronunciation (RP), the accent of perhaps as few as 3 percent of those who live in England. (The ‘received’ in Received Pronunciation is a little bit of old‐fashioned snobbery: it meant the accent allowed one to be received into the ‘better’ parts of society!) This accent is of fairly recent origin (see Mugglestone 1995), becoming established as prestigious only in the late nineteenth century and not even given its current label until the 1920s. In the United Kingdom at least, it is ‘usually associated with a higher social or educational background, with the BBC and the professions, and [is] most commonly taught to students learning English as a foreign language’ (Wakelin 1977, 5). Those who use this accent are often regarded as speaking ‘unaccented’ English because it lacks a regional association within England; we return to this point below. Other names for this accent are the Queen’s English, Oxford English, and BBC English. However, there is no unanimous agreement that the Queen does in fact use RP. Harrington et al. (2000) point out that an acoustic analysis of her Christmas broadcasts since 1952 showed a drift in her accent ‘toward one that is characteristic of speakers who are younger and/or lower in the social hierarchy.’ She ‘no longer speaks the Queen’s English of the 1950s.’ Today, too, a wide variety of accents can be found at Oxford University, and regional accents also feature prominently in the various BBC services.
The most generalized accent in North America is sometimes referred to as Newscaster English, the accent associated with announcers on the major television networks, or General American, a term which emphasizes its widespread acceptance and lack of regional association (see the website for this chapter to find a link to the discussion of Standard American English in the Do You Speak American? PBS production). Lippi‐Green (2012, 62) endorses the use of the term SAE (Standard American English), while recognizing that it is a ‘mythical’ beast and idealizes a homogeneous variety. There is no official definition of what forms are included
