Views of Standard English

This page gives access to some papers or talks on the subject of Standard English.

published in Tony Bex & Richard J. Watts eds. Standard English: the widening debate. London: Routledge, 1999, 117-128.
revised in November 2011
Standard English is a dialect which is socially superior to other dialects.

A paper presented to the Queen’s English Society in March 2000.
Standard English, as such, dates from the mid fifteenth century and has been constantly changing ever since in spite of the attentions of prescriptivists.

Discourses about English: Class, codes and identities in Britain
- In Marilyn Martin-Jones, Anne-Marie de Mejia and Nancy Hornberger eds. Encyclopedia of Language and Education Vol 3: Discourse and Education. New York: Springer 2008, 237-250.
- The educational consequences of continuing prejudices against non-standard dialects, with telling examples from classroom discourse.
Standard English and education
- In D. Britain, Language in the British Isles (2nd edition) Cambridge University Press 2007, 401-16.
- Includes a particularly useful history of official attitudes to non-standard dialects and the negative effects on education of marginalising non-standard dialects.
(with Eve Gregory) Writing inequalities: Literacy and social class in three primary schools.
- In Jeffrey, B. and Walford, G. Ethnographies of Educational and Cultural Conflicts: Strategies and Resolutions. London: Elsevier 2004, 67-81.
- Three very different schools in England as case studies of how social class and ethnicity affects children’s ability to benefit from education.

A paper presented (in absentia) to a workshop in Paris on prescriptivism and foreign-language teaching in March 2000.
Standard English, unlike other standard languages, is now highly codified for non-native speakers, but not at all codified for native speakers. However codification for natives would be quite helpful for schools.