Abstract
Standard dialects are frequently thought of as fixed and stable entities which possess clear boundaries and a set of criteria that allow us to recognise easily which texts or utterances are standard and which are not. This view, as has been proved by sociolinguists, is an oversimplification and idealisation since real-world standard dialects are best viewed both as fuzzy categories and as members of a large category centred around a prototype. The paper attempts to present a view of standard dialects inspired by the prototype theory and present-day sociolinguistics and exemplify this view by means of Standard British English. The analysis presents the notion of category in Standard English at three levels. Firstly, particular fragments of texts and utterances cannot be shown to be doubtlessly standard or non-standard, this issue being further complicated by the frequent confusion of typically spoken and typically written norms. Secondly, Standard English cannot be treated as a fixed entity because of its optional variability, its diversity in terms of style and register and the considerable number of local standard varieties of English throughout the English-speaking world. Finally, considering Standard English as possessing a long history of continued development towards minimal variation in form and maximal variation in function is also an idealisation of what has actually been a more complex process, in particular because, as linguists agree, language standardisation is not a fact but a process. All this leads to the conclusion that standard dialects can be analysed in terms of cognitive categorisation and prototypicality.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “standard dialect” is used here instead of “standard language” for two reasons: firstly, in a natural language a standard dialect is but a language variety and not a complete language and it is only in the case of artificial languages that the term “standard language” is fully justified; secondly, we must not mistake standard dialects for standardised languages and the term “standard language” may lead to such confusion. For a discussion of the issue see Hudson (1980: 31–32, 34), Crystal (1994: 109–114) and Trudgill (1999: 118).
- 2.
None of the phonetic features included in the survey was considered to be entirely non-standard by the respondents.
- 3.
Although some people consider Mid-Atlantic English to be an accent, it may be claimed to be a full dialect which is levelled on the levels of vocabulary and grammar in addition to pronunciation. This in turn is related to the concepts of World Standard English or International English, which are not analysed in the present discussion.
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Rataj, M. (2011). Beyond and within Standard English: Categories, Category Boundaries and Fuzziness. In: Pawlak, M., Bielak, J. (eds) New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20083-0_15
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