Standard English

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the relationship between standard and nonstandard language is, evidently, still an uncertain one. We are at a transitional point between two eras. We seem to be leaving an era when the rules of Standard English, as elected and defined by prescriptive grammarians, totally conditioned our sense of acceptable usage, so that all other usages and varieties were considered to be inferior or corrupt, and excluded from serious consideration. And we seem to be approaching an era when nonstandard usages and varieties, previously denigrated or ignored, are achieving a new presence and respectability within society, reminiscent of that found in Middle English when dialect variation in literature was widespread and uncontentious. But we are not there yet. The rise of Standard English has resulted in a confrontation between the standard and nonstandard dimensions of the language which has lasted for over 200 years, and this has had traumatic consequences which will take some years to eliminate. Once people have been given an inferiority complex about the way they speak or write, they find it difficult to shake off.