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.
Ann Williams: Three complementary papers:
- 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.