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.3 Standards and dialectal speech
are not simply cold linguistic systems studied in grammar books, but rather, tools for human communication. Therefore, as a human phenomenon, language is endowed with the spontaneous and ever-changing nature typical of us human beings. It is thanks to this medium that we can establish social relationships with other people, and so perform certain social functions, for there is no doubt that any speech act has a particular function in the context where it is taking place. In addition to the purely communicative function of language, we should not overlook that language is also a powerful source of personal information, in the sense that the way we speak our language is highly influenced by both our social status and our region of origin. Thus, if a given speaker comes from County Durham, for example, he or she probably uses the kind of language spoken by people from that part of the country. If this person is also a middle-class businessman, he uses the kind of language associated with people of this type. Kinds of language of this sort are often referred to as dialects, the first type in the previous example being a regional dialect and the second a social dialect.is a concept that tends to be confused with accent; however, it should be explained that dialect has to do with lexical, grammatical and phonetic differences between different language varieties, whereas accent refers solely to pronunciation. Taking the notion of dialect as a basis, I think that it would be convenient to define language as the compilation of all the dialects (or language varieties) of a given linguistic system used worldwide. Accordingly, the English language as a whole would include not only English English , but also American English , Australian English , Canadian English ... As there mentioned, hence it becomes clear that the notion of a unique worldwide Standard English is simply an utopia which is quite far from becoming a reality, for as David Graddol suggests, "a standard variety of English can only actually exist in the shape of one of its regional variations". [6; 190]
In the previous paragraph, it is noticed about concept that surely stands out in any discussion revolving around dialectal issues: Standard English. This is the dialect which is normally used officially, that is, the kind of English to be found in printed books, newspapers, educational contexts, dictionaries, grammar books ... However, it is obvious importance should not deter us from considering and valuing the existence of un...
