Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . Standard American | PBS

What’s Standard English? According to The American Heritage Dictionary it’s the speech of educated speakers. So where do we find the model? Chicago? Miami? New York? L.A.?

Ask a group of experts to define
Standard 
American
English,
and you’ll find, paradoxically, there’s no standard answer. Even the
editors of The American Heritage Dictionary are careful to
qualify their definition. They note:

People who invoke the term Standard English rarely make
clear what they have in mind by it, and tend to slur over the
inconvenient ambiguities that are inherent in the term.

American Heritage goes on to explain that the term:

is highly elastic and variable, since what counts as
Standard English will depend on both the locality and the particular
varieties that Standard English is being contrasted with. A form that
is considered standard in one region may be nonstandard in another…

Where does this leave us? American Heritage suggests there’s
no single, universally accepted standard for how to speak or write
American English. Even so, school systems, professional communicators
and businesses all have standards and, not surprisingly, the rules (at
least for grammar) do not vary dramatically from place to place.

What’s more elusive is finding an accent that sets the standard.
The variety of English spoken in the nation’s Midland areas is often
pointed to as sounding most neutral or “mainstream.” It’s frequently
identified as the speech of broadcasters. But as linguist  Matthew Gordon
explains, it
too is not unaccented English. For a variety of reasons, over time, the
Midland variety may lose its status as the vox media.

Not Really Real

The “unaccented” variety that is sometimes called Standard
American or Standard Speech is one taught by accent
coaches. This form is actually an idealized dialect – meaning,
it’s not really spoken anywhere, but instead is acquired through
professional training. Actors and professional communicators (including
some from the Midlands!) often take classes in “accent
reduction” to lose any
regional or social sounds in their speech. It takes a lot of work.

Natalie Baker-Shirer, an accent coach and acting teacher at Carngie
Mellon University explains:

“Standard Speech” is spoken nowhere in America, as such. It
is based on RP (British Received Pronunciation) which was adopted with
American alterations in the early 20th century by linguist William
Tilly. These alterations, this authentic “American” sound was loosely
based on the speech of North Eastern population of the US. It was
spoken by the cultured, well educated, well traveled people of the
time. Listen to old movies to hear it.

Baker-Shirer, like The American
Heritage Dictionary, qualifies
whether this kind of speech is “correct”. She writes:

According to Daniel Jones, An English Pronouncing
Dictionary, “There are innumerable other ways of pronouncing English in
existence, and I do not claim that RP is intrinsically “better” or more
“beautiful” than any other form of pronunciation.”

Formal Language Legislation?

Because the use of American English worldwide is pervasive, does it
make sense to continue to have no formal standard? The answer
may be moot. Unlike some nations, the United States has no official department of language
and seems no closer to creating one today than it did in the years just
after American Revolution. So a universal standard for American English
is unlikely to emerge any time in the foreseeable future. (A bit
Jeffersonian – and definitely very American.)

Suggested Reading/Additional Resources

• Sterling, Polly. “Identity in Language: An
  Exploration into the Social Implications of Linguistic Variation.”

  Agora Journal

  (Winter,
  2000): Texas A&M University.    PDF version     HTML version

• Rosina Lippi-Green.

  English
  with an Accent.

  New York:
  Routledge, 1997.