Prestige dialect
A
prestige dialect is the
dialect spoken by the most
prestigious people in a
speech community large enough to sustain multiple dialects. The study of prestige in language use is an important part of
sociolinguistics.
The most prestigious people are those with the greatest influence on the community. This influence may derive from
economic,
political, or
social power. Prestige is not always overt; covert prestige may be significant too. There may be a tendency to align one's own use of language (
idiolect) to that of a favoured dialect (positive prestige), or to move away from a dialect of low esteem (negative prestige). Studies, particularly by
Labov, have shown that positive prestige is more often overt, whilst negative prestige is more often covert (avoidance of the unmentionable). Sociologically, women of the lower middle-class are more likely to notice and adopt overt positive prestige. Among working-class men, there may sometimes be a covert preference for negative prestige.
In nations with a colonial history the prestige dialect is often close to the prestige dialect of the colonising community although it may fossilise at the point of secession.
Where
creolisation has taken place, the
superstrate language operates as an extreme prestige dialect, which may effect great influence, including, in extreme case, the
decreolisation of the
creole language into the prestige language.
When a prestige dialect is prescribed as the norm by dominant institutions it is also a
standard dialect. Broadcast media have been particularly effective at defining standard dialects. In the
United Kingdom, the thorough use of a particular prestige dialect in the first decades of broadcasting led to the term
BBC English being coined.
According to Wilson, the
United States has no single prestige dialect. In practice, many regional and ethnic dialects, such as
African American Vernacular English and
Appalachian English, are of lower prestige than the dialect prevalent in television newscasts, federal politics and meetings within nationwide commercial enterprises (referred to as
General American).
In the
United Kingdom,
Received Pronunciation is the main prestige dialect. In many parts of the
Commonwealth of Nations,
Standard English is the prestige dialect. In the Spanish-speaking world there is no single prestige dialect: instead, the variety used in the capital city is usually the prestige dialect of each country (for example,
Peruvian Coast Spanish in
Peru, or
Rioplatense Spanish in
Argentina and
Uruguay). In the
Greater China area,
Standard Mandarin Chinese, which is based on the
Beijing dialect is usually regarded as the prestige dialect. Among the
Hindi-speaking states of India,
Khariboli is the prestige dialect (of Hindi).
Modern Standard Arabic is the prestige dialect of the
Arabic-speaking countries.
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