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Ensuring social relevance 241
other creative writings that demonstrate the use of English to ex- press local sociocultural nuances.
In fact, the number of varieties of English has multiplied to the point of pluralizing it as World Englishes. Given the linguistic spread and the cultural richness of World Englishes, a crucial question arises regarding which standard or variety one should adopt for the purpose of learning and teaching English in various educational settings.
Reflective task 11.1
What criteria, do you think, must a language variety meet before it can be considered a “standard” variety? Who or what agency has the authority to declare a variety, a “standard” variety? Do you speak the “standard” variety of your first language? How do you know?
The Politics of Standardization
The term standard refers to a prestige variety of a language. It is com- monly and vaguely defined as “the variety of a language which has the highest status in a community or nation and which is usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language” (Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, 1985, p. 271). A definition like this begs a number of questions including: How does one determine “the highest status”? Who determines it? Who consti- tutes a community for this purpose? How educated is “educated”?
A variety does not become “standard” just because educated na- tive speakers speak it. A case in point is the following episode re- ported in a major newspaper during the 1992 U.S. presidential cam- paign involving Bill Clinton, the then-governor of the southern state of Arkansas. Consider this:
Gov. Clinton, you attended Oxford University in England and Yale Law School in the Ivy League, two of the finest institutions of learn- ing in the world. So how come you still talk like a hillbilly?
(Mike Royko, “Opinion,” Chicago Tribune, October 11, 1992, cited in Lippi-Green 1997, p. 211).