up speaking Standard English are motivated to learn it because it is the lan-
guage of school and business. In this text, we have referred to formal Standard
English as yet another dialect, associated most commonly with writing, espe-
cially academic writing, and members of the educated elite. The number of
people who use formal Standard English when speaking is relatively small, but
it nevertheless is the most widely accepted dialect. Given the importance of
Standard and formal Standard dialects and their numerous differences from
nonstandard dialects, we can understand why a significant portion of the U.S.
population must be considered bidialectical.
Because SES is closely tied to level of education (Herrnstein & Murray,
1994), nonstandard speakers who are not fully bidialectical tend to be undered-
ucated, and they also tend to be linked to the working-class poor. Education,
however, is not an absolute indicator of dialect: Anecdotal evidence suggests
that colleges and universities are more tolerant of nonstandard English than
they used to be, and a number of factors have made public schools more sensi-
tive to, and indeed more tolerant of, nonstandard English. As a result, it is fairly
easy to observe college graduates—and, increasingly, college and public
school faculty—uttering nonstandard expressions such as “I ain’t got no
money” and “Where’s he at.”
Students and Dialects
Students who want to succeed academically have good reasons to shift from their
home dialect, and many do so. This motivation continues in the workplace,
where employers deem nonstandard home dialects unacceptable for many posi-
tions. Language is perhaps the most important factor in defining who we are, and
we judge and are judged continually on the basis of the language we use. Conse-
quently, the desire to be identified with an elite group leads many people to drop
their home dialect for Standard English, if not formal Standard English.
Changing one’s home dialect is not easy. First, there is the challenge of
mastering a new set of linguistic features, such as vocabulary, accent, rhythm,
and in some cases, grammar. Motivation appears to be the key. We note, for
example, that when aspiring actors and actresses come to Los Angeles, the
first thing many do is hire a diction coach to help them replace their New York
or Southern or even Australian dialects. The efforts are nearly always suc-
cessful: Few people remember that superstar Mel Gibson grew up in Austra-
lia and that he spoke Australian English in his first films. We also note how
quickly dislocated teenagers shift dialects. When on the faculty at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina years ago, I worked with many students from the
224 CHAPTER 7