This glossary may help clarify terminology you will find throughout the website, in the works described in this site's  annotated bibliography, and other pages and sites linked here.

 

African American Vernacular English (Ebonics, Black English) – a variety of English with distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and rhetorical and stylistic features. This language form is used widely by African Americans, but it is not defined by race so much as by culture and community. Linguists have traced features of AAVE to the African languages of those who were brought to this country in the 17th and 18th century as slaves. AAVE has influenced other forms of American English, especially through its prevalence today in popular culture.

 

Code-meshing – intermingling two or more language forms in one utterance or one written piece.

 

Code-switching – the practice of switching between two forms of a language based on context and audience. Code-switching is also touted as a strategy to help students whose home language is not Standard American English transition in their school writing assignments from their language form to SAE.

 

Creole – the second generation of a pidgin language, a creole is a language that children grow up speaking. While the vocabulary is largely inherited from the languages of the original pidgin speakers, a creole develops its own grammatical features that help it to stabilize as a language form.

 

Dialect – a form of language particular to a specific region or social group. This term is often replaced with ‘language variety’ or ‘language form’ in academic discourse about language today.

 

Edited Academic English, or the language of wider communication – terms that language rights scholars such as Lovejoy and Smitherman have recommended to replace the term “Standard American English.”

 

Language variety or language form – a form or variety of a language that has distinct lexical, grammatical, rhetorical, and stylistic features, yet is mutually intelligible to those who use other forms of that language. Certain fields or areas of study - such as law or medicine - have their own language variety, while other language forms are socially, geographicially, or culturally situated. These latter forms include African American English, Chicano English, working-class English, and Appalachian English.

 

Lingua franca – a language that allows people who do not share a mother tongue to communicate, especially when the lingua franca is a third language, different from both mother tongues. English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of international popular culture and business communication today. For example: a German teenager might listen to music by a Korean pop star singing in English; Chinese and Swedish businessmen might negotiate a deal using English.

 

Mother tongue (native language, L1, home language, community language) – the language or language form that an individual grows up learning from his family and community. ‘Native language’ and ‘L1’ refer more often to a particular language (i.e. German as opposed to Chinese) while ‘home language’ and ‘community language’ refer more often to a language form (i.e. Appalachian English as opposed to Chicano English). ‘Mother tongue’ is used in both instances.

 

Pidgin – a simplified language that develops among two or more groups of people who do not share a common language, often in circumstances of trade or colonization. A pidgin is no one’s native language.

 

Received pronunciation (RP) – the most highly-regarded spoken form of British English; the pronunciation used by those with wealth, power, and influence in British society.

 

Standard American English (SAE) – the language that is commonly taught as the ideal form of English for success in academia and the workplace in the United States. This form includes specific conventions of vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and grammar that for various historical, linguistic, and social reasons have come to be considered 'correct' for written English in the present day.

 

Standard English (SE) – the particular form of English that is accepted as the national norm in a country where English is the primary language. This norm varies from country to country; for example, Standard British English is different than Standard New Zealand English. The ‘standard’ is set by those who have power and authority in a society; thus, the concept of Standard English is fraught with issues of economic opportunity, racial and class prejudice, and identity.

 

Vernacular – most often used to describe the spoken form of a language, it usually carries the connotation of being the everyday language of the ‘ordinary’ people of a certain region or area. However, lately the meaning has been extended to include a home or community language that is different from the standard form used by those in positions of power and authority.

 

World Englishes – the many and varied forms of English spoken throughout the world, including varieties developed as an outgrowth of colonization by the British Empire and the U.S., as well as forms that have arisen in non-colonial areas due to English’s widespread use as a language of global communication.