Standard language

A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features.^[1][2] Typically, the varieties that undergo standardization are those associated with centers of commerce and government,^[3] used frequently by educated people and in news broadcasting, and taught widely in schools and to non-native learners of the language.^[4] Within a language community, standardization usually begins with a particular variety being selected (often towards a goal of further linguistic uniformity), accepted by influential people, socially and culturally spread, established in opposition to competitor varieties, maintained, increasingly used in diverse contexts, and assigned high social prestige as a result of the variety becoming associated with the most successful people.^[5] As a sociological effect of these processes, most users of a standard dialect—and many users of other dialects of the same language—come to believe that the standard is inherently superior to, or consider it the linguistic baseline against which to judge, the other dialects,^[6] though this is rooted in social perceptions rather than objective realities.^[4]

The standardization of a language is a continual process, because language is always changing and a language-in-use cannot be permanently standardized like the parts of a machine.^[7] Standardization may originate from a motivation to make the written form of a language more uniform, as is the case of Standard English.^[8] Typically, standardization processes include efforts to stabilize the spelling of the prestige dialect, to codify usages and particular (denotative) meanings through formal grammars and dictionaries, and to encourage public acceptance of the codifications as intrinsically correct.^[9][10] In that vein, a pluricentric language has interacting standard varieties.^[11][12][13] Examples are English, French, Portuguese, German, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Armenian and Mandarin Chinese.^[14][15] Monocentric languages, such as Russian and Japanese, have one standardized idiom.^[16]

The term standard language occasionally also refers to the entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties.^[17][18] In Europe, a standardized written language is sometimes identified with the German word Schriftsprache (written language). The term literary language is occasionally used as a synonym for standard language, a naming convention still prevalent in the linguistic traditions of eastern Europe.^[19][20] In contemporary linguistic usage, the terms standard dialect and standard variety are neutral synonyms for the term standard language, usages which indicate that the standard language is one of many dialects and varieties of a language, rather than the totality of the language, whilst minimizing the negative implication of social subordination that the standard is the only form worthy of the label "language".^[21][22]