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Yaoyao Xu
English 130
Prof. Hodson
Take Home Essay #2
November 8, 2016
Standard Written English vs. Dialects
English is one of the main languages in the United State; Ryan mentioned in the 2011
U.S. Census report, “English is the language spoken by most people in the United States. The
official language of many states is English and it is the language used in nearly all
governmental functions” (1). In this country, about eighty percent of the population in this
country speak English. However, in this eighty percent population, about twenty percent
speak a dialect other than English (Ryan, 2). In addition, English itself has many dialects,
more than you can ever think of. David Wallace gave some examples in his article “Authority
and American Usage”, “Fact: There are all sorts of cultural/geographical dialects of American
English – Black English, Latino English, Rural Southern, Urban Southern, Standard Upper-
Midwest, Maine Yankee, East Texas, Bayou, Boston Blue-Collar, on and on” (408). As a
second language learner, I once thought that English is just one language; I have never known
about the “dialects” that English has until I read the article. In this article, he argues between
prescriptivism and descriptivism. Prescriptivism is how people feel English should be, like
dialects; and on the other hand, descriptivism is how English should be used, like Standard
Written English. At the beginning of the article, Wallace seemed to more prone to
descriptivism, which he believed that people should keep their dialect; but at the end, he
changed his view, he believed that Standard Written English is more important.
I do agree that Standard Written English is very important in our academic study, every
college student should have some skill of writing in order to work in their classes. However,
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learning Standard Written English does not mean that you have to give up your dialect. I
think the English we use in talking and writing are totally different. When we talk, we tend to
use some casual English. Furthermore, we do not pay much attention to grammars; as long as
the audiences can understand what you are talking about, we do not need to be too serious
about grammar. In fact, if we are too concentrate in grammar when we speak, it can make our
words sound awkward. For example, if someone say “I love you”, and the other person
answers “And I you”; this answer is perfectly acceptable and grammatically correct, but it
makes the conversation sounds a little weird because not many people use this phrase.
Normally, when someone tell us “I love you”, we can just simply reply “I love you too”. The
daily conversations tend to be more casual, so we can talk however we want. Involving
