English in the United States

Abstract

American English is an Inner Circle variety and one of two major “reference accents” of global English. The distinctive nature and the varieties of English in North America are a product of the continent's settlement history, with individual accents and dialects having resulted from unique mixtures of settlers from different regions of the British Isles and elsewhere and their ways of speaking. Typically American English is seen as against British English, and distinguishing features on the levels of phonology, lexis, orthography, and grammar tend to be juxtaposed in list form in textbooks. This chapter looks into dialects: American English is anything but homogeneous – the notion encompasses not only a rich array of regional forms and some social variation but also, and increasingly so, ethnic varieties shaped by effects of language contact and differential degrees of integration of generations of immigrants into the American mainstream culture.

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