Introduction

More research has been carried out on the English that is spoken in the UK and, particularly, in the USA, than anywhere else in the world. It is impossible to survey this vast array of research within a single chapter, and I shall make no attempt to do so.

Nevertheless, as mentioned in the Introduction, a volume whose subject matter is English around the world can hardly exclude the two countries where English has been institutionalised longer than anywhere else, and whose standard varieties have, until very recently, held an unchallenged position as reference models for the teaching of English throughout the world. This chapter, therefore, briefly discusses some sociolinguistic aspects of English as it is used in the UK and the USA, keeping broadly to the format that the authors of the overview papers were asked to use, in order to make comparisons possible between different areas of the world.

Whilst admittedly very different, the UK and the USA share some important characteristics. Perhaps the most important of these is that both countries are overwhelmingly monolinguistic in their official orientation, even though throughout their history they have always been multilingual. A further similarity is that the standard varieties of English in the USA and in southern Britain each have well codified norms, enshrined in their different national dictionaries and grammars; and within each country the existence of a standard variety has given rise to similar sets of attitudes towards the uncodified non-standard varieties (which are spoken by the majority of the population) and has resulted in a similar set of social and educational problems.