What Is 'Standard English'?

The title to this paper begs two prior questions: first, the question of whether a Standard English exists, and second, the question whether the very concept of a Standard English is valid or useful. Several different answers might be given to these questions, depending on the observer’s standpoint, attitudes or experience. This paper is written within the universe of discourse of applied linguistics and the teaching of English as a foreign language.1 It assumes and asserts that the concept of a Standard English is indeed valuable for such purposes, that certain features and aspects of present-day English are best accounted for by invoking this concept, that a Standard English definable in a particular way can be held to exist, and that this form of English occupies an important place within the diversity of the language.