In the public sphere, dialects are routinely demonized. It is common to treat ‘dialect’ as though it is somehow opposed to ‘language’ – as an enemy of language rather than as a part of it. The negative connotations of the word are bound up with false notions: that dialect, like hell, ‘is other people’; that dialects are the result of people’s failed attempts to govern their language properly; that they are deviant forms of correct speech and writing, rather than having their own distinct patterns and features; and that they are only used by the socially disadvantaged. This is not something
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