Discusses the Kingsman Report (Department of Education and Science, London) on teaching English in Britain, and considers its relevance for teaching English in other countries. The many kinds of English, the labels given to them, and the centrality of the standard language are briefly reviewed. (JL)

Dialect writing in nineteenth-century America has been used as a source of evidence about popular American language and culture. Works employing dialect have been studied as documents embodying perceptions of the relation between character, role, and moral values on the one hand, and speech variety on the other. Critics have noticed the difference…