When I say “prestige speech,” what do you think of? Surely, something prestigious, perhaps an old white man at a university lectern giving his analysis on some “deep” economic theory he’s posited in his fortieth book that no one read but will certainly have a break down of in The New Yorker for all the bathroom-copy hoarders. 

The essence in this image has threads and ties to what I mean by “prestige speech,” in that it contains an inherent act of prestige (“commanding position in people’s minds” as per Merriam-Webster). There is gravitas within the act, or so we think. For, what we call “prestige” speech is really a veil of power over “proper” speech, a social construct upheld by colonialism, classism, and racial hierarchy. Prestige speech isn’t just about “correctness” or who’s being excluded. In fact, the rules are often and eternally arbitrary. It’s about who’s doing the language defining and who gets to break the unwritten rules sans consequence. It’s about the illusion of accessibility. The idea that people can just “learn” the right way to speak ignores how prestige shifts in unpredictable, elite-controlled ways. 

Here I want to bring in three separate areas of analysis and thought to walk through my own thinking on this: the first is from John McWhorter’s Talking Back, Talking Black, which highlights the fact that Americans fail to recognize what he calls Black English (arguing that using the terms African American Vernacular English, AAVE, or ebonics are reductive to the language as a whole, since Black English extends outside of the African diaspora and ebonics places too heavy an emphasis on skin color), instead treating it as “broken” Standard English. McWhorter’s core argument here is that Americans don’t treat Black English as its own dialect because they don’t think of it as having linguistic legitimacy. In most of the world, speaking more than one language (vernaculars and dialects included), called diglossia, is incredibly common. That Americans only have one (monoglossia) is the more rare occurrence. And, in fact, by the basis of Black English having its own grammar, rules, and complexity, speakers of Black English (who also speak Standard English) have broader command of English as a whole and, are thus, diglossic.

Second, I want to bring back Pierre Bourideu’s concept of linguistic capital (a concept with which I played here) to think about how language functions as a social currency and is controlled by elites. As Bourdieu explains, differences in accents, grammar, and vocabulary indicate a speaker’s social positions and are a reflection of how much linguistic capital (and other types of capital) they have. “The more linguistic capital that speakers possess, the more they are able to exploit the system of differences to their advantage and thereby secure a profit of distinction,” John B. Thompson writes. Keywords here are “exploit” and “system of differences.” Thus linguistic capital is really an exploitation of this system of differences to further entrench, codify, and solidify existing structures of power. Why, then, do people chase prestige even when it’s arbitrary? The human condition, coming soon to an essay near you… (God, I hope not!)

Third, I want to pull in the concept of “style” as it relates to linguistic variation, in that all dialects serve a purpose in identity formation. In the research compendium Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, edited by Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford, we get the understanding that stylistic variation in language is not just a reflection of pre-existing social categories but a dynamic resource for shaping identity, relationships, and social meaning. While early sociolinguistic studies, namely from William Labov, framed style as a function of speech, more recent work positions it as a means of identity construction, audience design, and ideological distinction. The term “style” between authors is a bit ambiguous but consider it analogous to “style” in fashion – a flair in language, if you will. Nikolas Coupland wrote, “Style, and in particular dialect style, can therefore be construed as a special case of the presentation of self, within particular relational contexts, articulating relational goals and identity goals.” He continued, “It is at the level of the person – an individual’s personal and social identity that our social judgements of speech style reside” (p.197 - 198). 

Leveraging all three of these concepts, let’s look briefly at a juxtaposition between dialects of English. In British English, rather than “If she had smelled it, then I would have…,” one says, “If she had smelt it, then I would have done…” The latter is grammatically correct in the UK but sounds odd in the US, dismissed as “bad grammar,” despite following clear, rule-based structures. Similarly, in Black English, when someone says, “he be working,” it sounds odd for Standard English. But a direct translation that grasps the same nuance in Standard English, in the same number of words, isn’t entirely possible, since one grammatical rule that Black English has that Standard English doesn’t is this habitual “be,” indicating regular or repeated action. So, “he be working” in Standard English would be, “he is always working,” or “he usually works / he works regularly.” See, doesn’t really sound right when translated into Standard English, because it lacks the nuance. These rule-based structures are a core tenet of what makes a language, but as we can posit from these few examples, certain speech is only seen as “correct” when it serves power. The same Southern drawl that once marked poor, rural whites is now a political assets in conservative politics. What changed? And more importantly, who changed? 

Prestige Speech isn’t just about “correctness” – it’s about adaptation

When we talk about vernacular and dialect, we’re talking about two different things. Dialect is a specific variety of a language spoken by a particular group of people, often defined by region, ethnicity, or social class. Dialects have distinct vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Vernacular is the everyday language spoken by ordinary people in a particular region or social group. So, with those definitions in mind, I return to John McWhorter’s thoughts: “Americans have trouble comprehending that any vernacular way of speaking is legitimate language” (p.14). It’s really a function of Americanism that we are so entrenched in this idea of a single language, a single, standard English, as the complete story of our nation’s language. I want to look specifically at how dialects move in and out of prestige. Why some get absorbed into the mainstream while others remain stigmatized. 

First, the historical gatekeeping of language. When considering what has defining power, we can look back all the way to the infancy of the nation, with derision and malice from Brits to the American way of speaking. As evidenced in The Dictionary Wars by Peter Martin, a fight emerged in the 1800s around the national identity of language and the then-hysteric importance of codifying who controlled the narrative of American culture, education, and intellectual authority. Noah Webster, in particular, believed in an Americanized English distinct from British norms, using simplified spellings and uniquely American definitions to forge a national linguistic identity. It is not, therefore, an enormous cognitive leap to reach the current era of White, Anglo-saxon Protestant (WASP) aristocracy, corporate America, and academia, all of which have controlling interests in what is deemed “proper” English. Linguistic legitimacy often isn’t about grammatical complexity. It’s often decided along racial and class lines. The satirical The Official Preppy Handbook edited by Lisa Birnbauch in the 1980s, despite being written forty-five years ago and reading, in parts, as dated, documents existing patterns that pervade and dominate through WASP culture. WASP speech has been and continues to be (albeit modified in younger generations) a class marker, filled with coded words, strategic pauses, and controlled tones. Comparatively, we can look to the historic stigmatization of Black English and Southern drawls (no, they are not the same thing) to infer a level of denigration, changing for the latter as mainstream artists and politicians adopt this “new,” conservative ideal of “folksy,” even though both dialect and vernacular have deep historical roots and use. 

Linguistic authority, then, is a function of power. The rules of “proper” speech aren’t neutral standards of clarity or intelligence but arbitrary conventions enforced by those who already hold social dominance. The very idea of “correct” language serves to reinforce existing hierarchies, allowing elites to gatekeep access to opportunity while dismissing the dialects of marginalized communities as uneducated, unprofessional, or improper. Cockney and Irish English were once ridiculed but are now considered charming in British pop culture. Through a gentrification of working-class accents, we can see one of the ways in which cultural and linguistic shifts mirror and track with one another. Mid-Atlantic English (once prestigious in Old Hollywood and politics, think: FDR and Katharine Hepburn) disappeared from popular culture when it was no longer useful as a class marker. But unlike regional dialects that evolve organically, Mid-Atlantic English was deliberately cultivated (also known as affectation), often taught in elite private schools and drama programs, and propagated during the time by an alignment with the ideals of European elitism. With the rise of what we now refer to as Midwestern “neutral” and the New Deal/Post war era making a populist, regional identity the more popular, Mid-Atlantic English became outdated, pretentious, and theatrical. This patterns somewhat after Georg Simmel’s argument that language trends mimic fashion cycles, where elite speech is adopted, then abandoned when it spreads. We can also look to corporate speech that pervades digital Zoom rooms and water coolers: business jargon is opaque but still is seen as authoritative. “Synergize” sounds smarter than “work together,” even though it’s functionally nonsense. 

Who controls prestige? AI, academia, and the myth of meritocracy

Prestige speech is reinforced at every level of society, from AI voice recognition to what dialects get studied in linguistics departments. We might be able to consider it as an “invisible infrastructure” that governs legal, tech, and media spaces, as it has real consequences in those arenas. What happens, then, when an accent or dialect is seen as “correct” and others are dismissed as unintelligible, untrustworthy, or even dangerous? 

I think, probably too often, about the SNL sketch “Amazon Echo.” Not to kill the joke by overexplaining but in case you’re not up for any shenanigans, the premise that follows is that none of the old people can remember Alexa’s name, so Amazon (satirically) partners with AARP and releases a version that specifically responds to all of the possible iterations people can come up with. And there are many. But herein the humor highlights a truth about AI – that there are inherent speech biases that impact, and often complicate, our interactions with these technologies. AI models are trained predominantly by white men’s modeling – just by proxy of the fact they are the stark and steep majority of decision-makers in the tech industry. It goes to follow that these models are then trained on a very small group of people’s assumptions about what is “proper” and “correct.” Enter prestige speech stage right. The big idea here is that AI is becoming the newest enforcer of prestige speech, but it’s treated as a neutral entity, when it’s actually deeply biased. 

Let’s zoom in on academia for a moment, where the story of what counts as “language” is written, peer-reviewed, and funded (or not). Who gets studied? Who gets left out? And who, most importantly, gets to decide? 

Linguistics as a field has a bit of a checkered past here. For a long time, British Received Pronunciation and Midwestern Standard English were the linguistic gold standards – unmarked, “default,” allegedly purse. Meanwhile regional and racialized dialects were framed as problems to be corrected, not systems to be understood. Enter William Labov, stage left, with actual radicalism: the idea that AAAVE wasn’t broken English but a rule-governed dialect with its own internal logic. He dared to say that the grammar of “He be working” was not only valid but structurally sound – and that “Now what had happened was…” wasn’t redundant but a stylistic scaffolding for oral storytelling. Revolutionary stuff, apparently. Groundbreaking enough in the 1960s and 1970s to get noticed, but not enough to fully transform broader academic or public attitudes. Why? Because funding still overwhelmingly favored the “prestigious” dialects – British RP, Midwestern Standard, and other white-coded ways of speaking. Studies on Chicano English, Appalachian English, and AAVE? While more research exists today, these dialects have historically received less attention, and less funding, compared to prestige varieties. The legacy of that imbalance remains.

Judith Irvine’s concept of erasure is helpful here: the idea that dominant cultures systematically ignore or overwrite the legitimacy of nonstandard dialects by treating them as noise rather than signal. And once something is noise – unintelligible, unworthy, inconvenient – it comes easy to exclude.

Nowhere is this erasure more dangerous than in the legal system, where prestige speech can determine whether someone is seen as credible or criminal. Think back to Rachel Jeantel’s testimony in the Travyon Martin case. She was fluent in Black English. She was clear, confident, and direct. And yet, she was publicly dismissed as “unintelligent,” “confused,” even “hostile.” Her dialect, familiar to millions, was treated like a liability. Contrast that with the way we remember people like Ted Bundy: a serial killer with a polished vocabulary and a Midwestern drawl, described as “charming” and “articulate.” We don’t trust speech because it’s truthful. We trust it because it sounds prestigious.

This is where “politeness” becomes a legal privilege. Courtroom studies show that Black and working-class defendants are interrupted more often, asked to “clarify” their statements, and presumed less credible – all because their dialect doesn’t align with the imagined neutrality of “proper” English. And when “proper” is synonymous with white, male, and middle class, everything else becomes suspect by design.

But here’s the kicker – the real kicker – about prestige speech: it isn’t evenly enforced. Prestige is conditional, contextual, and deeply racialized. Black English, for example, is weaponized against Black professionals, but suddenly becomes trendy when used by white influencers or tech execs trying to seem “relatable.” Elon Musk tweets “finna” and it’s edgy, meme-worthy. A Black applicant says the same word in a job interview and gets told to “code-switch” for professionalism.

This is the double standard baked into linguistic perception. Valley Girl speech – with its uptalks and “likes” – gets mocked but not punished. Hedge fund bros use vocal fry and still land billion-dollar deals. Appalachian English gets derided as “hillbilly” but doesn’t stop politicians from playing it up for populist appeal. Meanwhile, Black English – structurally complex, historically rich – is surveilled and sanctioned unless it’s being borrowed (read: stolen) by someone already safe within the bounds of prestige. 

We need to ask: Who gets to sound “authentic” and still be taken seriously?

Look at the evolution of Mark Zuckerberg’s public persona. From t-shirts and button-ups to hoodies with gold chains – a costume change, yes, but also a linguistic shift. His speech got more casual over time, even dropping a “y’all” here and there. But nobody is saying he sounds uneducated. Instead, it’s being branded by the Alphas and the Sigmas and innovative leadership – Silicon Valley chic. Prestige is a slippery beast. It moves the goalposts constantly. And the people allowed to break the rules tend to be the ones who wrote them.

Frank Luntz, Republican messaging strategist, understands this all too well. He rebranded estate taxes as “death taxes” and healthcare mandates as “government overreach.” Power speaks. Power frames. Power defines.

Meanwhile, marginalized speakers learn to survive by code-switching – not out of preference, but necessity. McWhorter and others have pointed out that Black Americans, in particular, are among the most linguistically versatile English speakers in the country. And yet, versatility isn’t rewarded unless it comes from a body already draped in prestige. 

Women face their own version of this. Uptalk and vocal fry – linguistic styles linked to young women – are mocked relentlessly, but when men use the same patterns, no one notices. Robin Lakoff’s work on language and gender made this clear decades ago: women’s speech is always under surveillance. The politics of pronouns, tone, and inflection are all micro-battles in the war over who gets to speak with authority. 

So then, can we ever escape this trap of prestige speech?

If we know the system is rigged, do we opt out? Dismantle it? Create something new? 

McWhorter makes an important point: people primarily shape the way they speak through real-life peer interaction, not from TV or textbooks. That means change is possible. Already, we’re seeing linguistic reclamation movements push back against prestige norms. The recognition of Black English and AAVE in literature and linguistics. Indigenous language revivals – like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work on animacy in Potawatomi – that reframe not only grammar but worldview. And the rise of Black Twitter and internet dialects as a form of digital linguistic activism – bending the language to reflect lived experience, not institutional approval.

Still, we should ask: What happens when we stop teaching “proper” English? Does it liberate, or does it set up more barriers for those still trying to gain access to systems that haven’t changed? Prestige may be a scam, but it’s also a passport. Is it more helpful to tear it up – or redraw the map? 

This tension is real. Can we decolonize language without creating new forms of exclusion? If we move away from teaching “correct” English, do we risk leaving marginalized speakers even more vulnerable in courtrooms, hiring processes, and classrooms still ruled by prestige norms? 

Robin Wall Kimmerer argues that language shapes reality. George Lakoff reminds us that framing determines participation. So if we want to shift the power of language, we have to shift how it’s framed, who gets to define it, who gets to bend it, and who gets to break it without consequence. 

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: Prestige speech is a scam – but it’s also addictive. Even when we know it’s arbitrary, we’re drawn to it. We assign intelligence to accents. Trust to diction. Power to tone. And undoing that isn’t just a matter of academic critique – it’s cultural rewiring. 

So, ask yourself: what dialects, accents, or speech habits do you assign prestige to? And why?

Because until we name it, we can’t unlearn it. And if language is power, then learning to hear beyond prestige might be the most radical act of all.