Editing General American English (section)

=== Disputed usage ===

[[English studies|English-language scholar]] William A. Kretzschmar Jr. explains in a 2004 article that the term "General American" came to refer to "a presumed most common or 'default' form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked regional speech of New England or the South" and referring especially to speech associated with the vaguely-defined "[[Midwestern United States|Midwest]]", despite any historical or present evidence supporting this notion. Kretzschmar argues that a General American accent is simply the result of American speakers suppressing regional and social features that have become widely noticed and stigmatized.<ref>{{harvp|Kretzschmar|2004|p=262}}: 'The term "General American" arose as a name for a presumed most common or "default" form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked regional speech of New England or the South. "General American" has often been considered to be the relatively unmarked speech of "the Midwest", a vague designation for anywhere in the vast midsection of the country from Ohio west to Nebraska, and from the Canadian border as far south as Missouri or Kansas. No historical justification for this term exists, and neither do present circumstances support its use... [I]t implies that there is some exemplary state of American English from which other varieties deviate. On the contrary, [it] can best be characterized as what is left over after speakers suppress the regional and social features that have risen to salience and become noticeable.'</ref>

Since calling one variety of American speech the "general" variety can imply [[Linguistic prescription|privileging and prejudice]], Kretzchmar instead promotes the term ''Standard American English'', which he defines as a level of American English pronunciation "employed by educated speakers in formal settings", while still being variable within the U.S. from place to place, and even from speaker to speaker.{{sfnp|Kretzschmar|2004|p=257}} However, the term "standard" may also be interpreted as problematically implying a superior or "best" form of speech.<ref>{{harvnb|Kretzschmar|2004|p=257}}: "''Standard English'' may be taken to reflect conformance to a set of rules, but its meaning commonly gets bound up with social ideas about how one's character and education are displayed in one's speech".</ref> The terms '''Standard North American English''' and '''General North American English''', in an effort to incorporate Canadian speakers under the accent continuum, have also been suggested by sociolinguist [[Charles Boberg]].<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Boberg|2004a}}</ref><ref>Boberg, Charles (2021). ''Accent in North American film and television''. Cambridge University Press.</ref> Since the 2000s, '''Mainstream American English''' has also been occasionally used, particularly in scholarly articles that contrast it with [[African-American English]].<ref>[[Barbara Zurer Pearson|Pearson, B. Z.]], Velleman, S. L., Bryant, T. J., & Charko, T. (2009). Phonological milestones for African American English-speaking children learning mainstream American English as a second dialect.</ref><ref>Blodgett, S. L., Wei, J., & O'Connor, B. (2018, July). Twitter universal dependency parsing for African-American and mainstream American English. In Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 1415–1425).</ref>

Modern language scholars discredit the original notion of General American as a single unified accent, or a [[standard English|standardized form of English]]{{sfnp|Wells|1982|p=118}}{{sfnp|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|p=263}}—except perhaps as used by [[television network]]s and other [[mass media]].{{sfnp|Wells|1982|p=470}}<ref>Labov, William (2012). ''Dialect diversity in America: The politics of language change''. University of Virginia Press. pp. 1–2.</ref> Today, the term is understood to refer to a continuum of American speech, with some slight internal variation,{{sfnp|Wells|1982|p=118}} but otherwise characterized by the absence of "[[markedness|marked]]" pronunciation features: those perceived by Americans as strongly indicative of a fellow American speaker's regional origin, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Despite confusion arising from the evolving definition and vagueness of the term "General American" and its consequent rejection by some linguists,{{sfnp|Van Riper|2014|p=129}} the term persists mainly as a reference point to compare a baseline "typical" American English accent with other [[World Englishes|Englishes around the world]] (for instance, see [[Comparison of General American and Received Pronunciation]]).{{sfnp|Wells|1982|p=118}}