The question about the history of the Standard English language and the essence of this concept remains topical for a long time. At present, British and American linguists disagree on what standard English is. The standard language is understood as the variety of English language, dominant in social and cultural terms, as well as a dialect of upper social strata or interlingua, devoid of territorial and to some extent social restrictions …

The term standard language began to appear in English in the early 18th century. The term Standard English was preceded by Queen’s English (King’s English), first branded by Geoffrey Chauser in the 14th century, as well as soft language (courtly language), which became widespread in the 17th-18th centuries.

Royal English was a linguistic model in pronunciation for a long time, but it was the speech of not just queens and kings, but the speech of the court society as a whole. Royal English language understood as the standard language for educated people. The main component of the king’s English was the accent on pronunciation. Soon people began to connect accepted pronunciation with the availability of power, education, and material well-being. As noted ¢. Crowley, a British sociolinguist, the English term of the queen does not apply to an idiolect of any particular sovereign (monarch), but to the adopted and institutional form of the language. As sovereign, the king’s English is symbolic in the sense that it brings together all the means of communication of the English language. King’s possession of English clearly distinguishes some who speak as citizens of England and requires a response to devotion to the language. More than that, he, as sovereign, must be protected from ill-treatment. Currently, the English language of the queen is not used as a sample royal court speech, but only indicates a pure and competent speech of people educated in the British variant of the English language.

As a result of British society’s infatuation with the concept of politeness, the term Queen’s English was replaced by polite language. In this term, undoubtedly, there is a social component: the people of the educated society speak an educated language, that is, representatives of the social elites. The lexical stuffing of the language was contrasted with the language of the barbarian: it was forbidden to use even colloquial words and expressions, professional words, including archaisms and scientific terms. Speech activity has also undergone certain changes: it was supposed to have a certain form of behavior: the person should be able to carry on the conversation in any situation and behave naturally.

As we can see, the use of both variants practically did not differ. It should be noted that polite language was applied more to oral speech than to writing and to the oral literary salon culture that played an important role in the formation of the literary languages ​​of Europe.

In the 20th century another term appeared to denote the exemplary form of the English language. It was called BBC English. The name of the influential British radio company, a leading broadcast in many countries around the world, was at the base of this concept. The BBC was created to improve the cultural and educational level of the audience, raise the standards of the language, as well as to foster the unity of the nation. Received pronunciation (RP) (adopted by standard pronunciation) was chosen as an exemplary standard. For a long time the speech of the announcers of this company sounded in different parts of the world and has become synonymous with correct English. However, the term BBC English is applied primarily to oral speech, while standard English is associated with written speech. It could replace RP, but today, according to the principle of political correctness, there are local accents among BBC spokesmen. So now BBC English is just an orthopedic standard, geared towards the audience of speaking in another language.

The twentieth century directly revived interest in the formulation of Standard English, because it was the specialists in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies. It was designated as a term in the scientific and educational circulation that does not solve the question with the definition of its status: if it is a language or a dialect?

In P. Trudgill’s opinion, the standard language cannot be called a language in the broadest sense of the term: it may be the most important among the many dialects of the English language; It is usually used in forms of writing, especially in print, and in oral speech it is used by educated native speakers. This diversity associated with the education system in all English-speaking countries. Exactly Standard English is taught to non-native speakers as a foreign language or as a second mother tongue.

It should be noted that standard English is not associated with standard pronunciation. RP is a standardized accent of the English language and not the standard of the English language. Standard English informants are found in all English-speaking countries and of course they speak with a different accent, and differ from Standard RP depending on whether they are from Scotland, USA, New Zealand, etc.

Various authors adhere to a common point of view, that standard English is … a dialect of the upper social strata, forcibly imposed by the social elite on the broad masses of people. However, now the view of the standard language as a social dialect is not accepted by all linguists, since not all its informants belong to the upper strata. If we talk about the social status of standard English, many authors have placed the emphasis not so much on the prestigious social status of the informants, but on their high intellectual level.

At present there is no common understanding of the nature of Standard English, therefore the problem of defining the essence of Standard English is very relevant to English-speaking researchers. And its status and relationship to other forms of existence of the English language remain the subject of lively debate.