non-standard speech
- noun
- Specialized
:
habla no estándar
- Linguists often study non-standard speech to better understand language variation within a community.
Examples
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The teacher encouraged acceptance of non-standard speech as part of the region's cultural diversity.
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Many children use non-standard speech when they play with friends.
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Her use of non-standard speech sometimes made her stand out among her more formal classmates.
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Her use of non-standard speech surprised the linguists at the conference.
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Linguists often study non-standard speech to better understand language variation within a community.
-
The teacher encouraged acceptance of non-standard speech as part of the region's cultural diversity.
-
Many children use non-standard speech when they play with friends.
How Standard
Surface Forms
Morphology
non-standard + speech
The meaning 'speech that differs from standard forms' is directly derivable from combining 'non-standard' (not standard) with 'speech' (spoken language). The negation/adjective + noun composition is a common, regular morphological pattern cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Non-standard speech gives a clear image: non-standard means 'not following the main rules' and speech means the words people say. Think of it as language from a side street instead of the main road, using local words or grammar that do not follow the 'standard' form, so the phrase means speech that differs from the usual accepted way.