A prestige dialect is the dialect spoken by the most prestigious people in a speech community large enough to sustain multiple dialects. The study of prestige in language use is an important part of sociolinguistics.

The most prestigious people are those with the greatest influence on the community. This influence may derive from economic, political, or social power. Prestige is not always overt; covert prestige may be significant too. There may be a tendency to align one's own use of language (idiolect) to that of a favoured dialect (positive prestige), or to move away from a dialect of low esteem (negative prestige). Studies, particularly by Labov, have shown that positive prestige is more often overt, whilst negative prestige is more often covert (avoidance of the unmentionable). Sociologically, women of the lower middle-class are more likely to notice and adopt overt positive prestige. Among working-class men, there may sometimes be a covert preference for negative prestige.

In nations with a colonial history the prestige dialect is often close to the prestige dialect of the colonising community although it may fossilise at the point of secession.

Where creolisation has taken place, the superstrate language operates as an extreme prestige dialect, which may effect great influence, including, in extreme case, the decreolisation of the creole language into the prestige language.

When a prestige dialect is prescribed as the norm by dominant institutions it is also a standard dialect. Broadcast media have been particularly effective at defining standard dialects. In the United Kingdom, the thorough use of a particular prestige dialect in the first decades of broadcasting led to the term BBC English being coined.

According to Wilson, the United States has no single prestige dialect. In practice, many regional and ethnic dialects, such as African American Vernacular English and Appalachian English, are of lower prestige than the dialect prevalent in television newscasts, federal politics and meetings within nationwide commercial enterprises (referred to as General American).

In the United Kingdom, Received Pronunciation is the main prestige dialect. In many parts of the Commonwealth of Nations, Standard English is the prestige dialect. In German-speaking countries (for example Germany, Austria and Switzerland), Standard German is the prestige dialect. In the Spanish-speaking world there is no single prestige dialect: instead, the variety used in the capital city is usually the prestige dialect of each country (for example, Peruvian Coast Spanish in Peru, or Rioplatense Spanish in Argentina and Uruguay). In the Greater China area, Standard Mandarin Chinese, which is based on the Beijing dialect is usually regarded as the prestige dialect. Among the Hindi-speaking states of India, Khariboli is the prestige dialect (of Hindi). Modern Standard Arabic is the prestige dialect of the Arabic-speaking countries.

References

Language varieties and styles | Sociolinguistics