GENERAL AMERICAN

GENERAL AMERICAN. [Introduced by George P. Krapp in The English Language in America, 1924]. Short forms GA, GenAm. A term sometimes employed to refer to ‘a form of U.S. speech without marked dialectal or regional characteristics’ (OED Supplement) but one ‘no longer in technical use’ (The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1987). It was denounced by Hans Kurath in his review of Krapp's book, but has continued to be used in some scholarly and many popular treatments of AMERICAN ENGLISH, often subtractively to refer to whatever is left once various ‘regions’ have been described: usually NEW ENGLAND, NEW YORK, and SOUTHERN. Although there may have been some justification before 1945 for presuming uniformity elsewhere in the US, the term began to diminish in popularity once the complexity of AmE began to be understood. In revising MENCKEN's The American Language, Raven I. McDavid accounted for Mencken's use of the term by noting: ‘In the last thirty years research for the L[inguistic] A[tlas] has shown that the so-called “General American” area is really made up of two major dialects’ (1967). Some scholars outside the US continue to use the term, specifically to refer to a norm of PRONUNCIATION: for example, J. C. Wells, in both Accents of English: Beyond the British Isles (1982, p. 470) and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (1990). See NETWORK STANDARD.