acrolect

(redirected from Acrolects)

ac·ro·lect

(ăk′rə-lĕkt′)
n.
The variety of speech that is closest to a standard prestige language, especially in an area in which a creole is spoken. For example, Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect where Jamaican Creole is spoken.
ac′ro·lec′tal adj.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

acrolect

(ˈækrəˌlɛkt)
n
the most standard form of language
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ac•ro•lect

(ˈæk rəˌlɛkt)

n.
a variety of a language, esp. a creolized one, that is closest to the standard form of the language on which it is based.
[1960–65; acro- + (dia) lect]
ac`ro•lec′tal, adj.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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However, Youssef states in her conclusion that she observed a trend toward a community preference for the mesolect, away both from basilects and acrolects. This trend, if verified, would signal a leveling of the continuum leading to a variety akin to African-American English in the United States, but it can be hoped that this may be an artifact of the methodology used in the data collection.
Ulrike Gut's narrow focus on relativization strategies in professionals' speech ("Relative Markers in Spoken Standard Jamaican English") presents a view of an acrolect that seems to draw from written English, and is thus sometimes more formal than the Standard English norm (for example in its exclusion of the widespread 'that' relative pronoun).
The outer circle of the model is important in terms of the varieties of English where acrolects showing little differences from the colonial English represent different identities.
Remaking Literary English in Pakistan: Indigenous Influences and Linguistic Creativity
In support of his point, the author discusses normative standards of the language versus basi-, meso- and acrolects. He also notices that an equation mark cannot be put between the chronological stages of the language (Anglo-Saxon is markedly different from Chaucerian English -- still it is considered to be the same language).
The introductory chapter contains a brief presentation of useful but very often problematic terminology to be used in the book (language, dialect, acrolect, basilect, mesolect, creole, etc.).

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