US English and Pragmatic Norms

US English, that is, the variety of English spoken in the United States, synonymous here with “American English”, has been well described on a phonological, orthographical, lexical and grammatical level. Pragmatic descriptions are less extensive. Drawing from speech act scholarship in cross-cultural and variational pragmatics, this entry explores the pragmatic profile of American English. In doing so, it highlights a number of key foci of appropriate language use in present-day American English, namely democratic language use, clarity of expression, social warmth and achievement recognition.