Usage Problems in American English

This chapter explores the complexity of attitudes to the usage problems ain’t, literally, and like in American English, from the point of view of both prescriptivist discourse found in usage guides and speakers’ ideas about these usage problems. I argue that the stakes for speakers involved in using certain usage problems are different in different contexts, and that these usage problems merit more serious sociolinguistic attention. I pay particular attention to how the attitudes of speakers towards the usage problems considered in this chapter differ from those expressed in usage guides. One of the conclusions of this analysis is that different usage problems have different social implications for different speakers. Grammatical usage problems in particular seem to be more closely associated with education, although regional and language context sensitivity play a role as well.