If you’ve fallen for it—that is, if you’ve actually found yourself debating the specific physical and behavioral characteristics of unicorns—you’re not alone, and you’re not crazy either!

Throughout your life, you’ve been exposed to many images and stories that have helped you form a pretty clear idea of what unicorns are like. Perhaps you’ve read literary works—including semi-historical ones—that describe unicorns in such a convincing way that they seem real.

But, in the end, alas, unicorns are imaginary! Sometimes they seem so real to us, but they exist entirely in our imagination…

…just like “the standard language”!

Like the unicorn, standard language is an entity that derives its authenticity from mythology, stories, artifacts, and people’s willingness to believe in it.

We could do the same exercise for standard language that we did for unicorns: let’s try to describe it.

While we might agree on some features of Standard Italian (such as the horn and the horse-like shape of the unicorn), we certainly won’t agree on every single detail. It’s likely that even two members of the same family would define “Standard Italian” in different ways.

This inability to fully and definitively describe the characteristics of the standard language has never prevented schools and the government from continuing to use it. The Italian school system is based precisely on the concept of uniting the country around the standard language, even though it is a constantly shifting target that is still being defined.

Paradoxically, the linguistic elements that are far more recognizable and definable are those that do not have the mythical status of a “standard,” but which often have the advantage of not being strictly regulated. There are neither entrance exams to assess proficiency in a dialect nor state exams to verify mastery of a particular regional accent.

But if there’s no real standard, then that means what we call a standard is actually a mix of languages, accents, and registers, right?

Do you remember that we mentioned “academic language” at the beginning? Here’s a great example of a register that is often confused with “standard” language or passed off as such.

But if it’s so “standard,” then why does it seem to be something students almost always lack? Why does it need to be taught even to kids who grew up speaking Italian?

Here we return to the concept of the communicative repertoire, but it must be approached with a critical eye. We’ll discuss this in the next chapter!

In summary: As long as the concept of a “standard” remains important to our institutions, the myth of its existence will persist. On our own, we cannot overhaul an educational system that began over 250 years ago, but we can start to truly ask ourselves what this system is meant to achieve and what role we play in changing or supporting it.