Standard English

"The prize for the joke of the year," he wrote during the Emergency, "should go to the Indian news agency reporter in London who approvingly quoted a British newspaper comment on India under the Emergency, that 'trains are running on time' - not realising this used to be the standard English joke about Mussolini's Italy. When we have such innocents abroad, we don't really need humorists."

"The slaves would have a way of speaking to each other that is unintelligible to their slave owners. In my novel, it happens to be what we would call standard English".

Then he translated into standard English: If anyone tries to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, “I will veto it.”

In other words, no one speaks "standard English"; rather, it is an imagined way of using language that exists only in grammar and style books.

He also takes issue with the term code switching, or changing between two languages, which he says is disproportionately applied to Black people and implies that African American English has less legitimacy compared with standard English.