It's no big secret that different social groups exhibit language variation, and that while there's nothing inherently lesser about certain dialects, they are no

It's no big secret that different social groups exhibit language variation, and that while there's nothing inherently lesser about certain dialects, they are nonetheless coded as e.g low or high status. You might feel a lot more comfortable talking about this subject and find useful alternatives to your scare-quoted words if you skim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics Also due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection ,I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English is a fascinating and accessible example. A terrible summary: dropping the R is lazy (dropping anything is "lazy"), but at the same time sounds British and therefore fancy to some American ears. But other people, to avoid laziness, add Rs. But then their speech can sound low-status in some cases too.