A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is defined either as a language variety employed by a population for public communications, or as the variety of language that has undergone codification of grammar and usage. The term standard language occasionally refers to a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties, referring to the entirety of the language (or an ensemble of similar, standardized varieties) rather than a single, codified form. Typically, the language varieties that undergo substantive standardization are the dialects spoken and written in centers of commerce and government; which, by processes that linguistic anthropologists call "referential displacement" and that sociolinguists call "elaboration of function", acquire the social prestige associated with commerce and government. As a sociological effect of these processes, the users of the standardized varieties come to believe that the standard language is inherently superior or consider it the linguistic baseline by which to judge other varieties of language.