We analyze the stability of certain kinds of two-dimensional, incompressible, viscoelastic shear flows at high Reynolds number. These particular flows consist of a strong background linear shear, with a superposed ＇defect＇; i.e. a localized region over which the vorticity varies rapidly. A matched asymptotic expansion recasts the problem in a simpler form for which one can derive explicit dispersion relations for the normal modes. This provides an analytic method for investigating stability in regimes when numerical approaches are cumbersome. This technique is used to explore the stability properties of some constitutive models including the Oldroyd-B, Johnson-Segalman and Phan-Thien-Tanner models. Finally, for large Weissenberg number, the defect approximation allows us to study the continuous spectrum associated with the elasticity of the constitutive models. The dynamics associated with this continuous spectrum contains features such as transient amplification and ultimate decay, phenomena familiar for Newtonian fluids in the inviscid limit. However, our calculations indicate that this continuous spectrum decays less quickly than in the Newtonian problem, suggesting that these features of the linear dynamics pronounced.