In this study we show that the perception of lateral variants by Puerto Rican listeners changes according to who the listener believes is speaking. Puerto Rican listeners heard sentences with target words featuring either rhotic [voiced alveolar tap or flap] or lateral [l] (amo[voiced alveolar tap or flap] -- amo[l]) codas, a sociophonetic…

English is core to HE (higher education) globally, with both HE and English seen as pathways to success for students. Yet, access to English is unequal and colonial ideologies associate English with Anglophone settings. Much of the research on English in HE has focused on elite institutions and students, while the majority of the world's HE…

The author situates language education policy and scholarship on Academic English within the broader historical context of standard language ideology, the view that the language variety of socio-economic elites is intrinsically more complex than other varieties. It is argued that the current predominant focus on the nature of school language gives…

Policymakers need a conception of linguistic disadvantage to supply guidance about the relative priority of inequalities with a linguistic dimension and to inform decisions about whether such inequalities require correction or compensation. A satisfactory conception of linguistic disadvantage will make it possible to compare the situations of…

This study investigates language attitudes held by Chinese-English bilinguals toward two types of switching to English in mandarin Chinese discourse, that is, intraclausal and interclausal switching. Participants with varying degrees of English proficiency were sampled from four cities in mainland China and one oversea city, London. A variation of…

Due to the preK-12 student growth, the exponential growth of dual-language programs, and the gentrification of dual-language education, the need for critically conscious dual-language teachers is undeniably vital today. Institutions of higher education, in particular colleges of education, find themselves at the center of a transformative era, in…

It has been argued for many years that a new standard of Mandarin is developing within Taiwan, distinct from the official form based on the Beijing pronunciation, as well as the nonstandard vernacular, Taiwan-guoyu. The parameters by which this new standard, Taiwanese Mandarin, may be recognized, however, and the extent to which it exists in…

Although the modern multicultural European metropolis has brought previously disparate groups into close contact, little research has focused on the effect of these shifting demographic patterns on language attitudes and ideologies. This is probably due to the sensitive nature of issues relating to immigration which may evoke contexts of…

By combining features of matched guise tests with sociolinguistic interviewing and oral performance, this study investigates the social meanings carried by non-standard orthographies. Participant evaluations of the personas showed that people connected orthography to social identities. Specifically, results found people uncritically and…

A study was undertaken to gather attitudes of Spanish-speakers toward specific types of Chicano Spanish dialect lexical items. Reactions were randomly taken from 11 Latin American students who attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale during the 1975 spring semester; 20 Mexican residents of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, who attended English as…

Three prime time television situation comedies with primarily Black casts were studied for frequency and variations in use of Black English Vernacular (BEV). It is suggested that homogenization of BEV on American television reflects the attitude that BEV is not a legitimate language choice. (GC)

Examines the role of the educational and socioeconomic levels of the speakers in advancing linguistic change. The study reviews three grammatical phenomena found at distinct stages of change. Individuals at the lower socioeconomic and educational strata of society embrace innovations in language more readily than their affluent and educated…

This paper focuses on the roles and functions that English based vernaculars play in contemporary society and reviews literature pertinent to that topic. Areas considered include (1) societal behavior toward language, (2) language as a group marker, and (3) the contextual parameters of language use. In the discussion of societal behavior toward…

This work is an attempt to synthesize the findings of the multi-disciplinary research on various aspects of Chicanos' use of their two languages, Spanish and English. After an introduction on notions of language, speech, and sociology, the text covers nine aspects of the question: (1) historical background on the relations between the English and…

This article describes part of an experiment aimed at elucidating the relationship between speaker, speech act and listener from a sociolinguistic and sociopsychological perspective. High school students were asked to judge the taped speech of Swedish informants from Boras, Trelleborg and the Torne Valley. (CFM)