Linguist Rosina Lippi-Green concludes in her book, "English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States," "Accent discrimination can be found everywhere in our daily lives. In fact, such behavior is so commonly accepted, so widely perceived as appropriate, that it must be seen as the last back door to…

Comparison of the moribund dialects of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, and Smith Island, Maryland, demonstrates that valuable insight into the patterning of variation and change in language death can be obtained by investigating moribund varieties of healthy languages. Discusses comparative investigation of two kinds of linguistic decay:…

Educators must begin to take folk language seriously. Many of the situations in our classrooms are set up within unrealistic language frames because teachers are intimidated by code switching and because there is too little information about when and why people switch speech styles. (Author/WI)

An excerpt from the resolution of the executive committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, which espouses the view that no variety or dialect of a language is intrinsically superior to any other, is presented. Implications for teaching standard and nonstandard dialects are discussed. (KC)

Writing teachers should consider cultural pluralism as a rich resource in their classrooms, rather than as a distraction with which to cope. Because speakers of nonstandard English have important language skills in at least two different dialects, teachers should not only teach the standard dialect but also invite nonstandard English speaking…

Although studies of Vietnamese refugees indicated that their language values and attitudes encouraged the use and maintenance of Vietnamese as well as the development of English proficiency, a study of adolescent Vietnamese suggested that "Vietnamese English" is an emerging dialect featuring modifications of English structures.…

This paper proposes a tentative notational or marking system which attempts to provide more information on the sociolinguistic constraints upon the use of linguistic features than has been the case in other systems. A review of other studies in language variation, particularly those of William Labov, suggests that much can be done toward…

The debate continues about regional norms for English usage around the world, although the discussion has become more realistic and less didactic. Educated non-native varieties are increasingly accepted, distinctions are being made between national and international language uses, and localized varieties are no longer considered as necessarily…

This study develops specific facts about the nature of the Black English "lingua franca" which formed on the American eastern seaboard in the last half of the eighteenth century. Accepting an assumption that American English of this period was levelling into a "koine," this investigation attempts to characterize the consonant loss and substitution…

This description of Appalachian speech, derived from one part of the final report of a research project on Appalachian Dialects, is intended as a reference work for educators, particularly reading specialists, English teachers, language arts specialists, and speech pathologists. Chapters deal with the following main topics: (1) a sociolinguistic…