Weiner (1988. "On Editing a Usage Guide." In "Words for Robert Burchfield's Sixty-Fifth Birthday," edited by E. G. Stanley, and T. F. Hoad, 171-183. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 173) describes usage guides as being 'as broad as the English language, covering spelling, punctuation, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexis, and…

The traditional Philadelphia allophonic /ae/ system (henceforth: PHL shown in (1) below) is characterized by a set of complicated conditioning factors and a dramatic acoustic distinction between the two allophones. In recent years, some Philadelphians have begun to exhibit a new allophonic system (NAS, shown in (2) below). Like PHL, NAS is…

The geographical proximity and socioeconomic dependence on the United States brought about a deep-rooted anglicization of the Cuban Spanish lexis and social strata, especially throughout the Neocolonial period (1902-1959). This study is based on the revision of a renowned newspaper of that time, "Diario de la Marina," and the…

This article will focus on sociolinguistic aspects in Terry Pratchett's "The Wee Free Men." In particular we will deal with the interplay of standard and non-standard British English by which the writer highlights cultural stereotypes as well as narrative ones; creating a children's tale with a distinctively adult-like character set.…

This article makes a case for studying the perceptions that young people have of the ways of speaking of both themselves and others on the supposition that constructions of ambient sociolinguistic variation have an impact on the language development and use of individual language users. Such a study is particularly relevant in multilingual…

This article examines how speakers of Kam Muang in Northern Thailand draw on distinct temporalities (the slow paced, long-term historical temporality of "longue duree"; the medium paced, autobiographical temporality of intermediate time frames; and the fast-paced, immediate temporality of the "courte duree") to conceptualize…

This article discusses the novel "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw (1957) which depicts Eliza, a flower girl from East London, who became the subject of an "experiment" by a Professor of Phonetics who vowed to change the way she spoke. The story is an excellent example of a very real and contextual portrait of how language,…

This is an expanded version of a paper given at a conference held in Cape Town, South Africa from December 11-13, 2008 entitled "The Native Speaker and the Mother Tongue." In keeping with the conference's themes of exploring and interrogating the notions of "mother tongue" and "native speaker," I consider…

Recent studies of Asian American youth language practices have presented compelling insights about the identities and migration experiences of young people of Asian descent. This article offers a detailed examination of the relationship between language use and select issues concerning Asian American youth, including social life, schooling,…

This paper offers a dialogic discussion about several issues concerning call centers, including globalizing surges, modernity tropes and educational practices. Based on a critical discourse analysis of a document offering to train west-based entrepreneurs to assume managerial positions in call centers in India, the paper explores ways in which…

The contact between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans is targeted for study as much for its linguistic import as for its social context. Dominican and Puerto Rican Spanish are considered varieties of Caribbean Spanish that differ only by a few phonological and syntactic patterns and a small number of lexical items. Although both varieties are heavily…

Addresses Labov's claim that sound changes that are not stigmatized are led especially by young women who are the "movers and shakers" in the community, people with energy and enterprise. Investigated the claim by comparing the pronunciation of non-stigmatized front vowels with that of stigmatized diphthongs in New Zealand English.…

Offers this proposal: (1) the public prestige dialect of the elite in a stratified community differs from the dialect(s) of the non-elite strata in at least one phonologically systematic way; (2) the cause of stratified phonological differentiation is to be sought not in purely linguistic factors but in ideology. (Author/RM)

Ongoing change in Wolof noun classification is traced by comparing nineteenth-century linguistic evidence with modern sociolinguistic data. Upwardly mobile middle-aged men of high caste tend to reduce the noun class system, whereas other speakers tend to elaborate it. (Author/RM)

The language situation in Quebec is discussed from the point of view of the influence of the British conquest, the history of education in the province, the make-up of the working class, and the position of Quebec in the North American continent. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)