Gives an overview of the current status and usage of English in Albania, outlining the sociolinguistic context in which changes in usage have taken place. Evidence is presented of increasing contact areas of English and standard Albanian under the new, post-communist sociopolitical and economic circumstances. Attention is drawn to need for more…

Examined the emergence of Runyakitara as a new language in Uganda in the 1980s. The formation of Runyakitara through the realignment of four Western Bantu varieties illustrates the potential for the use of language as a resource in ethnic competition. Discusses the construction of Runyakitara in the context of the current political situation in…

Profiles interlanguage pragmatics as an area of inquiry in second-language acquisition (SLA) research by reviewing existing studies with a focus on learning, examining research findings in interlanguage pragmatics shedding light on basic questions in SLA, exploring cognitive and social-psychological theories illuminating aspects of pragmatic…

The most outstanding characteristic of language in education policy for South Asia (SA) is its multilingualism. All through recorded history the seven countries that constitute SA have been multilingual. For at least the first two decades of their existence as sovereign states the large nation states of SA failed to take into account this…

This article examines English as a Second/New Language teacher attitudes based on three personal stories and suggests study abroad as a way to foster necessary teacher dispositions. How can a teacher candidate master the array of teacher dispositions required by various sets of English as a Second Language (ESL) and Bilingual/Bicultural Education…

Nine papers present either discussion of the issues or practical answers to the issues of nonstandard dialects, pidgins, and creoles in the classroom. They include: "The Case Against a Transfer Bilingual Program of Torres Strait Creole to English in Torres Strait Schools" (Anna Shnukal); "Summary: A Survey of Teachers' Attitudes…

A study investigated the usefulness of instructional materials on the writing of scientific articles by comparing the descriptions of abstracts offered in the textbook with a sample of abstracts drawn from four fields of medicine (clinical medicine, surgery, epidemiology, basic sciences). The comparison was confined to abstracts of results-focused…

This book presents an outline of the historical development of English in Africa. The book covers all the major aspects of English in separate chapters, but aims at demonstrating how closely these aspects are intertwined. The differences in the historical impact of the English language in different regions are reflected in present sociolinguistic…

A discussion of the senior high school curriculum in Nigeria focuses on the role of English, considered an important language for educated individuals. An overview of the structure of the secondary curriculum is offered, and the sociolinguistic and pedagogical significance of English in the society is examined briefly. The senior high school…

This introduction to sociolinguistics surveys the various ways that language can be studied as a social phenomenon, examining known relationships between language variation and large-scale social factors and showing how this variation runs along "fault lines in social structure," such as divisions between social classes, the sexes, and different…

Injustices in language policy and practice in education are examined, focusing on three groups that appear to be most affected by unfair language policies in education; women and girls; minority social groups; and minority cultural groups, distinguished from minority social groups in that the former usually possess or identify with a language that…

Reports on three surveys of Australian Aboriginal language use, undertaken to determine the language groups' needs for translation and literacy projects, are presented. "Communicability of Some Western Desert Communilects" by K. C. Hansen evaluates mutual intelligibility between languages and dialects in that region, and addresses the complicating…

While the concepts of language continuum and diglossia are widely cited and discussed, they remain generally vague and are used in different ways by different linguists. Recent sociolinguistic research on Dutch-speaking Belgium provides a framework for examining the two concepts, a context for proposing a theoretical definition for language…

A study of code-switching in a group of 35 Spanish-English bilingual third-graders is reported. The students' diary journal entries and writing assignments based on previous classwork are examined. Retelling of stories previously told by the teacher and the journal entries helped identify the kind of language used by students, the code-switching…

The basic problem of communicating in Arabic today is the existence of two language varieties, one spoken and one written. These may even be considered two distinct languages. They have existed side by side for as long as one knows. Classical written Arabic became fossilized and developed as a closed system independent of common usage and…