The 10-year history leading to publication of "Making the Jump: A Resource Book for Teachers of Aboriginal Students" is chronicled. The book focuses on acceptance of the Aboriginal students' home language, often a creole or a dialect of English, and the use of that language as a jumping-off point for teaching Standard Australian English…

A discussion of the role of sociolinguistics in the treatment of communication disorders focuses on issues related to dialect and language variation. It begins with an examination of linguistic diversity and dynamic description of language, reporting on a study of speech and language pathologists' judgments of sentences in African American…

The study of language acquisition requires that the analyst identify the learner's target and have available a grammatical description of the target. In the case of the Caribbean Creole environment, special caution is required in identifying the learner's target because substantial variation is intrinsic to the input and ambient language. Existing…

A study investigated the speaking styles of black college students to determine whether selected stylistic features of speeches of students at a predominantly black university were different from those of black college students at a predominantly white university. Audiotapes were made of 25 students at the predominantly black university and 21…

Findings about black language and speaking behavior may help increase understanding and accommodation of black students in education. While something is known about Black English as a medium of communication, little is known about the language itself. The teacher must learn to recognize basic linguistic and performance features of black English,…

There is a substantial discrepancy between normative and empirical views on Dutch standard pronunciation. The discrepancy between these views can be reduced by looking at the empirical range as being structured from an imagined point of reference. The prescriptive standard then operates as the ultimate model toward which the submodels for standard…

Edward Sapir's 1921 publication, "Language, An Introduction to the Study of Speech" is interpreted for beginning students of historical and descriptive linguistics. In his book, Sapir attempts to show (1) what he thinks language is, (2) what variables occur in language due to time and place, and (3) the relationship of language and…

The use of Sino-Japanese in the vocabulary of the Japanese language has increased greatly since the Meiji Restoration of the mid-nineteenth century. Although there are differences in the types of Sino-Japanese writing, their meanings can be created by association through the "Kun" or meaning-based readings of the characters of which they are…

To examine the process of language shift (bilingualization) in an area where there is a local dialect equivalent to a "language of solidarity" and a national language equivalent to a "language of power," language interactions in the impoverished village of San Marcos in the highlands of Guatemala were examined. Although Spanish…

A study of the English of British schoolchildren of South Asian extraction looks at ways of examining the relationship between their English and two ethnic processes, called "interactive" and "reactive". The way in which Network Analysis permits investigation of the interactive process is outlined, and the use of Identity…

A collection of essays on linguistic variation in English that distinguishes communities and social groups from one another includes: "Standard English: Biography of a Symbol" (Shirley Brice Heath); "The Rise of Standard English" (Margaret Shaklee); "English Orthography" (Wayne O'Neil); "How Pablo Says 'Love' and…

This paper focuses on a language variation model that incorporates a number of concepts from linguistic and rhetorical studies. The model views language variation as a product of two correlating causes: one, the user and his or her personal, regional, and social dialect; and the other, the user's use of the language in terms of such discourse…

The children of Appalachia, a region characterized by a strong oral tradition, are constantly defining their roles in their society through language. In so doing they are contributing to the maintenance of the patterns of life in that society. Children observe the functional uses of story at a very early age, and narratives emphasize group…

With some imagination, songs can be used to teach all aspects of foreign language. The language teacher can take advantage of the cultural content of songs by playing holiday music during the appropriate season; explaining the traditions and history of songs; discussing songs with cultural flavor; presenting a variety of music types; and…

This study compares the ability of 37 Standard-English-speaking graduate students to comprehend Black English versions of a set of 45 utterances with the ability of 37 comparable students to comprehend Standard English versions of the same utterances. Of the two stimulus tapes used (consisting of 45 sentences each), one was recorded in Black…