The report of a sociolinguistic study of language usage in Montreal describes the historical and current roles of French and English, discusses Montreal's current linguistic situation in terms of two sociolinguistic concepts (code switching and the speech community), and outlines a survey examination of language use in retail transactions. (MSE)

Studied bilingual children and children learning a second language using a picture-word interference task. The printed distractors interfered with naming both on trials where the distractor and naming language were the same and on trials where they were different. These and other results question whether an "input switch" operates for bilingual…

The speech of 11-year-old children in different socioeconomic groups, was analyzed across a range of communicative tasks. On most "traditional" measures, consistent group differences did not appear. Significant differences were found on measures directly derived from the "planning principles" said by Bernstein to underlie restricted and elaborated…

Of the bilinguals in the United States, 22 million are Spanish-English speakers. Spanish-English bilinguals have been producing literature in Spanish, in English, and gradually in mixtures of both languages from the earliest days of contact in the U.S. This paper explores manifestations and meanings of Spanish-English bilingualism in Latino…

Examines the characteristics of diglossia and applies them to the current sign language situation in the United States. Concludes diglossia does not exist and argues that what is really happening is code switching between languages and style shifting within a language. (EKN)

A review of research on bilingualism in early childhood. (CM)

Presents an historical survey of Spanish language and educational policy in California highlighting those factors which may account for the present survival of the Spanish language. The role of education as an instrument of societal integration is examined in terms of its impact upon the Chicanos' language and educational achievement. (JMF)

Investigates the code switching of two French teachers in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environment. Highlights the importance of the social dynamic and technical aspects of teachers' codeswitching behaviors. (Author/VWL)

Compares controversies surrounding actions by school boards in Hawaii and Oakland, California, to promote student fluency in standard English. Public reactions to these actions demonstrated general lack of understanding about languages and nonstandard dialects. Myths and characterizations about Hawaiian Creole English and African American…

Offers several justifications for the claim that code-switching is a positive, not a negative, phenomenon. Included are three examples of "mixtilingual" poetry: poetry "mixing languages" in order to evoke different feelings and images within a certain cultural context. The poems mix English and Spanish, English and Italian, and Italian and…

In conversations between bilinguals, each of whom is a learner of the other's language, two different local patterns of codeswitching may emerge: compliance and mutual convergence. It is argued that a pattern of compliance is ultimately more accommodating that convergence, contrary to the claims of Speech Accommodation Theory. (20 references)…

Addresses the issue of whether there exists a matrix language to a code-mixed (CM) sentence, or whether no feasible linguistic analysis can reliably assign a matrix language to a CM sentence. The examination draws on natural conversations involving Chinese-English CM in Singapore. (41 references) (GLR)

Analysis of several types of faulty language selection in polyglots revealed that production errors were not a result of limited vocabulary or language deficiency but rather to interlingual code-switching based on the polyglot's differentiations between dominant language, foreign language, and weak language. (20 references) (Author/CB)

This study of primary school children's play interaction in an English-Swedish school setting combines a sequential approach to code switching with an analysis of footing, extending prior work in showing that code switches often involve a subtle shift of footing. Code switches were employed as important rhetorical and dramaturgic play devices.…

Examines the structural consequences of the contact between Dutch overseers and Eastern slaves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the formation of Berbice Dutch, an unusual Creole because of its remarkably homogeneous substrate. (Author/VWL)