The study of registers in language is the study of language as it varies according to "use." The situation in which language is used imposes certain constraints on the structure and lexical ingredients of the language. In this report, the author investigates the use of verbs in two different registers in English. The frequency of verbs in both…

The sociolinguistic variation of speech among Detroit Negroes is described. The analysis is based on the speech of 48 Negro informants, evenly distributed in four social classes. In addition, 12 upper-middle class whites are included. The social variables investigated in relation to speech differences are class, style, sex, age, and racial…

This paper is a study in language acculturation with special reference to the Indianization of the English language. It briefly traces the history of the diffusion of bilingualism in English on the culturally and linguistically pluralistic Indian subcontinent. The functional roles of English are discussed and the formal influences of Indian…

This text contains 50 lessons in Dagbani for the student of Dagbani as a second language. The principal emphasis of the lessons is on developing skills in the spoken language, and study is preferable with a native speaker of Dagbani. The use of English is to be avoided except when absolutely necessary. Because of the attention given to oral…

Because of the high incidence of structural similarity between Jamaican Creole and Standard English, many of the important differences between the two languages can be obscured. This fact and that of negative attitudes towards Creole are the principal problems encountered in teaching Creole. The lessons in this course on Jamaican Creole are based…

Methodological and theoretical options confronting second-language textbook authors are outlined. Analytic and synthetic methodological approaches, linguistic options, geographic variability, registers of language, spoken versus written language, cultural materials, and learners' level are discussed. (SW)

Describes a nine-stage approach, involving a slide program and the language lab, that puts students in authentic situations and provides them with an alternative series of protocols, verbal strategies, and syntactic transactions. (Author/RM)

This article discusses the concept of "threshold level" as it applies to second language learning and proficiency. The threshold level is seen as the minimum level of proficiency required to communicate basic needs and to interact successfully. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Supports a greater use of repeated recordings and elicited intuitions by sociolinguists in assessing the linguistic competence of individuals or groups. A replication of an earlier implicational analysis of pronominal variation in the Guyanese creole continuum shows that, with repeated sampling and the inclusion of elicited intuitions, the…

Observation of reticent (N=7) and normal talkative (N=7) kindergarten students with their teachers during classroom "sharing time" indicated that reticent children engaged in less complex speech than their peers, speaking more often about objects in the "here and now," speaking about one topic at a turn, and speaking in shorter…

Explores the use of discourse anaphora in scientific abstracts and presents rules to be used for distinguishing anaphoric functioning of terms. The results of tests using these rules are reported, and the implications for natural language understanding, question answering, automatic extracting, query analysis, and bibliographic retrieval are…

A language teacher urges the use of authentic listening materials that do not conform to the strictest standards of spoken usage, as a way of getting to know the language's norms and variations. (MSE)

Considers several ways in which texts are used in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms where communicative skills are taught. These texts fail to offer the EFL student the possibility of personal involvement of the sort that would be normal with a text in the native language. Suggestions are made for using texts in a way which encourages…

Samples of the communicative behavior of a group of mildly mentally retarded adults were examined for indications of mature linguistic competence (specifically, grammatical morpheme and complex sentence use).Findings confirmed the expectation that the eventual mastery of these aspects of linguistic competence in higher-level retarded individuals…

A collection of gross errors in language usage can be used effectively for classroom practice in error analysis and can increase students' understanding of the conceptual and functional frameworks of language use by appealing to their sense of humor. (MSE)