Explores the history of the study of Black English and the history of researchers' and teachers' attitudes towards Black English and its study. (RB)

As the field of sociolinguistics has emerged, its terminology, which like many other emerging disciplines contains many neologisms and new usages, has sometimes been called insensitive. This reaction may interfere with serious examination of the field's content. Areas of disagreement or dispute include terms used for the speech of black…

Describes three current approaches to the problems of nonstandard English and examines the motivations behind them. Appears in "The Florida FL Reporter special anthology issue, "Linguistic-Cultural Differences and American Education. (FWB)

This paper focusses on sex contrasts in language as revealed in recent sociolinguistic research. While there are relatively few differences in subjective language identifications and judgments, there are several clear differences in objective language data. In the Detroit Language Study, women show a greater "sensitivity" to multiple…

Subjective judgments are useful in linguistic studies to supplement information from objective language data, enlarge our knowledge of public conceptions of social speech communities (such as Negro speech), provide techniques for discussion of social markedness of standard and nonstandard varieties of English, and provide techniques for…

The author describes three current approaches to the problems of nonstandard English and examines the motivations behind their recommendations. The traditional negative correction to standard he calls "eradication," based on ethnocentric prescription. "Biloquialism" offers the student the option of adjusting phonology, grammar,…