The purpose of this booklet is to describe the major differences between the Levantine (Palestinian and Lebanese) and Egyptian (Cairene) dialects of Arabic, with some references to other geographical varieties of these dialects. It is designed to provide help to persons who have learned either one dialect or the other and need to transfer to the…

The use of language in education is examined, and the ways in which recent research helps in the understanding of classroom language are explored. The relevance of such research to practicing teachers as well as to sociologists is also discussed. The volume is divided into nine chapters: (1) "Why Is Language Important in Education?"; (2)…

This book emphasizes the value of bilingual education as an enrichment for all groups, not merely for heterogeneous populations or poor or dislocated populations. The book is aimed at teachers, administrators and concerned laymen. Part I of this book surveys the sociology of bilingual education. Language and culture in the global community and in…

Contrastive analysis is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both the form and function of language. As such, contrastive analysis must view language psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired. Due to the need for a psychological component in the analysis,…

The purpose of this paper is to present a general overview of the linguistic setting of Arabic. Three main areas are covered. The first of these, diglossia, is defined in general terms and then examined more closely in relation to its historical development in Arabic-speaking countries (i.e., as resulting from geographic, socioeconomic, and…

In the rapidly changing political, economic, and social life of West Africa, there is a renewed interest in cultural identity. This book describes the developments and the difficulties experienced by different West African countries in the use of mother tongues in multi-lingual society. The book was commissioned to give scholars, educators, and…

This edited volume is a collection of personal accounts, in narrative and interview format, of the formative literacy experiences of highly successful second language users, all of whom are professional academics. Representing 14 countries of origin, the contributors, who are well known specialists in language teaching as well as a variety of…

Most of the population of Japan remains ethnically Japanese. For this reason, bilingualism has never been a subject of significant concern in Japan. With the recent influx of new groups of non-Japanese speakers into Japan, the society is becoming more multilingual. This book introduces the way languages are used in Japanese interlingual families,…

This collection of 29 original articles provides an informative overview of current linguistic research on Spanish in the United States. Many of the chapters focus on regional aspects, ranging from sociolinguistic issues among Dominicans in New York and Cubans in Miami to the adoption and adaptation of forms from Nahuatal and English in the…

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…

This edited volume provides an overview of issues surrounding language loss from sociological, economic, and linguistic perspectives. Four parts cover general issues in language loss; language-community responses, including native language instruction in school, community, and home; the value of language diversity and what is lost when a language…

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…

Exploring writing in its many social and cultural variations, the seven articles in the first part of this book show different genres of writing serving various purposes in diverse contexts, while the six articles in the second part examine the effects of oral language differences on the learning and teaching of writing. Topics covered in the…

This booklet is a guide to the various aspects of bilingual education. It consists of the following chapters: (1) "Sink or Swim Educational Approach" (which discusses the practice of ignoring the linguistic problems of non-English-speaking children in American schools), (2) "Bilingual Instruction" (the two methods of teaching English to linguistic…

This book describes how bilingual children and their families actively and innovatively use available cultural and linguistic resources to pursue their goals. Three separate ethnographic studies were conducted within the same Mexicano community in Lincoln City, California. Descriptions of everyday talk of children and adults focus on how children…