Critically examines contemporary interactional studies of the cultural specificity of human language. The study is a cross-cultural analysis of misconstrued communications in human interaction, ascertaining whether these interactions are crucially dependent on nonlinguistic variables. (CB)

This review of "The Language of Teaching" (Edwards and Furlong, 1978) suggests that its most valuable contribution is to the further development of sociolinguistic research in classrooms and to the advancement of sociological analysis of education. The book reports the author's investigation of patterns of classroom communication and language…

Explores the social relation between a natural sign language and the language of the dominant hearing culture, focusing on language attitudes, status and affiliation, language contact influence, language variation and change, and language standardization. (58 references) (CB)

In investigating the degree to which minority languages are not recognized as separate languages by the majority culture, it is helpful to consider the distinction between abstand and ausbau languages. The distinction is also helpful in understanding other political and cultural problems concerning language versus dialect status in Europe. (five…

Introductory comments to a special journal issue on communicative accommodation provide a framework within which the accompanying articles can be examined. Terminology and field methods are described for this frontier area of sociolinguistic study and more sociolinguistic analysis is advocated. (50 references) (LB)

Discusses the fact that the characters in Indian English fiction perform speech acts in terms that are not entirely alien to readers from other English-speaking traditions. (18 references) (GLR)

Discusses one highly visible and often stigmatized feature of Chicano Spanish--lexical innovation due to intimate contact with English and mainstream culture. Discusses socio- and psycholinguistic factors that play a role in loanword formation. (Author/VWL)

Reviews distinctions between negative and positive letters and summarizes the advice commonly offered for conveying negative messages. Outlines the tenets of Grice's theory of conversational implicature, and discusses sociolinguistic explanations for the use of indirectness in negative messages. Analyzes the texts of several letters, using Grice's…

A survey of the literature on children's language and reading, divided into three major areas: the child, the instructional materials, and the teacher. (DD)

Discusses how children in one society on the Papuan Plateau, Papua, New Guinea, learn about making and responding to requests based on a strategy of appeal. (FL)

Provides a sociolinguistic account of the forms of address used in present-day Iranian Persian. The shift from power to solidarity as a result of the Islamic Revolution has resulted in a sociolinguistic simplification of address forms. (Author/CB)

Examines the rating scale and the testing procedure of the oral interview for evidence of discourse competence. The paper suggests that a careful examination of the processing capabilities might serve as a valid indicator of their discourse competence. (24 references) (GLR)

Exploration of two sign languages independently employed by two isolated deaf signers in a single northern India village found that both languages included such negative structure elements as context-dependence, multichannels, and nondiscrete, ambiguous signs. One signer, strongly embedded in close relationships that formed a tiny speech…

Discusses the "Hebrew Revival," which is considered a misunderstanding because Hebrew was never a "dead" language. (four references) (VWL)

In its lifetime, the profession of language teaching has undergone many changes. Early attempts at language teaching almost entirely lacked a theoretical base. In the 20th century, however, two sets of language teaching methods emerged; the first set borrowed theories from psychology, linguistics, and sociolinguistics whereas the second set was…