Kindergarten children were observed in a classroom situation to discover communicative competence in the sociolinguistic area. These children demonstrated competency in awareness of regularities in use of language in the classroom, ability to publicize confusions, and variations in ways of speaking. (DF)

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…

Michel Foucault's discourse theory and Pierre Bourdieu's critical sociology are used to reexamine early literacy training. The resulting model is used to describe educational discourse, particularly in a series of literacy events in an Australian first-grade classroom. Implications for pedagogy are discussed. (70 references) (Author/MSE)

A collection of papers, all by the author, looks at a variety of theories and theoretical approaches from linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics and their applications to the teaching of English as a second language. Two studies are also presented. Titles include: "Content Schemata and Second Language Learning";…

This book addresses questions of language education in the United States, focusing on how to teach the 3.5 million students in American public schools who do not speak English as a native language. These students are at the center of a national debate about the right relationship among ESL, bilingual, and mainstream classes. Bilingual education…