Research on classroom questioning by teachers is reviewed from a sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on context, content, and responses and reactions by speakers. It is argued that research on questioning has generally failed to recognize that classroom questions represent mutual constructions of teachers and students, rather than solely teacher…

Undertakes a critical language analysis of the Oakland Unified School District's 1996 resolution on Ebonics, focusing on the form, content, and function of the resolution's explicit text semantics as distinct from the public statements made about it. Discusses how the resolution frames Ebonics as a non-English-related system. (Author/SLD)

Does the language one speaks influence the way he thinks? Does it help define his world view? Anyone who has tried to master a foreign tongue has at least considered the possibility. Little linguistic peculiarities, though amusing, don't change the objective world people are describing. So how can they alter the way they think? Scientists and…

The ways in which children learn a language--be it their mother tongue or their second language--can have a strong influence on their success in school. Researchers in linguistics and early child development have tried to determine the factors that can help and hinder language acquisition in young children, with some conflicting results. In this…

This purpose of this article is to present a qualitative inquiry into the genesis of sociolinguistics and the contributions of eight sociolinguistic pioneers. This inquiry, based on an historical interpretation of events, reformulates the concept of validation as the social construction of a scientific knowledge base, and explicates three themes…

The article uses sociolinguistic and ethnographic methods and Black feminist theory to explore the classroom interactions of Pam and Natonya, two Black young females, during one event in a required high school British literature classroom. The event is presented as a telling case to explore gendered and racial complexities facing young Black…

The French and English terms for characteristics of human beauty are compared and contrasted from the perspective of how sociosemiotic factors influence the ways different speech communities deal with reality. First, background and theoretical approaches to sociosemiotically based research are discussed. The adjectives examined are listed and the…

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…

A national language is useful as one means of creating social cohesion at the level of the whole country. It is also a symbol of national identity and of a nation's distinction from other countries. Probably no nation will ever be fully satisfied with a language that is a national language in the symbolic sense only, but the symbolic function of a…

Analysis of the acquisition of French as a second language in a situation where it is a minority language, as in Ontario, shows how acquisition and learning can be combined, and how the study of such a sociolinguistic situation seems necessary to the development of appropriate teaching methods. (MSE)

Reexamines data from Carol Berkenkotter, Thomas Huckin and John Ackerman's landmark study of the first year in the life of graduate student Nate. Looks at Nate's work at significant junctures in his professional life. Suggests some of the limitations faced by sociolinguistic accounts of student experiences. (TB)

While decline and/or extinction threaten an ever-increasing number of languages, most of these are minority tongues that struggle for survival against dominant languages. The present paper reports the case of Belarusian, a national and co-official language, which the great majority of the population of Belarus considers as its mother tongue, but…

This paper reviews sociolinguistic work which has addressed the provision of justice for Aboriginal English (AE) speakers in Australia. It questions the assumptions about cultural and linguistic diversity and inequality which underlie this work, and proposes a critical sociolinguistic approach, which draws on social theory in the analysis of how…

A construction occurring in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is examined: NPi "call" NPi V"-ing", as in "the woman call herself working." First, a number of reasons that such a form might be overlooked or dismissed as an AAVE dialect form are outlined. Then the sociolinguistic method is applied to the…

In studying sociolinguistic rules, researchers must be aware of some guiding principles: that (1) these rules are below the conscious level of awareness, and (2) rules of speaking differ across cultural groups, with none being more correct than another. Even when members of different cultural groups interact in the same language they may find it…