A discussion of the current status and future of Celtic languages in the United Kingdom looks at the social and linguistic history of the languages, problems facing the community of Celtic language users, specific tensions and relationships, implications for reform of social policy, and the role of formal language planning, legislation, and key…

A study of the factors affecting the burring of word-initial /r/ in a small English village found variability in the temporal, spatial, social, sexual, and phonic aspects of usage. Six categories of burrers are distinguished according to their speech habits. The evidence points to an ongoing socially and phonetically conditioned change in the…

A collection of papers relevant to historical linguistics and description and explanation of language change includes: "Decliticization and Deaffixation in Saame: Abessive 'taga'" (Joel A. Nevis); "Decliticization in Old Estonian" (Joel A. Nevis); "On Automatic and Simultaneous Syntactic Changes" (Brian D. Joseph);…

The German sociologist and communication theorist Jurgen Habermas' theory of communication as it applies to the problems of developing nations takes into account both the structural factors that hinder indigenous development as well as the individual psychology of the citizens of the less-developed countries (LDC). This paper details the…

In this examination of Mexican-American bilingual college writers, it is argued that implicit language ideologies, common misconceptions about bidialectalism/bilingualism, and the classroom attitudinal domain subvert the success of ethnolinguistic minority students. The author designed and conducted a randomized language attitude survey (N = 195)…

Second language tests claiming to assess communicative competence are widespread, despite the vague nature of the construct. Sociolinguistic or intercultural competence is gradually gaining attention in the classroom, but testing has not kept pace, partly because of difficulty in defining the related skills. An opinion is that speech act theory…

While the concepts of language continuum and diglossia are widely cited and discussed, they remain generally vague and are used in different ways by different linguists. Recent sociolinguistic research on Dutch-speaking Belgium provides a framework for examining the two concepts, a context for proposing a theoretical definition for language…

Because an instructor's attitude toward students' language is a crucial factor in determining whether students will be active participants in the educational process, it is important for teachers to be aware of dialect differences. Labelled by many as "nonstandard," Black English is a dialect derived from Gullah, a creole based on…

Early Russian religious and educational influences on the 20 various Alaskan Native languages are described, followed by those of American origin in schools and religious groups after the American purchase in 1867, all of which show the development of diglossia and language shifts. The present dual educational system, which includes state schools…

A college student of intermediate to advanced English as a second language (ESL) is still constantly trying to identify the rules governing the language and making and correcting mistakes. Sociolinguistic theory can help to understand this type of active, advanced learner and the instructional strategies that complement this learning style. Four…

This book provides a summary of past and cutting-edge research on the acquisition of language by young children. It lends support to the behavioralist paradigm of language acquisition, namely, that maternal rewards and corrections should be integrated with perceptual, cognitive, and social learning conceptualizations in a skill-learning approach…

The research reported here seeks to explain communication failure between Whites and Aboriginals in Australia, based on an examination of fundamental concepts underlying the world view of each group. The research arose from the observation that in Aboriginal-White encounters, each group had different expectations of and conclusions about the same…

A comparison of the linguistic contexts of Scotland and Taiwan focuses on three aspects: (1) existence of two linguistic codes belonging to the same language family; (2) the status of one of those languages as the standard set by a larger, more powerful neighbor from whose perspective any other variety is likely to look like a dialect; and (3) the…

The aim of this article is to analyze the nature of the historical and contemporary social contexts within which applied linguistics in Africa emerged, and is currently practiced. The article examines the challenges "local" applied Linguistics in Africa is confronted with as it tries to amplify applied linguistic programs emanating from…

There is a growing awareness among some Arab education specialists that the low levels of educational achievement and high illiteracy and low literacy rates in most Arab countries are directly related to the complexities of the standard Arabic language used in formal schooling and non-formal education. The complexities mostly relate to the…