A study analyzed how freshman composition students handled an assignment that forced them to perform an act of sophisticated literacy which was a variation between spontaneity (present) and repetition (past) with a focus on how novice writers borrow language, whether through quotation or misquotation. The assignment involved two masterpieces of…

The role and use of Spanish in the geographic areas outside of the U.S. Southwest are examined in a collection of 16 conference papers. The papers address the general topics of language contact, linguistic variation, sociolinguistic factors, and language maintenance policy, and planning. Among the specific issues discussed are: a dialectology of…

One way to alleviate the hostile feelings of students whose dialects or idiolects interfere with their writing of Edited American English is to spend class time studying the differences between written and spoken English and examining the reasons such differences exist. The concept of a "grapholect," a national written language used by speakers of…

Metalinguistic skill is the ability to assume an objective attitude toward language. Metalinguistic awareness is less easily acquired and appears later developmentally than speaking and listening skills. What one needs to know to perceive and use language is not necessarily the same thing that one needs to know to reflect on and comment on…

Language variation, be it foreign or dialect, receives little tolerance and understanding by the general public. Thus, there are two major challenges for the decade of the 1980s in language arts instruction. The first is for teachers to become thoroughly informed about the nature of language and its role in our society. A knowledge of language…

A variable rule of /s/ deletion that operates in many varieties of Spanish is examined. A descriptive apparatus is posited that may be helpful in systematizing quantitative data from studies of phonological variability. Empirical data from the speech of informants show that ordering relationships among constraints on variable phonological rules…

Different languages code messages in different ways and use different channels for sending messages; thus there are many places for misinterpreting and mishearing messages in an intercultural context. To move from one language to another requires a description of the total language communication system, one that has its universals in social and…

Answers to three of the questions used in gathering material for the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) are analyzed in this paper. The data was collected state by state, and the number studied in each state was based on the 1960 population figures and known patterns of settlements and migrations. In the first question, the informants…

Recent research in sociolinguistics has demonstrated the need for looking at language in a dynamic framework, that is, for not imposing the traditional synchronic-diachronic dichotomy on linguistic studies. Support for the dynamic framework has been given from various oral languages. This paper attempts to test variation theory with historically…

A study investigated the phonemic and morphophonemic patterning of the glottal stop in Agutaynen, a Meso-Philippine language, and some comparison with two northern Philippine languages. Agutaynen glottal stop has as its sole origin a neutralization of contrast rule, the operation of which can be noted in three different linguistic environments.…

It is suggested that the notion of prestige has been too readily appealed to in explanations of language variation and change, and that such appeals result in apparent contradictions and conceptual confusions. The term "prestige" has been used by sociolinguists in widely differing ways, and, as a result, the nature of the term has become…

Recent studies of American Indian dialects of English have focused on efforts to determine whether the sources of such dialectal variation lie in interference from the native languages or in developmental errors in the acquisition of English. The implication of both assumptions is that educational intervention and the passage of time can eradicate…

An analysis of Old English phonology examines two traditional sound changes, the First and Second Frontings, that have been analyzed by different linguists with rather abstract theories. These analyses are refuted, and a more concrete and realistic treatment is proposed for each. Examination of Anglo-Frisian Brightening, or First Fronting, raises…

Research in crisis intervention has prescribed how trained but non-professional individuals should and do act in a crisis situation. The present study, however, focused on the types of responses untrained helpers use to respond to the crisis of another individual. Results indicate that types of responses vary significantly, with probing and…

Among the characteristics which set Bordeaux French apart from Standard French are the rules governing the behavior of its mid-vowels. These rules are much simpler and more extensive (in that they also apply to unstressed vowels) than in Standard French. Their application is, however, systematically conditioned by the presence or absence of word…