This article examines the controversy over the alleged sexism of "French in Action" (1987, 1994) within the context of key differences between French and American feminist thought. Read within a French cultural context, this text can be more accurately perceived as a postmodernist, feminist critique of Hollywood's heterosexual romance…

Examines problems in encouraging communities and industry to face the broadcasting needs of linguistic minorities, based on Canadian experiences. A legislative and regulatory framework is discussed, and three approaches for initiating services to small linguistic societies are described: (1) no government involvement in programing; (2)…

Reviews European Community and Australian language policies. Considers cultural-economic interface in Australia with respect to current interest in teaching Asian languages for trade purposes. Discusses Australia's growing acceptance of languages other than English and its affect on Aboriginal people. Urges the better utilization of the country's…

This article presents a demographic profile of the users of English in China and the distribution of proficiency among the millions of English users, and includes a sociolinguistic profile of the different uses of English in Chinese society. It concludes that the primary function of English in China is social and economic mobility. Contains 40…

Twelve languages--including the two prestigious colonial languages, English and French, a French-based creole and "ancestral" languages, such as Hindi and Mandarin--are spoken on the multiethnic island Mauritius. Given the multilingual and multiethnic nature of the nation, linguistic practices are an important way for Mauritians to…

A study of language attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area of 45 countries and over 1,700 languages, attempts to: (1) pinpoint attitudinal patterns towards European and indigenous languages; (2) give these attitudes historical perspective; (3) identify attitudes toward language use in education; (4) encourage language research on attitudes in…

Results are presented of an experiment involving the reactions toward accented speakers by immigrated native and near-native proficient English speakers from the same Spanish-speaking ethnolinguistic background. It was hypothesized that: (1) the negative reactions of listeners reflected an observable association with a geographic location such as…

Research was conducted to consider in detail the intergenerational dimensions of bilingualism in the Puerto Rican community in New York City via the children of adult immigrants who had abandoned their native language usage and who later revived it. The issues in focus are language choice, language change, language use, and language learning. The…

A study looks at the economic, social, cultural, and political factors involved in conflicts between New Brunswick language communities in the last two decades. The demographic, economic, cultural, and political relationships between the French and English language communities are presented and discussed in terms of political matters and principal…

A study looks at the economic, social, cultural, and political factors at work in conflicts between Quebec language communities in recent years. The historical and current demographic, economic, cultural, and political relationships between the French and English speaking communities are presented and discussed in terms of political issues and…

An ethnographic study of language proficiency in the home and school languages of bilingual children was conducted. From a qualitative sociolinguistic perspective, language proficiency, the relation of linguistic performance to community language use and attitudes, and the correlation of the sociolinguistic findings on language repertoire with…

Proposals for changing sexist language, while having an increasing impact on patterns of language usage in America, have also continuously been argued against in the media and in academia during the 1970's. The proposals for eliminatinq the usage of masculine terms as "generics" have received the most criticism. In this paper, the various…

This volume combines a discussion of bilingual education in three parts of the world, the Soviet Union, the Celtic countries of Western Europe, and the United States, with an outline of a theory of bilingualism and bilingual education. The first part of the book investigates how various systems derive from different combinations of identical…

After 1580 the English language was no longer considered barbarous because important works had been written in it, its vocabulary had expanded, and it had been adorned with the devices of classical rhetoric. It did not have, however, a dictionary or grammar, the fourth quality that makes a language eloquent. Thus, the eighteenth century…

A fair number of empirical, scholarly studies of West African languages have been published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, the study of West African languages was in these years overtaken and nearly overwhelmed by a racist reaction. In the 1930's linguistics began to assume its substantially modern form and scholars…