Paradoxically, linguists' speculations about sex differences in language use are highly plausible and yet have received little empirical support from well controlled studies. An experiment was designed to correct a flaw in earlier methodologies by sampling precisely the kinds of situations in which predicted differences (e.g., swearing,…

This paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis of the historical present tense (HP) in English. The tokens of HP in narrative clauses, such as "he's smiling, an' he picks up the card," are referentially equivalent to their past tense alternants in the phrases, "he was smiling an' he picked up the card." Previous…

This book examines dialect variations in the United States. Chapter topics include an introduction to dialect study, colonial English, eastern settlement, eastern words, eastern pronunciation, eastern grammar, the westward movement, sectional atlas studies (the Great Lakes, the Upper Middle West, Texas, Colorado and other Rocky Mountain areas,…

From the beginnings of English grammar in the early sixteenth century, our language has been described by men, and the usage promulgated as the "standard" has been that of men. Because men have been able to effectively control English through their control of the communications media and educational institutions, they have made our language an…

In the contemporary standard Warsaw Polish of educated Poles, there is evidence of a system of gender-marking whereby masculine-gender nouns are being substituted for feminine professional names, working titles and surnames. The current usage is attributed to the change of status of the modern woman, or, more precisely, to her increased…

This paper attempts to dispel a number of misconceptions about the nature of meaning, namely that: (1) synonyms are words that have the same meanings, (2) antonyms are words that have opposite meanings, (3) homonyms are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings, (4) converses are antonyms rather than synonyms, (5)…

Culture learning includes the study not only of the highest artistic expression of a people, but also of the everyday patterns of communication and behavior. Recent sociolinguistic studies take the view that social rules, rights, and duties are properties not of individuals but of interaction itself, and are constantly changing. This implies that…

The cardinal aim of this paper is to demonstrate interrelationships between patterns of social behavior and patterns of terminology. The author postulates that the terminology significantly symbolizes behavioral patterns and proceeds to examine the relationship of Russian kinship terminology and social structure in the context of a pre-industrial…

This study describes the segmental phonemes of five 4-year-old speakers of Black English, and analyzes both their language development and ethnic characteristics. The study group of Negro children, born and living in Washington, D.C., came from homes that met two of three specified criteria based on the mother's education and family income. The…

The major purpose of this study was to contrast the responses of three groups of subjects to a language attitude questionnaire focusing on non-mainstream language patterns. The three groups were writers in the area of sociolinguistics, students who were enrolled in an experimental sociolinguistic-oriented instructional module, and students…

Intonation patterns of Black English were studied and compared with those occurring in White English and formal Black English. It was found that: (1) the Black English corpus was characterized by a wider pitch range, extending into higher pitch levels than either the White vernacular or the formal Black English of the adult information; (2) a…

This paper discusses the results of part of an ongoing project studying an aspect of real world language usage, the comprehension of standard jury instructions. Problems in the comprehension of these instructions include the memory load that they impose, the fact that most instructions are read only once, and the fact that instructions are written…

The discoveries of theoretical linguistics could aid teachers in explaining such usages as "well,""sort of," sex link uses, and forms marking levels of politeness. Conversely, there is much about second language learning that theoretical linguistics could learn from applied linguistics. (Author/KM)

This article examines "ty" and "vy" usage in contemporary Soviet Russian by way of contrastive analysis with pronoun usage in English. The importance of understanding the cultural implications of the Russian pronouns is stressed. (CLK)

Examination of the West German language and society suggests that the notion that the West German indigenous working class is separated from the middle class by a linguistic barrier is invalid. (Author/CB)