Overviews the Ivory Coast's sociolinguistic situation. Standard French, restricted to the elite, is threatened by the local lingua franca. The spread and functional allocations of Dyula and Popular French support the point that the pervasive use of a language does not always lead to its adoption as a national language. (CB)

Discusses the development of manual sign codes for use in the education of children with deafness as an example of language planning activity. Argues that the development of manual sign codes can be seen as a misguided effort that ignores the linguistic bases of natural sign languages and the language rights of the deaf community. (contains 84…

Posits a reciprocal relation between the popularization of computer-based technology and the democratization of Central/Eastern Europe. Discusses the introduction of the communicative approach to language teaching, the choice of languages in schools, and the potential of new technologies for improving global communication. Advocates coherent…

Draws on policy documents and interviews with educational policymakers and leading figures in the field of Kweyol to document changes in the status of the language in official and popular domains in St. Lucia. (Author/VWL)

This book provides an overview of the history, present circumstances, and future prospects of the native languages of Quebec: Abenaki, Algonquin, Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, Micmac, Mohawk, Montagnais, and Naskapi. Chapter 1, "The Situation of Aboriginal Languages in the Americas" (Jacques Maurais), discusses the linguistic demography of…

Linguistics is the study of language, as contrasted with knowledge of a specific language. Formal linguistics is the study of the structures and processes of language, or how it works and is organized. Different approaches to formal linguistics include traditional or prescriptive, structural, and generative or transformational perspectives. Formal…

A sociolinguist looks at language teaching and the need for bilingual education to help the non-English-speaking poor and to preserve diverse cultures. Bilingual education and second language instruction are seen as interdependent fields with great potential for helping each other. (SC)

Linguists generally refuse to make judgments about language or define standards of excellence for it. This perpetuates a fundamental paradox of descriptive linguistics: the inability to describe a language without providing a standard or setting a norm. The discipline's desire to escape from ethnocentrism has caused it to avoid a legitimate and…

The final report of a workshop convened by UNESCO is presented. The objective of the workshop was to formulate a conceptual framework for language instruction in a multicultural context that would be in harmony with the aspirations and interests of the population of individual countries and that would contribute to bringing national communities…

This article discusses language planning activities at the East-West Culture Learning Institute in Hawaii. Activities have been planned to facilitate and orient the use of the language planning approach by practitioners who have increasingly focused on the relation of development and modernization to language, and need to understand how language…

This volume is an attempt to provide the sociology of language with the basic teaching-learning tools needed in order to facilitate its academic growth and consolidation. It provides the students and specialist in language planning with a comprehensive anthology of articles dealing with this area of research in the sociology of language. The…

This paper discusses the role of linguistics in educational planning and argues that, in order for sociolinguistic principles to be introduced and implemented, it will be necessary for sociolinguists to remember the failures of linguistics in the past, to rethink their attitudes concerning the relationship of their discipline to education, and to…

Advocates the use of the vernacular language, not only as an important vehicle for learning, but also as a means of enhancing the native speakers' feeling of self-worth. Presents several ways of extending the use of the vernacular, as well as the problems that can arise. (EKN)

Explores the impact of Quebec language planning in favor of French on self-reports of language use in cross-cultural encounters between Francophones and Anglophones in Montreal. Results indicate that discrepancies exist between respondents' self-reports of language use and their reported experience and that motivational and normative factors…

A discussion of language policy formation and planning in Western European countries covers the following: implications of the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, European Community initiatives, language planning at the regional level, the European Science Foundation, bilingual education, and the Council of Europe. (Contains 47 references.) (LB)