Presents evidence for a causal relationship between particular sociolinguistic contexts and a direction of language change in morphosyntax by identifying a class of contact languages that are similar. They are similar in that they are 'lower' languages used in multilingual diglossic speech communities that are isolated from the standard and…

Original version of this paper presented at the Conference of the 7th World Congress of Sociology, Varna, Bulgaria, September 1970. (VM)

Revision of a paper presented at the Conference Toward the Description of the Languages of the World, held in Burg Wartenstein, Austria, in August 1970. (VM)

Argues for the existence of two types of communities other than the diglossic deaf communities--isolated and developing deaf communities. The history, sign language and finger spelling of the Grand Cayman deaf community are discussed. As the deaf community develops, it is thinning out and breaking up. (PJM)

At certain points in their historical development, languages are not adequately equipped to serve their societies and do not offer certain communicative functions. Political and cultural domination can influence the language community to adopt a foreign language for higher communication, leaving the vernacular underdeveloped for those…

Within the framework of modern language teaching objectives, an inventory is presented of various socio-cultural activities in which written communication plays a key role. Writing is typed according to the situation. The status of written language is assessed from the aspect of multilingualism and of diglossia. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

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…

An attempt is made to develop a method for the presentation of temporal and spatial sociolinguistic data in order to study phenomena of bilingual interaction. Domain of language usage and other sociocultural variables are abstracted from extant sources, normalized and compared with the aim of studying sociolinguistic variation, its reflection on…

Discusses the difficulties involved in analyzing the sociolinguistic situation in Guadeloupe. (AM)

Discusses language shift in one community from German-Hungarian bilingualism to the exclusive use of German. Young women are further along in this direction than others. The linguistic contrast is shown to represent the social dichotomy between a newly available worker status and traditional peasant status. (Author/RM)

Describes how triglossia in Nigerian education lies in the complementary distribution of languages by functions, with the languages of home, community, and school corresponding roughly to the affective, conative, and cognitive psychological categories. Provides a triglottic model which describes actual function of language in education in Nigeria.…

It is argued that the relationship between Kiswahili and ethnic community languages in Tanzania is not diglossic. The paper applies definitions/redefinitions to the Tanzanian sociolinguistic profile, considers Tanzanian language policy, suggests the basic tenets of diglossia do not apply, and proposes another term for the Kiswahili relationship…

Although technical and social engineering and planning have made tremendous progress, an almost prescientific attitude regarding language planning still prevails in some linguistic circles. (Language planning is defined here as the "methodical activity of regulating and improving existing languages or creating new common regional, national or…

This books examines the interrelation between language and society in contemporary Italy and provides an up-to-date account of linguistic diversity, social variation, special codes, and language varieties within Italian society, and in situations of language contact both within and outside Italy. Part 1 covers the evolution and variations of…

Yugoslavia, a country with a population of about 20,000,000, has as official languages Macedonian, Slovenian, and Serbo-Croatian. The latter is the cause of much controversy, for while Croatian and Serbian indisputably have a common linguistic base, the political and economic tensions between the two "nationalities" augment disagreement…