This dissertation examines whether and how psycholinguistic priming, and social knowledge are integrated in the identification of sociolinguistic variants. Using the English variable (ING), the alternation between -ing and -in' (e.g. thinking vs. thinkin') as a testing ground, this dissertation probes whether and how individuals utilize…

Graduates who typically have L1 English, have majored in one foreign language (FL, L2) or more at university and have gone on to occupy FL posts in the UK civil service have reported mismatches between their pre-employment L2 learning and the tasks they face in the workplace. Such reported divergences in UK civil service capability have not,…

Weiner (1988. "On Editing a Usage Guide." In "Words for Robert Burchfield's Sixty-Fifth Birthday," edited by E. G. Stanley, and T. F. Hoad, 171-183. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 173) describes usage guides as being 'as broad as the English language, covering spelling, punctuation, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexis, and…

Because language, as a method of communication, is a two-way channel involving both speakers and listeners, a methodical study of linguistic variation should involve an analysis of both, how it is expressed and how it is interpreted. Furthermore, because language is known to vary between individuals (inter-speaker variation) as well as at the…

The influence of English on German has been an ongoing subject of intense popular and academic interest in the German sphere. In order to better understand this language contact situation, this research project investigates anglicisms--instances of English language material in a German language context--in the German hip hop community, where the…

The address systems in Raymond Barrio's "The Plum Plum Pickers" imply sociolinguistic differences between the Chicano and the Anglo characters. The kinds of sociolinguistic situations, the number of dyadic patterns, and the quantity of the dyadic patterns strongly suggest the differences. (Author)

Examines the alleged role of the BBC in the selection, codification, propagation, and acceptance process of Educated Southern English in Britain. (EKN)

This paper reports on a study designed to investigate the kinds of responses people produce during wrong-number telephone calls and to discover the rules that appear to govern the choices of the responses and their relationships. Fifty-seven calls were placed at different times during the day over a period of several weeks. The sentences used to…

A study is reported which investigated the social consequences that follow when a speaker accommodates or fails to accommodate his speech style with reference to his interlocutor. (Author/RM)

The roles played by English borrowings in modern Japanese literary works are examined. After a brief summary of previous studies, this paper describes the style repertoire and the kinds of stylistic effects produced in Japanese literature by English borrowings, such as attention attractors and in-group-identity markers. (23 references) (Author/LB)

A survey of written and spoken Tennessee English was recently begun. Work is in progress on the first stage of the project, which involves the compilation of a bibliography. Data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) and the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) will be examined in planning the survey itself. The next stage…

Begins a discussion of the social mechanisms of linguistic change by describing the distinctions noted by T. Bynon (1977) between two different approaches to the study of linguistic change. Presents a model designed to explain why linguistic change seems commonly to take place in some social conditions but not in others. (SED)

A collection of articles on the kinds of variation in English that one finds within the language of one group or one person includes: "The English Language as Rule-Governed Behavior" (Timothy Shopen); "The English Language as Use-Governed Behavior" (Joseph M. Williams); "Styles" (Ann D. Zwicky); "The Organization…

The writer, who feels that the chief differences between Black English (BE) and White English (WE) are phonological and not syntactic, reports on a sociolinguistically oriented examination of that variety of English spoken by children in rural Northern Florida (CBE/Fla). Twenty-two black children between the ages of nine and 12 were taped…

In-depth interviews with 34 English immigrants living in the "Anglophilic" eastern United States examined the social status of various English accents, anxiety engendered by creeping Americanization of their accents, how they coped with claiming an identity undermined by changing accents, and mechanisms to distance themselves from…