Interindividual and intragroup code-switching between the local and urban dialects is related to the degree of interplay among sociocultural factors of status, integrity and self-esteem present in the speech situation. In formal meetings, code-switching is governed by these factors with speakers manipulating the parameters of status while…

Examines the effects of power relations and audience on language usage, presenting data from a language attitude study that involved interviews between Dutch teachers and adolescents. It is argued that if speakers are expected to tailor their language to their audience, more flexibility must be allowed in role relations than what is suggested by…

This paper presents a view of traditional American Indian public speaking styles to students studying modern Indian diplomatic talk. A transcription of a talk given by the Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz provides an example of careful political speaking in the traditional tribal style. A culture which is typically oral, rather than…

A system of classification for tellings and retellings by Panama's Kuna Indians reveals the dimensions of their structure and function, textually, contextually, strategically, and ethnographically. Kuna verbal life can be characterized in terms of three distinct ritual-ceremonial traditions marked by three distinct languages, settings, sets of…

A study was undertaken to evaluate the child's capacity to judge the acceptability of French interrogative utterances on three levels--familiar, standard, and educated. A second objective was to consider the resulting observations in the light of certain sociocultural parameters. The test, one that had been used for adults in French second…

Research has demonstrated that many linguistic features correlate with social stratification of speakers and that these features often serve as social identifiers that trigger language stereotypes. An experiment was conducted to verify these findings with regard to Portuguese ethnic groups. Judges from four Portuguese-speaking ethnic groups…

Explores the role of sex of speaker and sex of addressee in determining the appropriateness of forms of address. (AM)

The specific concern in this study is to consider the nature, social significance, and consequences of syntactic variation in the question forms used by judges when taking guilty pleas from criminal defendents. Nine judges from a court of general jurisdiction in Arizona were observed and tape-recorded while presiding over several procedures that…

Sixth-grade students were subjects in a study to determine whether they possessed a repertoire of situational language in which registers or speech styles were differentiated by language use. A methodology was developed to elicit and describe children's language in different social settings that require different situational uses of language. Four…

This paper examines language in a factory setting and focuses on: (1) identical terms which workers use in different contexts, (2) terms that are discarded or changed, (3) different terms that express opposite units in a conceptual category but are labels for identical objects, and (4) terms which represent finer discriminations within conceptual…

The writer introduces the idea of sociolinguistic competence, the ability of a speaker to produce and recognize an infinite number of inter-idiolectal code switches, and discusses two methods of dealing with such language variations: frequency analysis and implicational analysis. In frequency analysis, the method used by sociolinguists such as…

Selected phonological, morphological, and syntactic evidence from two hours of tape recordings of conversations of a four-year-old Native American New Mexican was examined to determine its value in assessing the child's bidialectalism. (Author/SW)

This article describes a study attempting to correlate language style in elementary school children with sociocultural factors. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

A brief study of terms of address and reference in three examples of regional French of the departments of Sarthe and Mayenne. The questions raised in the study deal with ethnology, ethnolinguistics, popular or familiar French and traits of spoken French. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A discussion of syntax and different kinds of expression based on discourse analysis of children aged ten to twelve. The extent to which linguistic structures and syntax are determined by the type of language usage and expression is studied. (Text is in French.) (AMH)