Linguistic racism is magnified when a speaker is multilingual and shuttles between different languages and language varieties. This reality is underscored in this commentary that reviews four empirical studies that comprise this special issue on linguistic racism. We see linguistic racism enacted in different forms and contexts: through racial…

This paper examines the usage frequency of phonetically reduced modals (i.e. "gonna," "wanna," "gotta") in Present-day English. It is assumed that in distinct sociolinguistic and discourse contexts, the use of reduced modals is dynamic. To collect the data, there are five corpora used in this study, "Corpus of…

Translingual dispositions, characterized by a general openness to plurality and difference in the ways people use language, are central for all users of English in a globalized society, and the fostering of such proclivities is an imperative to the contemporary composition classroom. In this article, we analyze student writing that emerged from a…

Sociolinguists have recently employed the notion of spatiotemporal scales to explain the changing social status of linguistic codes across social and geopolitical domains. Scales enable us to address the portability of semiotic resources in migration with great insight. In addition, unlike romanticized orientations to globalization and…

Discusses the role that Sociolinguistics should play with respect to the Ebonics debate in the United States. Argues that the fundamental perspective Sociolinguistics has taken with respect to this issue is sound, namely that Ebonics like any other linguistic variety is just as rule-governed and systematic. (Author/VWL)

The essays in this volume are divided into four sections: (1) "Ethnic Diversity and National Language," (2) "Bilingualism: Its Causes and Consequences," (3) "Models and Methods," and (4) "Language Spread: A New Direction," The first part deals with the social conditions that influence acquisition of a second…

This is a collection of 60 essays on dialectology written in the period from 1942 to 1979. The essays fall into the categories of theoretical, applied, and critical dialectology. Some of the more recent titles include: "System and Variety in American English,""Dialect Differences and Social Differences in an Urban…

Recent research in sociolinguistics has demonstrated the need for looking at language in a dynamic framework, that is, for not imposing the traditional synchronic-diachronic dichotomy on linguistic studies. Support for the dynamic framework has been given from various oral languages. This paper attempts to test variation theory with historically…

An applied research paper on how Canadian English differs from British and American English. Highlights ways for teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) to demonstrate these differences to their students. The notion of Canadian identity is also explored. A 3-item bibliography is included. (Contains 15 footnotes.)

This volume combines a discussion of bilingual education in three parts of the world, the Soviet Union, the Celtic countries of Western Europe, and the United States, with an outline of a theory of bilingualism and bilingual education. The first part of the book investigates how various systems derive from different combinations of identical…

Reports on a longitudinal study of nearly 1,000 English words to determine differences in usage in the United States in the 1930s and 1990s related to age, sex, race, education, region, and rurality. The results indicated that males, whites, older speakers, and speakers from rural areas use more older terms, whereas most educated speakers use…

This collection of 29 original articles provides an informative overview of current linguistic research on Spanish in the United States. Many of the chapters focus on regional aspects, ranging from sociolinguistic issues among Dominicans in New York and Cubans in Miami to the adoption and adaptation of forms from Nahuatal and English in the…