Recent studies of Asian American youth language practices have presented compelling insights about the identities and migration experiences of young people of Asian descent. This article offers a detailed examination of the relationship between language use and select issues concerning Asian American youth, including social life, schooling,…

The shifts underway in contemporary social conditions call for a new alignment between the specializations constituting English Studies: namely, literature, applied linguistics, and rhetoric and composition. Postcolonial social movements have generated new language, textual, and literary practices. These developments bring to the fore practices…

This article presents an adaptation of a position paper written by Da Pidgin Coup, a group of concerned faculty and students in the Department of Second Language Studies (SLS). In fall 1999, the group became concerned about a statement made by the chairman of the Board of Education implicating Pidgin in the poor results of the students of Hawai'i…

This dissertation project examines the language contact situation of Chipilo, a Veneto-Spanish bilingual community of immigrant origin in central Mexico, focusing both on the social motivations for the sustained bilingualism observed and the linguistic outcomes in the Spanish of the community. Chipilo is a unique community in that Veneto, a…

This paper offers a dialogic discussion about several issues concerning call centers, including globalizing surges, modernity tropes and educational practices. Based on a critical discourse analysis of a document offering to train west-based entrepreneurs to assume managerial positions in call centers in India, the paper explores ways in which…

This paper examines the transmission patterns of Eastern Brittany's Romance language variety, Gallo, based on quantitative data showing learning patterns of school pupils of the language and their parents in 2003 and 2004. Results confirm the sharp decline in Gallo transmission between generations. Nevertheless, Gallo transmission has not…

This volume collects empirical studies applying Conversation Analysis to situations where second, third and other additional languages are used. A number of different aspects are considered, including how linguistic systems develop over time through social interaction, how participants 'do' language learning and teaching in classroom and everyday…

Formal language use in online communication and phone messages is increasingly being replaced by a new age language, i.e. the net lingos commonly used in Internet acronyms and text messages. This is, perhaps, a logical consequence of computers, mobile phones and gadgets becoming familiar household items in an era where there is a constant demand…

This article presents the results from a preliminary investigation into the use of fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language (Auslan), drawing on data collected as part of the Sociolinguistic Variation in Australian Sign Language project (Schembri and Johnston 2004; Schembri, Johnston, and Goswell in press). This major project is a replication in…

Linguistically, political discourses have generally been discussed within qualitative approaches (e.g., Blackledge, 2005; Chilton, 2004; Chomsky, 2004; van Dijk, 2005; Wodak, 2002). This paper presents tools to design a quantitative research relating political speech with sociolinguistic variables. Notions such as Accommodation Theory (Giles &…

The author shares findings from a qualitative study of white, monolingual preservice teachers enrolled in a sociolinguistics course that examines the interplay of language and ethnicity in the United States. The primary aims of the study were to learn more about the preservice teachers' awareness of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds and to…

Discussing World Englishes, outlines a basic developmental scentrio, and suggests that speech communities typically undergo five consecutive phases in this process--foundation, exonormative stabilization, nativization, endonormative stabilization, and differentiation. Describes the sociolinguistic characteristics of each one. The framework is…

Kachru (1988) and Sridhar and Sridhar (1992) argue that the spread of English as a world language increases the types of context in which English is learnt today. The sociolinguistic realities of world Englishes learners today challenge the validity of some second-language acquisition theories. One of the theoretical limitations of existing…

Although courts are urging linguistic sensitivity, linguistic geographers and sociolinguists are providing evidence on linguistic variety. (RL)

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)