Questionable white dialects are discussed from the viewpoints of various authorities, and the dialects of the Southern states are used as examples of the complexity associated with attempting to designate a set of usages as being questionable. Suggestions of ways in which English teachers may cope with the problem of dialects and jargons are…

There is little or no argument these days that Black English Vernacular (BEV) is a reality and that it is stigmatized. There is still a need, however, in spite of many studies of spoken varieties of BEV, for teachers to know what governs its occurrence in writing. This study concentrates on the written manifestation of BEV, on explaining which…

Provides definitions for 24 new words or phrases in American English. Journal availability: see FL 512 361. (AM)

Presents definitions and examples of usage of late-twentieth century American words and terms, including: bite, dramedy, photo op, photo opportunist, safe computer practice, sound bite, teflon, trapdoor, vaccination program, computer virus, and wait state. (CB)

Explores the interactional significance of grammar on turn-taking in Japanese in view of reported conversation analytic findings on turn-taking for Anglo-American English. Particular focus is on ways in which grammar may be implicated in the conversation of turns at speaking and the projection of turn endings in Japanese talk-in-interaction.…

Discusses the Third Dialect (Labov 1991, 1994), offering the first systematic variationist analysis of speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with particular focus on three phonological processes. Argues that Veatch's (1991) model of English syllable structure provides a unified account of these seemingly unrelated phonological changes in Pittsburgh.…

Forty adult Chinese-speaking learners of English and 20 native speakers of American English participated in a study of second language learners' interpretation of syntactically ambiguous sentences involving "that"-clauses that could potentially be interpreted as complements or as relative clause. Two sentence interpretation tasks suggest that the…

This article considers the comprehension of tense-aspect markers remote past BIN and habitual be by 3- to 5-year-old developing African American English (AAE)-speaking children and their Southwest Louisiana Vernacular English (SwLVE)-speaking peers. Overall both groups of children associated BIN with the distant past; however, the AAE-speaking…

A study is described that will investigate whether cultural referents found in the Defense Language Institute (DLI) American Language Course are biased toward North American cultural norms, and whether Saudi Arabian military personnel in language training using those materials are affected by the cultural information contained within them. The…

While students generally recognize that racism exists on an individual level, the instructor's challenge is to both elucidate patterns of discrimination and to expose their corollary: unearned and unrecognized systemic privilege of the dominant group. Unaware that their sense of entitlement advantages them at the expense of people of color, some…

This study compared monosyllabic word recognition in quiet, noise, and noise with reverberation for 15 monolingual American English speakers and 12 Spanish-English bilinguals who had learned English prior to 6 years of age and spoke English without a noticeable foreign accent. Significantly poorer word recognition scores were obtained for the…

A comparison of American and British language of the theater. A conclusion noted is that there exists parrallel vocabulary in the United States and Great Britain. The terms studied are: director, producer, stage director, stage manager, assistant stage manager, artistic director. A glossary is appended. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

The study of folk speech, which traditionally included only regional dialects, has evolved to include cultural and generational dialects. This article discusses how folk speech study has come to include a range of dialects and a variety of sociolinguistic trends. (JL)