Language and accent strongly influence the formation of social groups. By five years of age, children already show strong social preferences for peers who speak their native language with a familiar accent (Kinzler, Shutts, DeJesus, & Spelke, 2009). However, little is known about the factors that modulate the strength and direction of…

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…

Do French-Canadian (FC) minorities in New Brunswick and Ontario remain as committed as majority Francophone Quebecers in developing their vitality within Canada's bilingual belt? FCs constitute host communities for interprovincial migrants of FC and English-Canadian (EC) background who can bolster or weaken the vitality of FCs. How FCs and ECs…

This essay suggests a companion term to "literacy sponsors" that better mirrors the practice and protection of traditional literacies evident in the cases of two Dakelh elders. "Literacy steward" introduces a theoretical means to describe community members whose rhetorical decisions depend on traditions that are alternative to…

In their keynote contribution, Poplack, Zentz & Dion (henceforth PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) propose an interesting "scientific test of convergence" (under section heading: "Introduction") which contains criteria to check whether a particular feature in a given language in contact with another one is…

Newfoundland English has long been considered autonomous within the North American context. Sociolinguistic studies conducted over the past three decades, however, typically suggest cross-generational change in phonetic feature use, motivated by greater alignment with mainland Canadian English norms. The present study uses data spanning the past…

This bibliography is divided into five sections. The second, third, fourth, and fifth sections are each devoted to publications in one specified area, American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand English respectively. The first section lists bibliographies pertaining to all of these areas. Entries in all sections include both American and…

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.)

Asserts that contemporary history and historiography is "official" history that ignores the daily struggles of people for their continued survival. Argues that, while public illiteracy has nearly disappeared, individuals are ignorant of the wealth of primary-source materials of other cultures' histories. (CFR)