A study is reported which investigated the social consequences that follow when a speaker accommodates or fails to accommodate his speech style with reference to his interlocutor. (Author/RM)

Shows that hesitation phenomena are intricately connected with propspective and retrospective speech production tasks and mark critical points in processing. Two major hesitation categories exist: stalls and repairs. Stalls head off errors and represent error-free output; repairs take care of errors already committed. English and German examples…

Based on a model developed by Brown and Levinson (1978), this thesis examines one feature underlying appropriate language use--politeness--as it affects the discourse of native English speakers in three situations. The three situations and speakers involved are: (1) British speakers in a British public library, (2) American speakers in an American…

Discusses a quantitative study of the use of Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI) in Sydney, which reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic of a language change in progress. The social motivations of AQI are examined in terms of local identity and the entry of new ethnic groups into the community. (Author/SED)

Explored differences in the spoken English of Texas women, listening to individual women rather than to populations or samples. The study attempted to determine how each woman used available linguistic resources, and it pointed out that every speaker is idiosyncratic and a variety of factors bear on how people talk. (SM)

This paper examines the speech performance characteristic of the college lecturer. One of the most organized forms of speech performance, the lecture functions as a referential monologue and has a necessarily topical focus. Specifically dealt with are the ways in which lecturers introduce new topics, link together topical utterances, and close out…

Prison language, primarily the lexicon, at the Women's Correctional Center (WCC) in Columbia, South Carolina is described. This center is considered here as a speech community and a subculture. Inmates have developed speech habits and vocabulary which indicate the social structure of the prison and inmate values. They coin or metaphorically extend…

The investigation described in this paper was concerned with language alternation (code-switching) in the speech of Chicano migrant workers in Florida. In order to study Chicano bilingualsim, three principal sources were utilized: (1) a revised version of Wolck's sociolinguistic background questionnaire; (2) pictorial questionnaires such as…

A study of the factors affecting the burring of word-initial /r/ in a small English village found variability in the temporal, spatial, social, sexual, and phonic aspects of usage. Six categories of burrers are distinguished according to their speech habits. The evidence points to an ongoing socially and phonetically conditioned change in the…

THE WORK PRESENTED IN THIS STUDY IS AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE. THE COMPLEXITY OF THE ENGLISH DIALECT SPOKEN IN NEW YORK CITY PARALLELS THE COMPLEXITY OF THE CITY'S CHANGING SOCIAL STRUCTURE. DATA GATHERED FROM THE LARGER SPEECH COMMUNITY SHOW THAT THE VARIATION IN INDIVIDUAL SPEECH PATTERNS IS REFLECTED IN A HIGHLY…

The objectives of this study were to examine a body of data collected by five graduate students at the University of Texas at San Antonio and to determine, after a careful analysis of the transcribed utterances, whether all instances of language alternations can be truly considered code-switching strategies and whether those that can be so…

The 75 Metis of Mission Metis, Alberta, exhibit three general types of linguistic behavior according to age. Traditional Metis, over 50, are trilingual in English, French, and Cree. Those aged 30-50 speak English and some Cree and understand but do not speak French. Those under 30 speak English. The Mission Metis English and Cree are not…