To be lame'' in Black English means to be outside of any vernacular peer group and its culture. (RS)

This study was designed to investigate, describe, and compare the intonation patterns of Black English and Standard English speaking children in a reading (formal) and free discourse (informal) situation. Black English was defined as the linguistic code of the subjects sampled from the inner city black poverty area schools, and Standard English as…

IT HAS BEEN HYPOTHESIZED THAT THE ADOPTION OF THE LINGUISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUBCULTURE OTHER THAN A CHILD'S OWN IS A VALID INDICATION OF THE DEGREE TO WHICH THE CHILD HAS BECOME SOCIALIZED INTO THAT SUBCULTURE. TO EXAMINE THIS HYPOTHESIS, RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED (1) TO EXPLORE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LINGUISTIC HABITS AND ATTITUDE…

The speech of 23 people in a rural Texas community was studied. The population of the area was over 90 percent white Anglo-Protestant. The subjects varied from illiterate to college educated and ranged in age from 17 to 60 years. Seventeen dialect features were chosen as illustrative of the variations in the use of linguistic forms for people of…

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…

This report is the result of a sociolinguistic survey of the French-speaking minority of Welland, Ontario, most of which is bilingual. Interviews were carried out and taped in French with sixty French-speaking adults. Two series of closed questions and one series of open questions were asked, the former yielding detailed data concerning the…

Many questions accompany the recognition of different dialects, including questions concerning the origin of the speaker, the reasons why people speak the way they do, and which way of speaking is correct. Stronq feelings may accompany the recognition of dialects, and assessments and classifications of people may be made based on how they speak.…

A teacher's developing awareness of his college students' dependence on jargon as the expression of their culture is portrayed with the aid of quotations from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Parallels are drawn between Prufrock's attitudes and student language in the classroom. (AF)

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 purpose of this study was to specify variables which function significantly in the racial identification and speech quality rating of Negro and white speakers by Negro and white listeners. Ninety-one adults served as subjects for the speech task; 86 of these subjects, 43 Negro and 43 white, provided the listener responses. Subjects were chosen…

The paper focuses on the linguistic behavior of Negro children concentrated in communities where a non-standard form of English is the accepted currency. Such children are verbal, possess a language fully developed to serve the needs of their "world," and think effectively enough to survive in a sometimes hostile environment. Certain basic…

Noting the close relationship among language, thought, culture, personality, and self awareness, anthropological linguistics acknowledges the powerful and real function language styles play in human life, the close attachment between the individual and his natural manner of speech, and the sensitivity that surrounds an individual's attachment to…

Discussions in speech and language pathology often contain references to language differences and the ways these differences compare with speech and language disorders. There is ongoing research on the regional varieties of English, and within the past decade, information on social and ethnic variation in language has been accumulating. Based on…