Earlier version of this article read at the Conference on Continuities and Discontinuities in Afro-American Societies and Cultures, Mona, Jamaica, April 2-4, 1970. Special issue on Black Dialect: Historical and Descriptive Issues'' edited by William A. Stewart. (RS)

This article discusses the spread of English and the impact of American culture within the European Community. It argues that rather than identifying English solely with speakers from Britain or with American culture, English belongs to those who use it and therefore has the potential to be a means of expression of European identity. (32…

Discusses Ocracoke English as an endangered dialect, examining the social responsibility linguists and dialectologists should assume in documenting and disseminating information about the state of moribund dialects and describing a community-based, collaborative model involving the development of materials and programs that foster knowledge of and…

Current work in American dialectology is summarized and commented on. (Available from: See FL 508 214.) (RM)

The variety of syntactic forms for expression of directives is commented on. Data has been collected investigating the empirical distribution of formal variants across social features and predictability of the form of a directive if social features of its context are known. (Author/RM)

Critical rejoinder to Lawrence M. Davis' Social Dialectology in America,'' Journal of English Linguistics, March 1970, p46-56. Special issue on Black Dialect: Historical and Descriptive Issues'' edited by William A. Stewart. (RS)

Investigates the sociolinguistic interaction between language behavior, religious affiliation, and degree of bilingualism in a group of Pennsylvania Germans. Also explores the nature of bilingualism and language contact phenomena in order to gain an understanding of ethnic subcultures and strategies to maintain their identity. (Author/MES)

Examines linguistic and social factors reflected in the development of American Czech, spoken by Czech immigrants living in rural Nebraska communities, distinguishing between fully competent, proficient, and imperfect speakers. Despite the undisputed English influence, American Czech shared characteristics with other enclave languages developing…

In studying sociolinguistic rules, researchers must be aware of some guiding principles: that (1) these rules are below the conscious level of awareness, and (2) rules of speaking differ across cultural groups, with none being more correct than another. Even when members of different cultural groups interact in the same language they may find it…

Deals with the shift of the low-back vowel as in 'caught' to a low-central vowel as in 'cot' thereby merging such pairs as caught/cot, dawn/Don, and stalk/stock. The causes and the sociolinguistic implications of this shift are discussed. The majority of the informants were from West Los Angeles. (TL)

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…

This paper reports on the Arkansas Language Survey, which had two purposes: (1) to explore the idea advanced by Labov that Americans generally have negative attitudes about their language, and to see to what extent this applies to Arkansawyers; and (2) to determine how Arkansawyers judge the way other Americans speak English. The twenty-four white…

The characteristics of several nonstandard dialects of American English are presented in this paper in the form of an inventory of features. It has been compiled with the recognition that nonstandard dialects are governed by pronunciation and grammatical rules and that within the broad category of nonstandard dialects, regional and ethnic…

Selected phonological, morphological, and syntactic evidence from two hours of tape recordings of conversations of a four-year-old Native American New Mexican was examined to determine its value in assessing the child's bidialectalism. (Author/SW)

This paper traces the history of changing attitudes toward American English. Two approaches to language policy have always been present, the conservative one, which considers British English the only acceptable standard, and the liberal, which favors American English. (CFM)