The proposition that education affects dialect to a significant degree is examined. The findings leave doubt whether an educational differential is adequate to explain the maintenance of dialect differences between ethnic groups. (Author/RM)

Maintains that linguists and educators sincerely interested in black education should concentrate on devising a performance instrument to measure the degree of command of the style of any given Black English speaker rather than on establishing linguistic remediation programs to correct a non-existent remediation. (Author)

A study of 51 speakers in rural Illinois showed fronting and raising of (aw) to be considerably more advanced among countryside dwellers than among town residents. Discusses some of the social and economic changes contributing to this phonological shift. (EKN)

A small-scale survey of adult native speakers of British and North American English found that a majority of speakers of the latter prefer the simple past tense in (what the author calls) the category of "past with current relevance." (five references) (CNP)

Research indicates that the instructional conversation (IC), a dialogue between teacher and learner in which prior knowledge and experiences are woven together with new material to build higher understanding, can be an effective method for raising the low academic achievement levels of various groups of Native American students. The IC contrasts…

Criticizes mainstream dialectology and linguistic atlases as outdated, and suggests a method for mapping the language of the Southwest. (CK)

A sociolinguistic analysis is made of the use of gratitude expressions by Marathi and Hindi speakers in South Asia, and a comparison is made to American practices. (RM)

The 804 entries in this bibliography are divided into four major categories. The first category, regional dialects, is concerned with those varieties of English which are confined within specific areas of the continental United States. The second, social dialects, is concerned with varieties of English which have features that tend to be…

Describes a study in which participants from five areas in the U.S. converted hand-drawn maps into generalized maps of their perceptions of dialect areas. The maps are compared with one another, with traditional maps of U.S. dialect areas, and with maps of cultural and regional zones of the U.S. (Author/SED)

The use of interpersonal verbal routines such as greetings and thanks is examined as a universal phenomenon of human languages. Examples from Syrian Arabic, American English and other languages are used to show differing patterns of structure and use, susceptible of grammatical and sociolinguistic analysis. (Author/RM)

Originally appeared in Workpapers: Teaching English as a Second Language," Volume 5 (June 1971), Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles, California. (VM)

Provides a statistical portrait of residents of the United States who speak a language other than English, including the degree of their fluency in English. The analysis is based on the microdata files from the 1990 Census of Population. The data reveal that a continuation of current migration patterns will result in both linguistic concentration…

This study examines the speech act sequence of introductions among native speakers of American English from a wide variety of occupations, educational backgrounds, and role relationships. Specifically, the focus of the study is on the sequencing of other-introductions; namely, in an introduction that involves at least three participants, who gets…