Investigated the developmental processes that lead from a literal interpretation of idiomatic expressions to the ability to comprehend and produce them figuratively. Results showed that younger children are more literally oriented than older children, who in turn are more idiomatically oriented, and that children of both age groups found it more…

Compares the relative effects of speech rate in Korea and the United States for perceptions of the speaker's credibility. Using a 3-way factorial design, data for 120 university students from each country indicate that rapid delivery can enhance one's credibility in the United States and among female Korean speakers. (SLD)

This study assesses whether third graders verbalize gender differences in dominance in mixed- and same-sex interactions, using data from tape-recordings of 43 pairs of white children (14 female and 12 male same-sex dyads and 17 different-sex dyads) playing checkers in same- or mixed-sex conditions. Children develop gender-differentiated speech…

Recognizing that speech is an important component of the language arts and that the English curriculum is the most natural place for speech skills to be fostered, this handbook examines several methods of developing speech competencies within the secondary school English classroom. The first section, "Looking at Speech," examines the…

This study describes rules of code-switching (choice between languages) in four six-year-old Spanish/English bilinguals in a school setting, to show that bilingualism is a sociolinguistic competency. Data included 306 episodes of situational code-switches and 64 episodes of conversational code-switches. The children consistently applied the…

This text was developed to enable students of Spanish to use idiomatic expressions from the early learning stages to the more advanced levels. Students can use idiomatic Spanish as soon as they have learned regular -ER, -AR, and -IR verbs, and as they become more proficient, they can apply their knowledge of the irregular verbs in studying other…

This is a reflection on certain aspects of sociolinguistic and linguistic problems of French in West Africa, particularly in Senegal and the Ivory Coast. The sociolinguistic section discusses the role French has played in Africa and still plays vis-a-vis African languages and English. Conditions in which French is used and attitudes both of…

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…

A review of the literature on Black English was made to determine what information is available and to assess the credibility of the information. The review covered the years from 1865 through the first half of 1975. More than 75 documents were identified as potentially informative in the area of investigation. The linguistic features of Black…

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…

Transcriptions of recorded conversations of nine-year-old French children are analyzed and presented in this comparative word count. The actual count of the 55,588 word corpus is arranged alphabetically and contrasted with selected, identical words found in the Francais Fondamental word list. Proper nouns are listed separately at the end of the…

Concern during the past decade with educational failures of urban Negro children suggested the need for empirical evidence demonstrating whether or not students use identical grammatical and stylistic structures in both speech and writing. Fourteen black, inner city junior high students, all of whom speak "black English," were interviewed for…

Reports on research concerning the impact of pupils' speech styles on teacher attitudes. Focuses on Australian research and the classroom implications for Australian teachers and students. (RL)

Discusses the literature on interference as the cause of errors in second language speech. A study is reported which shows that interference by the native language is most often the factor responsible for the largest number of mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. (Author/AMH)