This volume presents an overview of police communications and analyzes the relationships between the people and hardware in the police system. Chapters discuss the development and use of such communication devices as the telegraph, telephone, and computers; the role of mass media, feedback, and communicative settings in human communication;…

The primary focus of this book is upon the training of local writers to enable a preliterate, minority language group to produce reading materials that reflect the cultural interests and desires of the group. The training program described in the book involves three components: intensive linguistic study culminating in a tentative orthographic…

Standard measures and techniques are needed to establish resemblances and differences among languages. A determination of the degree to which one lanquage or dialect differs from another requires the examination of language universals. To study what languages have in common, attention has to be given to the physical, psychological, and social…

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.…

The effect of language variation on language teaching is considered. It is suggested there has been a shift away from the notion that a language can be perceived by learners as a fixed system to an emphasis on its negotiability in a social context. This is not precisely the shift from grammatical concerns to functional ones, for it arises out of…

While the goal of language teaching has been the development of practical communication, most language tests have stressed mastery of discrete linguistic skills. Oral language performance-based testing requires test-takers to use and perform in the language in actual communicative situations. The variations in communication created by the…

Areas of interference between English and the Spanish of some Puerto Ricans and Cubans in Chicago is the subject of this study. Fifty-nine informants were provided with a list of everyday expressions in English, which they were to express in Spanish. The informants were classified according to education, degree of knowledge of English, and degree…

Interviews with 108 Navajo children from bilingual first grade classes on Navajo reservations were recorded. Analysis of the interviews focused on phonological, grammatical, and lexical features that show a systematic variation within the speech of individuals or between individuals. Variable features were compared with background factors such as…

This monograph explores the conflicts in attitudes toward language that occur and in which English teachers may be asked to uphold forms and conventions of traditional grammar standards while they have linguistic training and knowledge that support a more flexible language usage. Chapters deal with conflicts in attitudes toward language, language…

The Black English tests for students attempt to provide a complete picture of a Black child's language proficiency, including the child's relative proficiency in the standard and vernaculary forms of speech. Three different tests, which can be taken separately, are included in this manual. The "Discrimination Test" measures the ability to…

This report describes the use of the English negative by three adult second language learners, and relates the findings to Schumann's "pidginization hypothesis." This hypothesis states that a particular subject's restricted English was the result of his social and possibly also his psychological distance from English speakers. In order to provide…

Student editorials and letters to the editor that appeared in selected school newspapers during two school years (1949-1950 and 1973-1974) were analyzed to determine whether the more recent writing revealed characteristics usually associated with oral expression, a hypothetically negative influence of television viewing. In the analysis, only five…

Supporters of the teaching of "standard English" maintain that permitting students to retain their own dialects leads to chaos, hampers communication, and promotes ignorance. Those supporting the rights of students to retain their own dialects focus on the concept that language is constantly changing, expresses the thoughts of living people, and…

This paper explores the link between sign language research and sociolinguistic theory. It demonstrates how sign language research benefits from a sociolinguistic approach and provides validation for sociolinguistic theory. Previous research on the sign language of the deaf is reviewed, and a distinction is made between "structure-oriented" and…

This paper deals with the integrative function of sign language in the British deaf community. Sign language communities exhibit a special case of diglossia in that they exist within a larger, hearing community not necessarily characterized by diglossia itself. British Sign Language includes at least two diglossic varieties, with different…