Details of a year-long sociolinguistic study of classroom discourse are presented in this final report, with focus on pupil perceptions of the units and features of classroom discourse. Pupils in second-, third-, and fourth-grade classrooms in a lower socioeconomic, multiethnic elementary school, viewed videotapes of language arts lessons given…

Many Puerto Rican children currently enrolled in English as a second language (ESL) classes speak Puerto Rican English (PRE). Their speech is characterized by nonstandard features, including some from Black English. Because of actual or historical interference from Spanish, they do qualify for ESL enrollment, yet their language problems are…

The first part of these findings is a report on a study of the characteristics of 120 Spanish-English bilingual children's speech over a two-year period in the classroom, on the playground, and at home. Three types of language measures were used as well as audiotaped speech samples taken in the three communication settings. Preliminary findings…

This paper proposes a tentative notational or marking system which attempts to provide more information on the sociolinguistic constraints upon the use of linguistic features than has been the case in other systems. A review of other studies in language variation, particularly those of William Labov, suggests that much can be done toward…

This paper considers the problem of differentiating thought and language in a way that makes it possible to relate them to each other. The analysis covers approaches of sociolinguistic research, different models of language and cognitive functioning within psychology and linguistics, the cybernetic approach, and psycholinguistic analyses. A common…

The major components of cross-cultural communication are treated in this collection of essays. The articles illustrate the influence which a society's values, role expectations, perception, nonverbal patterns and language behavior bring to bear on the international cross-cultural encounter. The following articles are presented: (1) "American…

A rejoinder is presented to Betty Lou Dubois' article entitled, "British-Tradition English in the American University," which considers English West African English. Objection is made to the characterization of West African English in terms of errors. It is argued that there should be recognition of a "standard" West African…

To dispel the myths of linguistic deficiency among nonstandard English dialect speakers, evidence that repudiates these myths should be examined. These myths include suggestions that nonstandard dialects are ungrammatical and cannot be used to form concepts, and that speakers of such dialects receive little verbal stimulation as children. The…

The first section of this paper focuses on misunderstandings surrounding two of the proposals for changing sexist aspects of the English language, namely, avoiding the use of masculine pronouns (he, his, him, himself) with alleged sex-indefinite reference, and replacing the word and morpheme "man" with "person" in sex-indefinite usage. Several…

Studies in the development of sexist language can provide insights into diachronic change in word meanings. Since semantic features are intimately related to the cultural and social matrices they represent, semantic change can be predicted on the basis of cultural constants as well as cultural changes. Prehistoric cultures can be reconstructed by…

These proceedings contain six conference papers with commentary and discussion: (1) Dell Hymes, "On Communicative Competence," (2) David McNeill, "How to Learn a First Language," (3) Wayne O'Neil, "A Theory of Linguistic Performance," (4) William Stewart, "Social Dialect," (5) Paul Cohen, "Some Methods in Sociolinguistic Research," and (6) S. Alan…

Yugoslavia, a country with a population of about 20,000,000, has as official languages Macedonian, Slovenian, and Serbo-Croatian. The latter is the cause of much controversy, for while Croatian and Serbian indisputably have a common linguistic base, the political and economic tensions between the two "nationalities" augment disagreement…

A china factory in Pennsylvania was the setting for a study of the characteristics of the factory, its workers, and the community. Specifically, the speech of 151 informants, representing 12 1/2% of the plant population, was analyzed for both careful and casual speech, in order to focus on lexical and grammatical forms which reflect regional and…

Historical conditions determined that the Romanian language developed independently of the other Romance languages; the language thus remains behind in its development. In the eighteenth century the activity of the Transylvanian School of philologists established the Romanian language's own linguistic bases for the assimilation of borrowings from…

This paper reports on a study done at the University of Texas at San Antonio to examine the extent of compoundness or coordinateness with respect to the language use of Spanish-English speaking bilinguals in the Southwest. The long-range purpose was to delve into the more theoretical issue of the kinds of bilingual functioning. The discussion is…