Court trials are formalized disputes in which the parties are denied confrontation and have restrictions placed on their rights to tell the story. The rights of telling are part of discourse rights, and in the courtroom they are circumscribed by attorneys' objections to either the other attorneys' questions or the witnesses' answers. This can be…

Analysis of the role of paraphrase in the cohesion of everyday oral discourse suggests that combining two methodological approaches to discourse analysis, using distribution of specific discourse elements and sequential relationships within discourse, creates a more empirical foundation for analysis, leading to a more accurate formulation of the…

Two speech styles, origin-myth telling and ritual wailing, found among the Shokleng Indians of south Brazil are analyzed from the perspective of two specific functions of speech style: (1) for indexing or highlighting the subject matter in certain contexts, and (2) for relating the contexts and subject matters to other contexts and subject matters…

A number of issues must be considered if those in the profession are to construct a theoretically and pedagogically sound definition of literacy as a word and a concept. The profession agrees that literacy is the encoding and decoding of meaning, but there is little agreement on the term "meaning." Sociolinguists define literacy as a cluster of…

A bibliography on American Indians contains almost 200 citations of articles, papers, monographs, and books in seven categories: culture (language and customs); normal speech and language acquisition (mother-child interaction, language community, form, content, usage, cognitive development); sociolinguistics (issues, dialect features, attitudes,…

A bibliography on Asian Americans contains over 100 citations of articles, papers, monographs, and books in seven categories: culture (language and customs); normal speech and language acquisition (mother-child interaction, form, content, usage, second language acquisition, cognitive development); sociolinguistics (issues, features, language…

A bibliography on Hispanic Americans contains over 200 citations of articles, papers, monographs, and books in seven categories: culture (language and customs); normal speech and language acquisition (theoretical framework, mother-child interaction, language community, form, content, usage, second language acquisition, cognitive development);…

An answer to the question of what sociolinguistics has to offer to the art of language assessment is sought in exploration of the following topics: (1) a history of the development of sociolinguistics and an outline of the research on dialectology; (2) a review of basic sociolinguistic foundations and theories about language, society, domains of…

Drawing upon research from a number of fields, this paper explores parallels between new paradigms in the sciences--particularly physics, chemistry, and biology--and new paradigms in reading and literary theory--particularly a socio- or psycholinguistic, semiotic, transactional view of reading and a transactional view of the literary experience.…

Foreign language teachers should be aware of certain sociolinguistic concepts that can be termed "language ecology," which has been defined as the study of a "language and its environment." These concepts are: classification, users, domains of use, concurrent languages, internal varieties, written traditions, standardization,…

The author differentiates eight types of verbal communication: (1) Socioeconomic, (2) Domestic, (3) Professional, (4) Sociocultural, (5) Public, (6) Legal-Administrative, (7) Recreational, (8) Entertaining. (HK)

Information is offered in this paper to aid teachers of Asian Americans in their understanding of the language learning problems which Asian Americans may encounter. Language learning is considered a social phenomenon which cannot be dissociated from other life experiences. A reading program should match the cognitive style and learning modalities…

Investigates the role of social factors and marital status in the use of expletives among married and single American women between the ages of 40 and 55. (AM)

The desirability of learning the foreign civilization in conjunction with learning a foreign language is discussed, and an approach to civilization study to be incorporated in foreign language study is set out. (RM)

Linguists should not only observe but actively try to control the internationalization of languages. Borrowings may be harmful to the smooth functioning of a language and contribute to the loss of its distinctive character. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)