One of the most significant problems that linguists face in their attempts to describe Vernacular Black English (VBE) is the matter of fluctuating forms. It is consistently observed that speakers appear to fluctuate between a socially stigmatized variant and its presumed nonstigmatized counterpart. Fluctuations in VBE have often been viewed as a…

The assumptions of sociolinguistics are contrasted with those of its more static predecessors in light of their potential for bearing on educational problems. The focus on variability with regard to sex, age, style, socioeconomic status, race, education is more akin to the dynamics of the linguistic and educational setting in which a child finds…

Sociolinguistics is characterized by a concern for viewing language variation and for seeing language in real social contexts. It has a high potential for relationship and application to other fields such as education, sociology, and psychology. Sociolinguistics try to study the speech of a community, and instead of studying the presence or…

Course designers and teachers of English as a second or foreign language need a pedagogical grammar, that is, a collection of linguistic statements about English which specifies the linguistic behaviors that an ESL/EFL learner will need to acquire and which can easily be used in the preparation of materials and lessons. Pedagogical grammars…

Mutual distrust and suspicion between individuals from differing cultures often influence behavior in the classroom to the point of blocking learning. This "culture clash" also exists for literacy learning in that, as a national goal, reading has been imposed on certain groups whose cultures are not literate and on groups who, although their…

This study traces the syntactic interference of the dialect of 176 black children (grades 1-6) living in south-central Los Angeles when they attempt to speak standard English in the school and correlates the amount of interference with certain socioeconomic variables. Syntactical interference items investigated include verb agreement, tense,…

Sociolinguists have proposed various beginning reading approaches to remedy the reading problems of disadvantaged black children. Their programs reflect their theoretical biases concerning the nature of Black English and the type and degree of interference that may exist between the language of the Standard English (SE) text and the child's…

The selections in this book reflect a concern for understanding urban ghetto vernicular and its implications for teachers. Chapter one provides preliminary information on Black English and an orientation to the linguistic viewpoint taken by the remaining articles. Chapter two discusses the social conditions under which Black English may be spoken;…

An instrument to determine attitudes of Anglo- and Mexican-American parents toward Spanish-English bilingualism has been developed. This study examines the feasibility of revising this instrument to measure attitudes toward Puerto Rican bilingualism. Ninety-two Puerto Rican, 39 black, and 34 white parents with children in elementary schools in…

This study investigated the hypothesis that an employer's hiring decisions are influenced by certain speech characteristics of prospective employees. Simulated job interviews of four different speakers were played for 62 employers involved in actual hiring. Sets of semantic differential scales were used to measure employer's attitudes towards the…

Current research in linguistic typology shows some syntactic processes, such as rightward dislocation of modifiers, to be characteristic of certain types of languages, and that a language of that type without such processes is "unnatural" and likely to develop them. For instance, almost all languages with order Verb-Object (VO) have dislocation…

This article stresses the need for examining the total context of language, including the biological characteristics of the speaker, and anthropological, psychological, geographic, and socioeconomic factors. (CLK)

A study is reported in which Mexican-American and Anglo adolescents rated the personalities of sixteen speakers representing four language categories: English-Home, Spanish-Home, English-School, and Spanish-School. The study sought information about the Mexican-American bilingual adolescent and his reactions to his position as a bilingual.…

This study was designed to determine whether subjects would behave differently to a standard and nonstandard British-accented speaker. The matched-guise procedure was used with a stimulus speaker present, face-to-face with listeners. Listeners did not know they would subsequently be required to evaluate the speaker's personality. (Author/RM)

Misinformation and ambiguity as features of social communication in Northern Thai villages are examined. The questions of how well Northern Thai villagers understand each others' verbal communications, and how accurate their statements actually are, are considered. (Author/RM)