Pragmatics is included in one of four communicative competences (Canale, 1980). It is necessary and important to teach pragmatics at school in our globalized world in order to avoid as much as misunderstanding, which is likely to stem from cultural difference. As a result, greater importance should be attached to diverse customs and pragmatics.…

The tracing of the origin of the name of a Tidewater, Virginia, group of watermen who spoke a distinctive dialect illustrates the power of language in marking the group's social parameters and distinguishing that group from other area watermen. (34 references) (CB)

This article reviews the cultural and linguistic background of Asian Indians in the United States. It highlights some of the phonological, grammatical, semantic, and vocabulary usage peculiarities of the variety of English called Indian English spoken by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. (Author/DB)

Based on the idea that linguistic competence depends ultimately on knowledge of the culturally determined norms of language use, this paper focuses on the way business-related telephone conversations between Finns and Anglo-Americans are organized, with special attention to differences in the way the opening "How are you?" sequence is…

Discusses the signals that are used to create, sustain, and end conversational involvement in two different languages, with examples provided of paralinguistic attention getters, linguistic conversation initiation signals, "in-tune" signals, and "face-saving" signals from a study of English and Greek. (CB)

Canada is one of the few democratic societies that has addressed the issue of cultural and linguistic pluralism, incorporated it into its definition of national identity, and formulated it as a formal state policy of multiculturalism. Canada has always been an ethnically heterogeneous society, and the view that Canada values the cultural mosaic…

Using a comparative and historical approach, this paper examines linguistic perspectives on minority education, specifically language-based explanations for the reading problems of working class minority group students. The paper first discusses the ways in which competence and performance theories of language treat the relation between language…

The term "ethno-lingual relativity" is defined as a perspective that is not limited by one's own cultural and linguistic experiences, but rather is open to the contrasting cultural and linguistic patterns of other peoples. It is hypothesized that having an ethno-lingually relative perspective can facilitate one's ability to learn a new language.…

The traditional discussion of language issues is extended to multicultural settings by looking at how language shapes and is shaped by diverse cultural experiences. This review of existing studies shows that the acquisition of culture-specific communicative competence and socialization patterns plays a significant role in language acquisition and…