The public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By…

Formality has long been of interest in the study of discourse, with periodic discussions of the best measure of formality and the relationship between formality and text categories. In this research, we explored what features predict formality as humans perceive the construct. We categorized a corpus consisting of 1,158 discourse samples published…

Uses trademarks that are calculated misspellings, bumper sticker slogans, the strained and pretentious language of Howard Cosell, and governmental jargon to illustrate how to attune students to the magic and power of language, while poking fun at language abuse. (RL)

A comparative analysis of four studies that emphasized linguistic similarities (rather than differences) between nonstandard speakers and other groups focused on developmental characteristics of the semantic categories encoded by nonstandard speakers compared with other speakers. Implications for language assessment are discussed. (JW)

Examines methods of teaching the stylistics of language usage, emphasizing revision in the composing process. (RL)

Covering a 500-year span, this article traces the changes in and evolution of the Spanish language from its earliest written accounts in the eleventh century to the Spanish that was brought by the Conquistadores to the New World. (DS)

It has been suggested that all speech communities have varieties of simplified speech regarded as appropriate for use with individuals who do not have a full command of a language. These simplified codes are conventionalized within speech communities and are learned by the same process of cultural transmission as other language behaviors. This…

Current practices and materials for teaching English as a second language (ESL) contain oversimplifications about English based on the assumption of a uniform language type and standard of usage, presented to foreign learners for pedagogical clarity. ESL teachers may be aware of the language's diversity but are not prepared to provide…

The Communication Committee of the South African National Council for the Deaf is currently developing an artificial sign language which could be used with all of the country's ethnolinguistic groups. Guidelines and constraints for developing such an artificial language are outlined. (CB)

Investigates the tonal changes in Mandarin Chinese from 1932 when "standard Mandarin" was legitimized to the period between 1963-85 during which two studies on tones were carried out. Discussion focuses on differences over time, and on differences between actual pronunciations or words in Taipei and Beijing and their dictionary…

A review of research concerning bilingual (English and Spanish) Chicanos' use of code-switching during spontaneous oral narrative indicates that such code-switching may be organized to achieve more dramatic effects through personalizing (as opposed to objectionalizing) certain parts of the narrative and through techniques of foregrounding and…

Reviews the general trends of research concerned with second language phonology, citing several principal factors involved in foreign accent such as age and native language interference. More recent investigations show that pronunciation of a foreign language is influenced by factors of stylistic variation and stages of development unrelated to…

Traces the history of the presence of black people's languages in Great Britain and also provides a contemporary perspective on current needs to define and articulate these language needs and to contribute toward the theory and development of language teaching, teacher training, and production of teaching material. (Author/CB)

Nonnative institutionalized varieties of English (NIVEs) are placed within a wide framework that includes the study of language contact and language acquisition in general. NIVEs and other contact varieties are explored from a sociolinguistic as well as second-language acquisition perspective. (105 references) (Author/LB)

Traces the development of "Australian English" from the 1940s to the present time, noting a radical change in both public and individual acceptance. Briefly surveys the extent of the scholarly documentation of Australian English in dictionaries and style manuals, and addresses the question of Australianness in a range of text types and…