The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a number of syntactic phenomena in modern English, specifically but not exclusively in British English, that can be characterized as urban/suburban near-standard usage. These phenomena are representative of a type of feature that has to date received relatively little attention from linguists. One…

Addressing the common misconception that Japan is a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, and monolingual society, this article focuses on several areas of sociolinguistic concern. It discusses: (1) the bimodalism of the Japanese deaf population between Japanese Sign Language as native language and Japanese Spoken Language as acquired second language; (2)…

A communicativity index (Index I) is described that measures the potential communication function performed by a given language in a designated communication situation. Significant sociolinguistic contrasts between the language situations of West Malaysia and Singapore are revealed by applying this index. (PMJ)

Discusses the birthday notices that appear in the advertising section of the Papua New Guinea "Post Courier." The texts of these notices are analyzed from a sociolinguistic perspective, and their context is considered as a register of the variety of English that has become known as Papua New Guinea English. (Author/OD)

Sociolinguistic studies of spoken Arabic show at least three varieties at different levels of prestige: (1) Modern Standard Arabic (MSA); (2) regional standard with local prestige; and (3) vernacular varieties. The social function of the local prestigious nonstandard features can override the influence of the prestige of MSA. (Author/LMO)