Employs the matched guise technique to compare attitudes in Kentucky about Appalachian English and Standard American English held by speakers of both language varieties. The study suggests that speakers of Appalachian English partially accept low status evaluation of their dialect, but reject other negative stereotypes about their community…

Review of transcripts of supposedly invariant opinion surveys reveals, rather than suppressing their individual linguistic styles, interviewers make changes in scripted introduction and add unscripted answer-acknowledgments and commentary throughout interviews. Although this is a response to U.S. value of individuality in discourse, it conflicts…

Tests Ervin-Tripps's hypotheses concerning the relationship between several social and ecological factors and the choice of directive variants in English, using as a sample a predominantly Black male migratory agricultural labor population. Found that most of the predictions derived from Ervin-Tripp's model for these directive variants were…

Reports on one aspect of an ongoing study of language contact in the American deaf community. The ultimate goal of the study is a linguistic description of contact signing and a reexamination of claims that it is a pidgin. Patterns of language use are reviewed and the role of demographic information in judgments is examined. (29 references) (GLR)

Describes a study that investigated the distribution of the pronouns of address in the German Democratic Republic by looking at the pronouns and terms of address in different newspaper tests. Pronoun use was dependent on the kind of text, on party membership, nationality, social class, and the roles of the addressee and addressed. (SED)

Reports on the application of the concept of social network to the process of language usage among Yoruba-speaking city dwellers in Ile-Ife, Southwestern Nigeria. The study focuses on phonetic/phonological variation within common spoken Yoruba. (41 references) (GLR)

Examines the relationship between topic and gender on the basis of observation of naturally occurring conversations among all-male, all-female, and mixed-gender groups. An analysis of the relative importance or triviality of these conversations as perceived by the conversants themselves is presented. (Author/CB)

Examines sociolinguistic pressures now exerted on Gullah-speaking communities, which are similar to the general conditions described for postcreole speech communities or communities in which the traditional language variety is decreolizing or dying. There is sufficient break-down in the formerly rigid social stratification to motivate large…

Discusses a quantitative study of the use of Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI) in Sydney, which reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic of a language change in progress. The social motivations of AQI are examined in terms of local identity and the entry of new ethnic groups into the community. (Author/SED)

The impact of church affiliation on language use, identity, and change among Kwara'ae speakers in the Solomon Islands is examined. It was found that members of different sects signal their separate identities not only through linguistic code but also through discourse patterns and nonverbal aspects of communication. (26 references) (JL)

The quantification of communication network integration provides valuable information for the study of language change in very small rural communities such as Grossdorf, Austria. The approach is particularly relevant when study of aggregate group behavior has failed to yield results due to small sample size or group internal inconsistency. (26…

Presents some differences between the sign language of Black deaf persons educated before and since racial integration of the schools and relates these differences to educational policies. Evidence is provided on teachers' awareness of these differences and of educational policies before and after integration. (Author/SED)

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)