This paper argues that one important reflection of a culture's status is the existence of general reference books on it. To this end, it discusses the forthcoming "Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English," a book designed to address the lack of a comprehensive reference work on Appalachian speech and language patterns in this region. The…

Defining lexical familiarizations as devices by means of which an author gives a reader an understanding of newly introduced key lexis, this paper discusses familiarizations in content area textbooks. The various sections of the paper examine the following topics: (1) the forms taken by lexical familiarizations, including use of reader experience,…

This paper addresses the following problem: how do power relationships constrain what counts as knowledge in social studies education and thus constitute the field? By looking at speech acts performed in a given socio-linguistic community one can get insight into discursive practices of that community. The present concern is with power relations…

Evidence for speaker knowledge of morphological patterns, both derivational and inflectional, is not limited to productive patterns. Nonproductive patterns appear to be accessible in such a way that accessibility (a term preferred to "psychological reality") may be viewed as a function of four somewhat interdependent factors: (1) productivity, (2)…