This study investigates the effect of Facebook on Arabic language attrition, i.e., decrease in language proficiency, as exhibited in the use of Colloquial instead of Standard Arabic, use of foreign words although Arabic equivalents exist, and committing spelling errors. A sample of Facebook posts and a corpus of spelling errors on Facebook were…

This article will focus on sociolinguistic aspects in Terry Pratchett's "The Wee Free Men." In particular we will deal with the interplay of standard and non-standard British English by which the writer highlights cultural stereotypes as well as narrative ones; creating a children's tale with a distinctively adult-like character set.…

The study investigates educated Arab's preference for using foreign words in Arabic oral discourse. A corpus of commonly used English/French words was collected. A sample of language and translation students and faculty was tested and surveyed to find out whether they were familiar with the Arabic equivalents to foreign words commonly used,…

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.…

Examines the decline, death, and resurrection of the Cornish language. Looks at 17th and 18th century writings on the subject and at the problems faced in reviving the language, especially in connection with the reconstruction of its phonological and lexical components. Considers the state of Unified Cornish today. (SED)

Using as a framework the theory of the ecology of language formulated by Einar Haugen, compares two Finnish minorities in Sweden, one which ceased to exist in the middle of this century and one, the Tornedal Finnish minority, which still exists. Discusses circumstances favorable to the preservation of Finnish in the Tornedal. (SED)

Discusses the use of Swedish and Finnish in a bilingual company with offices in both countries. In some work areas, Finnish is the dominant language, in other instances, Swedish is. At many meetings, each person speaks in his/her mother tongue. There seems to be no friction over language choice. (SED)

This paper discusses research on the English of Mexican Americans, arguing that in focusing primarily on description of vernacular Chicano English, the literature describing English spoken by Mexican Americans presents an incomplete picture of the complexity of their linguistic situation. Researchers may lose sight of the range of linguistic…

The linguistic philosophies of H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin are discussed, and ways of applying their ideas to learning activities for gifted students are suggested. Grice's work focuses on prerequisites for successful conversation, the cooperative principle, and features of conversational implicature. Austin's work analyzes the distinction…

Discusses the status of the Same (Lappish) language which is distributed into six different dialect groups. Earlier research into the problems relating to the linguistic behavior of a Same group living in Finland and the position and use of their minority language is analyzed in terms of demographic, social structural, and political-legal factors.…

In Black English (BE), in addition to the motion verb "come," there exists a modal-like "come" which expresses speaker indignation. This "come" is comparable to other modal-like forms, identical to motion verbs, which occur in Black and non-Black varieties of English, and which signal various degrees of disapproval.…

The typical pattern of Chinese word formation is to have native material adapt to changed circumstances. The Chinese language neither borrows nor lends words, but it does occasionally borrow concepts. The larger cultural pattern in which this occurs is that the Chinese culture borrows, if necessary, but ensures that the act of borrowing does not…

A corpus of Black English (BEV) data is re-examined with exclusive attention to the "is" form of the copula. This analysis differs from previous examinations in that more constraints have been introduced, and the Cedergren/Sankoff computer program for multivariant analysis has been employed. The analytic techniques that are used allow for a finer…

An extrinsic relationship between generative semantics and dialect geography should be exploited because contemporary transformational grammarians have too easily ignored the work of the dialectologist and have been too readily satisfied with what might be called armchair evidence. The work of the dialect geographers needs to be taken into…

This paper asks whether the imprecision and complexity of natural language, as opposed to the language of science or logic, represent flaws or essential functional properties. It is argued that ambiguity can be manipulated by the speaker through environmentally derived characteristics. A discussion follows on the study of the functions of language…