Defines and traces the history of diglossia, and offers an extensive bibliography on the subject. The need for an overall integration of research within the socioevolutionary context of diglossia is highlighted. (32 references) (LT)

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)

A theory that the consonant system of Chipewyan has been reduced from 39 to 16 segments, as influenced by Cree, was based on an incoherent and indiscriminate admixture of variable data; instead, there is evidence of intralinguistic divergence, not interlinguistic convergence, because the observed changes are those frequently observed in other…

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)

Summarizes the main points presented in the 1989 book, "The Death of Black English" by R.R. Butlers (1989). Butler's book presents most important research of last 20 years and subjects the results to variation analysis. It is concluded that the history of linguistic assimilation points to the eventual disappearance of Black English in…

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)

An approach to Greek diglossia is proposed, focusing on the differing social functions of the two coexisting Greek languages. Reasons for the success of the 1976 language reform abolishing diglossia, and the resulting revival of the argument questioning Demotic Greek, are examined and concluded to be attributed to a crisis of national identity.…

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…

Explores the status of the Zamboangueno dialect, discusses the various stages of decreolization in the direction of Spanish, and suggests possible avenues for the continued introduction of elements from an acrolect which, for all intents and purposes, is no longer generally available to residents of Zamboanga, Philippines. (Author/CB)

The growing secularization of Israeli lifestyle and the increasing influence of foreign languages as manifested in the local media have given rise to new forms of language secularization. This article discusses and provides examples of the secularization of Hebrew, which has split modern Hebrew into two varieties--religious and secularized. (13…

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)