This dissertation draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

Recent studies of Asian American youth language practices have presented compelling insights about the identities and migration experiences of young people of Asian descent. This article offers a detailed examination of the relationship between language use and select issues concerning Asian American youth, including social life, schooling,…

The factors which underlie discussions of the legitimacy, pedagogy, and politics of the variants of Spanish spoken in the United States are discussed. [In Spanish] (Author/NQ)

Indian English is a variety of the English language used as a second language by Indian bilinguals. This paper reports on a computerized survey of the grammar of Indian English, consisting of the classification of 230 expressions "of whose standing there might be some question" by a group of linguists and teachers of English in India, in…

A review of research concerning bilingual (English and Spanish) Chicanos' use of code-switching during spontaneous oral narrative indicates that such code-switching may be organized to achieve more dramatic effects through personalizing (as opposed to objectionalizing) certain parts of the narrative and through techniques of foregrounding and…

This introduction to sociolinguistics is presented in four parts. The first part gives an overview of this branch of language study, its scope and principles of inquiry, and its basic and key concepts. This portion is written for individuals with no prior knowledge or expertise in the subject. Topics covered in this section include: the nature of…

Language attrition research usually attempts to elicit all types of usage from speakers of all fluency levels in a dying language in order to abstract changing linguistic patterns from situational variation. Informants adept at hiding their vernacular and improvising in an obsolescing variety are reluctant to admit to such scrutiny. In a…

Two basic approaches to language treatment have been defined, the policy approach and the cultivation approach. The former deals with the selection of a national language, standardization, literacy, orthography, and the stratification of code varieties, and is a macro approach. The latter concerns correctness, efficiency, specialized functions,…

As stated in Part 1 of this discussion, Canada is a hybrid, making use of both the macro, or policy, model and the micro, or cultivation, model of language treatment. Some concrete measures are taking place in language status and corpus planning on the inter-federal-provincial level and the provincial level, particularly in Quebec. One such…

The purpose of this paper is to provide classroom teachers with background information about code switching and its role and function within a bilingual community. The many facets of code switching and its varying characteristics are described in some detail, as well as code switching in the classroom and the importance of the teacher's attitude…

This study examines the hypothesis that the French used by a large number of Franco-Ontarians represents a linguistic system (or several systems) that differs from Standard French. In addition, a review of previous research leads to the inverse hypothesis, that Ontarian French represents a body of different systems or sub-systems that are more or…

Three similar experiments were conducted to assess language variation and politeness in the speech of English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children, and in Armenian children learning English as a second language. Each experiment elicited request strategies from the children with the use of puppets in a structured conversation. While…

A role-playing procedure for elicitation of speech acts was designed to study aspects of the communicative competence of second language learners, namely, their language variation with respect to deference when the age and sex of the addressee are systematically manipulated. Sixteen Spanish-speaking adult learners of English as a second language…

An approach to translation is discussed which takes into account the sociolinguistic factors involved in a translated document designed for use with a linguistically, culturally and educationally heterogeneous population, such as the U.S. Spanish-heritage community. The translation project described resulted in the Spanish-language questionnaire…

English in Third World countries characteristically possesses an ambivalent, even ambiguous character, relating uneasily with feelings of nationalism and of tolerance towards grassroots multilingualism on the one hand, and with the not-so-blind desire of common people to acquire the White people's language on the other. Many different kinds of…