This article serves as an introduction to a collection of four articles on multilingual practices in speech and writing, exploring both contemporary and historical sources. It not only introduces the articles but also discusses the scope and definitions of code-switching, attitudes towards multilingual interaction and, most pertinently, the…

Proposes a standardized orthography for the English Creole vernacular of Trinadad and Tobago. The reasons for this standardization are to meet the needs of a local population writing more and more in Creole, and to prepare a standard reference dictionary of the language. (43 references) (Author/CB)

The study reported here focused on the uses of the word Esperanto in selected English, French, and German newspapers over an 18-month period. Most uses were metaphorical: generally positive in articles on arts or technology, generally negative in political contexts. (Author/VWL)

Compared two Arabic stories and their English translations and two Arabic and English stories with reference to sentence organization, coordination, and subordination. Showed that Arabic and English sentences are differently organized, coordination is more common in Arabic than in English, while subordination is more frequent in English than in…

Addresses the discourse domains of academic writing in English and Polish using the example of school writing. The English argumentative-expository essay is related to its potential counterpart in Polish.(Author/VWL)

Individual bilingual language performance in occasional songs is examined with focus on the use of Danish and English by a female member of a Danish-American organization in both song-writing and organizational written recordkeeping. The findings confirm the hypothesis of a conditioning effect of features of genre and social role on the…

Intended to provide for the reader a new road to study India, the booklet encourages students to experience the languages of India as an avenue to learning something about its people. The workbook introduces the reader to the languages of India; shows through activities and research the contributions of Indian languages to English; and provides a…

Discusses the style repertoire in the context of Hindi literature, the functions of code mixing varieties in Hindi literary works, and the implications for sociolinguistics of such investigations from linguistic and stylistic perspectives. Hindi poetry from the last three decades is examined to determine the effects of language mixing involving…

The extent to which the second-language English spelling of young Welsh-English bilinguals is systematically idiosyncratic was examined from free compositions written by 10- to 11-year-old children. A model is presented of the second-language spelling process in the form of a "decision tree." (Contains 29 references.) (Author/LB)

Two experiments are reported on the array-scanning characteristics of Malaysian subjects exposed to arrays of Roman and Arabic letters. Unique search patterns were found with both letters. Ways are discussed in which these patterns may be related to the underlying linguistic structure of words in Bahasa Malaysia, English, and Arabic. (13…

Humor--and communication itself--when translating from one language to another, depends on an accumulation of shared understandings about how people say things in a given culture. Examples are given in translations of Portuguese to English and English to Portuguese. (CB)

Analysis of research involving reading comprehension ability in a second language shows that problems with illocutionary force, logical connectors, and modifiers indicate that many students are either unable to draw on a culturally appropriate memory schema for reading comprehension or have preconceived notions about word meaning that prevent them…

Focuses on the similarities and differences between the rhetorical structure of some Slavonic and English scientific texts. The study tests the assumption that scientific discourse has universal features that are language-independent. Results point to differences between the two types of rhetorical patterns resulting from cultural and academic…

The development of effective skills and basic competencies in written English for Ute students in a reservation public school system and adult Ute learners seeking high school equivalency certificates is discussed. The focus of analysis is on assessing the Ute students' assumptions about written language and their use of those assumptions when…

The graphemic and functional distribution of Chinese punctuation markers are outlined, and the implications of Chinese punctuation practices for second language instruction are discussed. Three kinds of Chinese punctuation markers are described: those graphically unique to Chinese, those written and used in the same manner in both Chinese and…