This document shares Dr. Walt Wolfram's views on African-American Dialect. He states that the most elementary principle is that all language is patterned and rule-governed, and one can apply that principle to African-American English, Appalachian English, and to every other dialect that is examined.

Discusses syntactic and stylistic errors in the language of advertising and the reason for these linguistic irregularities. Suggests ways of dealing with the problem. (EL)

An essay compares Japanese and American language, reflecting on the fundamental culture-based differences between methods of communication in Japan and the United States. Japanese and Americans have different systems of logic and thought, attitudes, and ways of expressing themselves, all of which are affected by their respective background…

A small-scale survey of adult native speakers of British and North American English found that a majority of speakers of the latter prefer the simple past tense in (what the author calls) the category of "past with current relevance." (five references) (CNP)

In standard American English, the word "like" has several senses associated with it, the earliest of which dates to the 14th century. Some meanings reflect recent developments in the language and suggest that the lexical aspects of the word are changing toward a more grammatical function. Analysis of historical information and data collected in…

The conciseness and "ease of use" often attributed to North American English relative to French in standard contemporary usage is explained in terms of English morpho-syntactic structure and of the values of the classical norm and rhetoric affecting French. (Author/MSE)

Claiming that understanding the social context in which words are formed is necessary to appreciate the richness and vitality of language, this book presents an informal, discursive examination of how and why American speech came to be the way it is, and in particular where the words came from. The book follows a roughly chronological format from…

The Whorfian Hypothesis, which states that the structure of one's language influences the understanding of reality, is examined in relation to the Chinese language and culture and to the English language and American culture. Examples supporting the Whorfian Hypothesis are offered in language relating to personal relationships. Research on the…

Patterns of dialect shift and language standardization in the United States are examined and illustrated with regional dialect maps. In particular, the relationship between the disappearance of regional accents and negative attitudes about accents is discussed. It is concluded that there is a long-term trend toward a more uniform accent among…

Differences in spoken and written English appear at every level of the language; there are differences in phonology, morphology, vocabulary, and syntax, as well as differences in acceptability levels. This study contains four sections and an inventory of contrasting forms. Section One deals with domains and modalities including those discourse…

The choice of a reliable authority for use in decisions of grammatical acceptability in English is discussed. It is argued that commonly-heard "rules" of English grammar offer advice that is either prescriptive or proscriptive, not descriptive, and often based on inaccuracies or flawed linguistic analyses. This is illustrated in the case of…

Two papers address different issues in linguistic theory. "Attitudes, Norms and Standardization in English: Some Aspects of the Language In Its Social Context," by Bent Preisler, looks at how attitudes affect language norms and ultimately, standardization in British and U.S. English. It begins with the attitudes and communicative…

This paper draws from a number of sources, from Muhammad Ali to TV commercials, to demonstrate the quite different conceptions that black and white Americans have of the meaning of boasting and bragging. For blacks, boasting and bragging are two distinct ways of speaking and communication. Boasting is a joking, playful verbal bahavior, not to be…