Studies the English-speaking and French-speaking populations of the Gaspe, focusing on socioeconomic status, mother tongue retention and bilingualism rates. This is followed by a detailed study of a small, linguistically mixed community in Gaspe East, reconstructing the community as it was in 1925 and describing it as it was in 1970. (Author/RM)

Challenges the notion that a lexical code or argot necessarily defines the parameters of a sub-cultural group, and illustrates the challenge with a discussion of language particular to the homosexual community. (CLK)

Anthropological linguists often deal with language systems manifesting nonrandom variability. This article demonstrates that methods developed within the U.S. for the study of language variability are useful in the study of creole languages. This study was conducted on the island of Tobago in the West Indies. (CHK)

Presents a case study in which the use of intricate varieties of levels of honorifics in Japanese is more complicated than traditional sociolinguistics has shown. The buraku (Japanese barrio) treated here is situated in the west part of Honshu, Japan, and consists of 13 households. (CHK)

This article explores the notion that the assumptions on which the process of linguistic analysis is based relate to linguistic universals. The kinds of universals that underlie the process and their role in it are examined. (CLK)

Selected phonological, morphological, and syntactic evidence from two hours of tape recordings of conversations of a four-year-old Native American New Mexican was examined to determine its value in assessing the child's bidialectalism. (Author/SW)

Discusses the transitional unilateral code-switching observed in speakers of Hakka when speaking Cantonese. (CLK)

This article discusses how and when children acquire and master various speech styles, and specifically deals with the development of sex-specific speech as influenced by role expectations. (CLK)

A communicativity index (Index I) is described that measures the potential communication function performed by a given language in a designated communication situation. Significant sociolinguistic contrasts between the language situations of West Malaysia and Singapore are revealed by applying this index. (PMJ)