Wisconsin Walloon is a heritage dialect of a threatened language in the langue d'oïl family that originated in southern Belgium and expanded to northeastern Wisconsin, USA in the mid-1850s. Walloon-speaking immigrants formed an isolated agricultural community, passing on and using the language for the next two generations until English became the…

As the discipline of language documentation and description evolves, so do the expectations placed on researchers. Current trends emphasize collaborative efforts that prioritize tangible contributions to the community, such as a pedagogical grammar, dictionary, or collection of texts. Some argue that for unwritten languages orthography development…

Although traditional, unitary models of language standardisation have been prominent in minority languages, it is contended that this approach reproduces dominant language hierarchies and hegemonies, diminishes linguistic diversity and marginalises speakers who do not conform to prestige models. The polynomic model has been described as an…

A replication was conducted of Sterling Leonard's 1932 survey of "Current English Usage," which submitted a questionnaire of expressions to judges consisting of linguists, journalists, teachers, and businessmen. It was hypothesized that more of the expressions in Leonard's study would be acceptable today (looser standards) than was the…

This study investigates the extent to which nonstandard forms of written English create for readers stereotypes of the writer's personality. To determine the extent to which nonstandard writing is apparent to speakers of standard and nonstandard English, and to what extent such writing represents a socioeconomic liability for the writer, two…

Reports on a survey of how laypeople responded to errors in usage, their attitudes toward the acceptability of certain errors, and the values they placed on certain language styles. (RL)

Analysis of college students' interpretation of sex-indefinite paragraphs using the generic he, he or she, or they found that men, regardless of pronoun and their personal use of gender-indefinite pronouns, interpreted more male and fewer female referents than women. (64 references) (Author/CB)

Parallels between processes in society and in language are drawn in this analysis of problems involved in eliminating sexism in language. The paper is organized as follows: varieties of sexism in language are outlined; the linguistic notion of marking is applied to the sexist structures; psychological aspects of such marking are considered;…

Reports a study investigating how multilingual language learners evaluate their own multilingualism, how they view the interaction of their different languages, and whether they think the different languages help or hinder them when speaking, listening, understanding, or writing the foreign languages. Ways in which these perceptions can be used to…

Relates the English language spelling system to sound and examines whether spellers make use of the information available in that relationship when spelling words. Describes how certain phonological features of a dialect spoken along the northeast coast of Newfoundland influence spelling errors among fourth graders. (SB)

Six empirical studies have revealed undesirable effects of the use of the generic term "man" and its alternative forms to indicate both males and females. The studies have dealt with the effects of the use of generic terms and of the label "Male Interest" in job advertisements, the question of whether people perceive generic terms in sentences and…

The articles included in this volume were selected as exemplary papers from the conference in Mexico. The goal of the forum was to provide an opportunity for researchers from the three branches of the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (UAM) to meet and discuss research projects currently in progress at the university. The works presented here…

A survey investigated the attitudes of educated Greeks about possible modifications in the orthographic representation of written Greek. Subjects were 82 students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program in English Language and Literature offered at the University of Cyprus. The subjects were administered a 20-item Likert-type questionnaire…