Part of the Grade Teacher Special report, "Linguistics and the Language Arts.

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that the use of swear words by women elicits more negative perceptions of the speaker than the use of the same words by men. Subjects (undergraduates) read vignettes describing fictitious clients' initial interviews at a mental health center. One described a forty-year old teacher troubled by…

IT IS IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE THAT APPALACHIAN CHILDREN ARE NOT ILLITERATES. THEY HAVE A VERY SOPHISTICATED LANGUAGE WITH WHICH THEY COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITHIN THEIR OWN COMMUNITY. THEIR LANGUAGE SYSTEM, HOWEVER, IS NOT LIKE THE STANDARD AMERICAN ENGLISH, BUT IS LEARNED ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY FROM ORAL TRADITION AND HAS CHANGED VERY LITTLE FOR…

There are 452 idioms in this listing compiled from the 1,920 idioms in Gaetano Massa's work, "Italian Idioms and Proverbs." The study attempts to determine the range and frequency of each idiom by checking the master list against the end-vocabularies of 25 representative Italian texts consisting of novels, short stories, and plays. A bibliography…

Right dislocations are expressions of the following form: (1) "They told the Grand Jury a number of lies, the Nixon men." (2) "We find we have to limit our social schedule, my husband and I." (3) "Mary always wears a frown, the ugly witch." They are found also almost exclusively in the spoken language. This paper…

This paper defines the grammatical role of a particle in Swahili in terms of the semantic information which it contributes to all utterances in which it occurs. The particle -A occurs in the syntactic configuration Noun 1 -A Noun 2 and has been traditionally described as reflecting relations of possession and attribution between the two nouns in…

The role of language structure in the classroom is discussed, and the limitations of the formal analysis of language is enumerated. It is argued that most language problems derive not from difficulties with language form, but from covert differences in value which are characteristically associated with those forms. Examples are given of conflicts…

Even though linguistics has freed us from misconceptions, we have continued to seek answers to usage problems primarily by looking to linguistics. The myth of the verbal authority of standard speakers has given way to the evaluation of statistical frequency of forms. No matter how extensive or accurate the statistics, they must still be followed…

This volume is a selection of papers prepared for a conference on sociolinguistically oriented language surveys organized by the Center for Applied Linguistics and held in New York in September 1971. The purpose of the conference was to review the role and function of such language surveys in the light of surveys conducted in recent years. The…

A series of computer programs and routines designed to assist researchers in the analysis of language usage was developed by the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL). This document is one of a series that describes design specifications for the individual modules which comprise the Language Analysis Package (LAP). The Content Module functions as a…

The identification and study of 20 syntactical patterns responsible for much of the structural ambiguity found in literary composition can develop in students an audience awareness. When they realize that such constructions as "a dull boy's knife" and "the club will be open to members from Monday to Thursday" can be misinterpreted, they take more…

The oral and written language of 10 students expressing themselves on the same subject was observed to determine (1) whether an "oral style" could be identified and (2) what relationship existed between cognitive processes and methods of expression. Six girls and four boys were placed in two situations: an "oral" situation in…

An attempt is made in this book to state some of the features of and dispel some of the myths about nonstandard English, particularly the dialects of English spoken by many black Americans, and to consider alternative policies that might be adopted regarding varied forms of English. The chapters of the book include "What Is the Problem?""Is…

Describes the characteristics of language conflict and examines the areas of emphasis in the literature, including multilingualism and linguistic identity, glottophagia and minority/majority relations, the danger of reliance on language censuses, conflict resolution/avoidance, and the importance of ecolinguistics in conflict description and for…

Detailed analysis of frequencies of the primary auxiliary verb "be" in Scots dramatic texts leads to consideration of the typological relationship said to exist between different varieties of Scots and between them and standard English. (Author/CB)