This book analyzes the distinctive language and culture of the Internet. It offers a study of the fusion of linguistic, visual, and technological dimensions which characterize the World Wide Web. Recognizing that Internet language is being created at a prodigious rate, the authors set out to equip teachers and educators with a key to understanding…

This monograph explores the conflicts in attitudes toward language that occur and in which English teachers may be asked to uphold forms and conventions of traditional grammar standards while they have linguistic training and knowledge that support a more flexible language usage. Chapters deal with conflicts in attitudes toward language, language…

Supporters of the teaching of "standard English" maintain that permitting students to retain their own dialects leads to chaos, hampers communication, and promotes ignorance. Those supporting the rights of students to retain their own dialects focus on the concept that language is constantly changing, expresses the thoughts of living people, and…

This paper deals with the integrative function of sign language in the British deaf community. Sign language communities exhibit a special case of diglossia in that they exist within a larger, hearing community not necessarily characterized by diglossia itself. British Sign Language includes at least two diglossic varieties, with different…

This paper first explains the diversity of the Arab World, the unifying force of Classical Arabic, and that Modern Standard Arabic, less complicated in structure and less ornate in rhetoric, is sufficiently Different from colloquial dialects to require considerable instruction in schools. For contrastive analysis to be useful as a basis for EFL…

The national re-emergence of Scotland is accompanied by the desire for cultural and linguistic autonomy and identity. Issues at hand include language standardization, bilingual education, the language problems of immigrants, the role of Gaelic as compared to the continuum of linguistic varieties that go from Standard English to Scots, the adoption…

The purpose of this booklet is to describe the major differences between the Levantine (Palestinian and Lebanese) and Egyptian (Cairene) dialects of Arabic, with some references to other geographical varieties of these dialects. It is designed to provide help to persons who have learned either one dialect or the other and need to transfer to the…

Focuses on the issue of Black native languages in the educational system in the context of curricular reforms emanating from the multicultural education movement. Examines how multicultural education has dealt with the needs and concerns of African Americans and Haitians. Looks at well-publicized African American and Haitian educational events in…

Focuses on interethnic interactions in which adolescents of Asian descent put on strong Indian English accents when addressing Anglo teachers and adults; discusses the extent to which these code switchings constitute acts of resistance within a racist society. Findings indicate that the term "resistance" is too crude to do justice to the…

The Instituto Caro y Cuervo of Bogota, Colombia, named after two outstanding Colombian intellectuals, was established in 1942 primarily to complete the lexicographic work of Rufino Jose Cuervo. It has continued its work through several reorganizations, and in 1947 was charged with the study of the present state of the Spanish language in various…

A study of the factors affecting the burring of word-initial /r/ in a small English village found variability in the temporal, spatial, social, sexual, and phonic aspects of usage. Six categories of burrers are distinguished according to their speech habits. The evidence points to an ongoing socially and phonetically conditioned change in the…

The English spoken in India is too close to standard English to be characterized as a separate variety. Although phonological variations give English in India some regional flavors, they do not have any structural or semantic base and do not constitute a new language. Cultural differences have not caused English-language literature written in…

A collection of papers relevant to historical linguistics and description and explanation of language change includes: "Decliticization and Deaffixation in Saame: Abessive 'taga'" (Joel A. Nevis); "Decliticization in Old Estonian" (Joel A. Nevis); "On Automatic and Simultaneous Syntactic Changes" (Brian D. Joseph);…

This collection of symposium papers on varieties of the English language used in Ireland includes: "The Role of Irish English in the Formation of Colonial Englishes," by P. Trudgill; "Anglo-Irish Verse in Translation from Irish," by P. L. Henry; "The Methodology of Urban Language Studies," by J. Milroy;…

This is a study of linguistic variability among social levels in West Germany and of the problems associated with doing such an analysis. The data, ordered according to sex and social levels, were collected from young children retelling narratives heard on tapes. The report represents a comprehensive study of the children's syntactic performance…