Study investigates the attitudes and reported behaviour of 60 infant and primary schoolteachers towards accent usage and change -- the results being discussed in the light of an accent extension programme. (Author)

The Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) was designed as a diagnostic tool for 3- to 6-year-old children to assess children's abilities to use language to solve thinking problems typically posed by teachers. The PLAI was developed after observing middle-class teachers in preschool classrooms encourage children to use language in…

Argues that the lower class uses language to maintain social relationships more than to communicate information, and that lower and middle class differences in language usage explain much of the academic failure of disadvantaged and minority children. Proposes a functional approach for studying how language, socialization, and academic achievement…

The purpose of this study was to determine how status was indicated by the use of directives in homogeneous groups of adolescent females and whether differences in status designation existed which could be attributed to either class or ethnicity. Three groups of ten to twelve-year-olds (middle-class white, working-class white, and working-class…