This article draws on longitudinal research of a linguistic ethnographic nature with four young women of Pontian Greek origin who migrated to Greece, from Russia and Georgia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and who speak Standardised Modern Greek and Pontian Greek; a language variety of the former. The article focuses on the ways in…

The main goal of this paper is to shift the focus on "learning" away from the traditional locus of inquiry in SLA--the L2 classroom--in order to extend the SLA empirical database, and by so doing extend and broaden our understanding of what it means to learn and use (in mutually reinforcing and enlightening ways) an additional, or second,…

Today, the study of regional and social dialects is offering valuable assistance to language teachers. Although studies comprehending all regions of the United States are still unrealized, linguistic geographers have undertaken comprehensive field studies of many regional language variations, making available (1) atlases describing the regional…

The Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) Project is a survey of regional and social dialects in eight southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. This manual has been prepared both for those who will conduct the research and for those who are interested in the aims and methods of the…

Research into Singapore English (SgE) has undergone many paradigm shifts from the 1970s to the present. This paper first begins with a consideration of how variation in the English language used in Singapore has been studied. It then identifies the two main varieties of English commonly described in Singapore, namely, Standard SgE (SSE) and…

Current work in American dialectology is summarized and commented on. (Available from: See FL 508 214.) (RM)

Research conducted in the Italian town of Pescasseroli revealed that cultural changes had provoked various changes in the local dialect. This dialect had been greatly transfored in the last 15 years by the modification or disappearance of old cultural models and the intrusion of new ones. (CFM)

The proposition that education affects dialect to a significant degree is examined. The findings leave doubt whether an educational differential is adequate to explain the maintenance of dialect differences between ethnic groups. (Author/RM)

The two purposes of this study were to analyze the linguistic studies of the speech of black Americans which began in 1865 and ended in 1972 and to determine, on the basis of the studies analyzed, whether or not a black dialect exists. First, 73 studies were read and analyzed; second, these studies were categorized according to the investigators'…

The first section of this paper is a general discussion of standard English. The nine sections which follow discuss the concept of correctness and the ideological differences between grammarians and purists; standard English in a historical perspective; Eric Partridge's (1969) taxonomy of the degrees and kinds of standard English, including…

The recent work by sociolinguists is more accurate for consideration of urban dialects than is the analysis provided in the "Linguistic Atlas" materials. The sociolinguists' work shows that the use of nonstandard phonological and grammatical features varies according to one's socioeconomic status, ethnic background, speech context, age,…

It seems highly likely that many of the features of Black American English can be traced back to the Afro-Portuguese Creole dialects that sprang up in the fifteenth century in Portuguese slave camps along the West African coast, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea area, the area of greatest concentration of activity during the slave trade. This…

Sociolinguistic variation in the copula system of Black English was studied in the light of the linguistic history of the dialect and universal constraints on possible grammars. An attempt was made to identify sociological factors which account for the fact that the grammar of American Black English does not exhibit evidence for a creole stage in…

At the prekindergarten and kindergarten age, children generally appear to be oblivious to dialect differences and fail to associate these differences in language variety with black speakers. (JH)