In the globalized economy, old metadiscursive regimes have been challenged by new conditions which are often considered to be more favourable to heteroglossic practices. In Flemish Belgium, the liberalization of the TV market is said to have transformed the broadcaster VRT from a public service aiming at educating viewers into a competitive…

The present study focuses on the language attitudes underlying patterns of stylistic variation in the speech of a female former President of the Spanish local Government of Murcia. We build on previous quantitative work demonstrating that this speaker shows unexpectedly high usage levels for nonstandard Murcian Spanish features in public speech,…

Earlier sociolinguistic studies distinguish between Standard English and Black English with respect to indirect question formation. Standard English typically does not invert the tense-marker "do" in the imbedded question ("Ask John if he played basketball today") while Black English does ("Ask John did he play basketball today"). In fact, the…

Describes the dilemmas involved with teaching Standard American English (SAE) while still accepting and not judging nonstandard dialects. Relates how the teacher used "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw to show students why they needed to learn SAE. (PRA)

Focusing on the social variation of language, this paper provides an overview of basic sociolinguistic concepts deemed to be necessary information for teachers involved in the language and literacy development of children who speak nonstandard dialects. The first section of the paper discusses three things that teachers must understand about…

The variation seen as deviation among the nonstandard styles of English does not represent a decay of the language, but rather, is necessary for simplification and other changes of English structure. The modern-day English pronominal system resulted from the incorporation of Scandinavian forms in the North and East Midland dialects of Middle…

One of the most significant problems that linguists face in their attempts to describe Vernacular Black English (VBE) is the matter of fluctuating forms. It is consistently observed that speakers appear to fluctuate between a socially stigmatized variant and its presumed nonstigmatized counterpart. Fluctuations in VBE have often been viewed as a…

This study was designed to determine whether subjects would behave differently to a standard and nonstandard British-accented speaker. The matched-guise procedure was used with a stimulus speaker present, face-to-face with listeners. Listeners did not know they would subsequently be required to evaluate the speaker's personality. (Author/RM)

Analyzes some of the educational problems that can arise from teachers' lack of awareness of the systematic differences between standard English and nonstandard dialects. Discusses the serious linguistic and social consequences of the situation in Britain, where most schoolchildren speak nonstandard English. (SK)

The paper is a survey of past and current research on attitudes toward Spanish language accented English in home, school, and community settings. The study highlights issues pertaining to Mexican American accented speech and the need for further research on the choice and motivation for an individual's favoring different degrees of accentedness.…

This paper discusses some of the problems faced in working with competing theories of basic writing and suggests its own kind of theoretical analysis of nonstandard writing. A brief overview of basic writing theories is presented, and the theories are categorized into two approaches: a traditional approach of teaching by prescription in an…

This paper examines the language used by workers in a china factory in order to present the characteristics and underlying features of occupational jargon. The paper shows: (1) jargon is affected by regional-local pronunciation, grammatical expressions and lexical items, and by individual speech styles which result from general linguistic…

Explores how a speech variety close to oratorical standard English is learned in one Afro-American peasant community in the West Indies. Material gathered during two field trips, one supported by a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and the other by a National Institute of Mental Health grant. (VM)

Contends that despite many overlapping characteristics, second dialect teaching requires a methodology distinct from that used in second language teaching, and discusses psychological, sociological, cultural, and linguistic aspects of second dialect teaching. (FB)

Offers arguments for and against the teaching of grammar in the English classroom. (RL)