In this article Renata Love Jones and Patrick Proctor introduce the notion of pursuing language to engage in critical dialogue about the nature and focus of language and literacy education in multilingual and multicultural contexts. A persistent threat in language and literacy education is standardization that constrains how language and literacy…

The achievement gaps between poor and more affluent students are persistent and chronic, as many students living in poverty are also members of more isolated communities where dialects such as African American English and Southern Vernacular English are often spoken. Non-mainstream dialect use is associated with weaker literacy achievement. The…

In discussions of cross-linguistic influence (also known as language transfer), the focus is usually on the influence of a particular structure in a particular instance of language contact, for instance, the negative transfer of serial verbs by Vietnamese learners of English: "She has managed to rise the kite fly over the tallest…

AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES WITH "BE" IN THE NONSTANDARD SPEECH OF NEGROES ARE DISCUSSED. THE AUTHOR HYPOTHESIZES THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENCES IN THE UNDERLYING SEMANTIC STRUCTURE (DEEP STRUCTURE) BETWEEN NONSTANDARD NEGRO SPEECH AND OTHER DIALECTS OF ENGLISH, AND THAT A "HABITUATIVE" CATEGORY MUST BE POSTULATED TO REMOVE STRUCTURAL…

Reconstructs the present temporal reference system of Early African American English by investigating the aspectual conditioning of a morphosyntactic construction within the domain of present temporal reference in three representative varieties. (Author/VWL)

Updated versions of "Dialects ("The Florida FL Reporter, Winter 1966-1967). Appears in "The Florida FL Reporter special anthology issue "Linguistic-Cultural Differences and American Education. (FWB)

The topic of black dialect, a timely concern in education and society, should include an understanding of the relationship between language and culture and an understanding of the differences within ethnic and environmental influences contributing to linguistic diversity. Characteristics in black dialect which reflect its descent from African…

Four realizations of the copula occur in English, two in both Anglo and Black English and two in Black English and in some varieties of Anglo English but not in standard English. This paper describes the use of the copula in English and identifies the phonological, syntactic, and semantic factors which are believed to condition its realization in…

Part of Lexicography and Dialect Geography, Festgabe for Hans Kurath''. (DD)

An idealized model of mutual second dialect acquisition in a bidialectal speech community is presented, placed in historical context, and used to illustrate the inherent social nature of hypercorrection and hypocorrection. The controversy surrounding hypercorrection for Black English is reviewed, and hypocorrection is shown to reinforce…

The Dialect Differentiation Measure (DDM) provides an objective, quantifiable means of identifying speakers of Black English. Three production tasks, designed to constrain the range of linguistic constructions with which a child may respond, elicit seven phonological and syntactic features characteristic of Black English. The DDM was tried out in…

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, November 1970, in Los Angeles, California. (DS)

The author describes an approach to teaching reading and writing in which emphasis is on the child's production of language. (Author/JB)

During the past fifteen years, a variety of linguistic analyses of the tense and aspect systems of dialects of English has been conducted. These analyses were bounded by several analytic dimensions. This paper treats three of these dimensions and discusses their interrelationships and implications in relation to two dialects--Black English and…