This paper reviews research about how speaking a dialect can influence students' writing and how writing should be taught to students who speak a dialect of English. Literature on the writing errors commonly made by speakers of Black English and other American dialects is summarized. (PP)

This book examines linguistic variation and change. Section 1, "Sociohistorical Linguistics," includes: (1) "British Vernacular Dialects in the Formation of American English: The Case of East Anglian 'Do'"; (2) "'Short o' in East Anglia and New England"; and (3) "Sociohistorical Linguistics and Dialect Survival:…

Presents an objective quantitative analysis of separate dialect features from the "Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States." Findings suggest that a mathematical modeling of areal variation of dialect features, combined with a reassessment of traditional notions of dialect, could contribute to knowledge of language and…

This book is a talking tour of American English. Short easy-to-read essays explicate the key features that make American speech so expressive and distinct. The tour begins in the South, home of the most easily recognized of American dialects, travels north the New England, then west to the Midwest, and on to the far west and Alaska and Hawaii. In…

This article summarizes African American Vernacular English (AAVE) phonological features from the perspective of phonetic transcription. Relevant International Phonetic Alphabet symbols and diacritics are discussed, as well as the importance of transcription detail when differentiating dialect variation from phonological delay or disorder. A chart…

This paper specifically focuses on the balance between local dialect and the language standard through the examination of generational markers reflecting upheaval and social transformation, as presented from a case study from Denmark, conducted over 8 years in three field trips. Generation is redefined as experiencing specific socio-historical…

A lexical comparison of four native speakers' spontaneous discourse in the Acadian French spoken in a southern Nova Scotia village with standard spoken French is described. This study is part of a larger study of four regional variations on Nova Scotia Acadian French and has as its objectives both linguistic analysis and improvement of standard…

Discusses the Puerto Rican dialect and its peculiar placement of subject pronouns. Notes the linguistic variety in the dialect as well as its use of verbs connotating mental and communicative activity and constructions of relativity. These distinctions give rise to the functional hypothesis to account for the peculiarities of Spanish in the…

Argues that teaching about Italian dialects ought to form an integral part of the Italian curriculum and offers ideas on what could be included in such a course. Points out that the study of these dialects can teach students about the history and synchronic structures of standard Italian as well as the role of Italian sociolinguistics as it…

Every spoken linguistic system shared by a community has structurally related regional variants. For example, the variant of the present day French for "soixante-dix" is "septante" in eastern France, Belgium, and the French-speaking community of Switzerland. This suggests that Proto-Romance has regionalisms. Using the…

Eight general principles are postulated by which immigrants adapt dialectologically to their new surroundings, based mainly on results of a developmental study of six Canadian youngsters in two families who moved to southern England, with supporting evidence from several other studies. (52 references) (Author/LB)

This paper explores how one facet of the process by which ideology about linguistic variation originates and circulates. It analyzes an archive consisting of newspaper articles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about Pittsburgh speech, the earliest of which is from 1910. The articles began appearing regularly during the 1950s-60s. First, the paper…

Following Roman Jakobson, this article attempts to outline the affinity between linguistic change induced by language contact and conflict, and the poetic function of language. This phenomenon can be observed by studying the discourses of trilingual speakers in the Aosta Valley in Northern Italy. The problematic position of French is reflected and…

In response to the problem of high rates of referral of black students to special education and related services due to their use of non-standard English (African American Vernacular English, AAVE), a project was undertaken to assess and address the issue in Baltimore (Maryland) public schools' special education services. An ethnographic study of…

Discusses Ocracoke English as an endangered dialect, examining the social responsibility linguists and dialectologists should assume in documenting and disseminating information about the state of moribund dialects and describing a community-based, collaborative model involving the development of materials and programs that foster knowledge of and…