This paper begins with a discussion of the assumptions basic to the study of both language and social dialects: verbal systems are arbitrary, all languages or dialects are adequate as communicative systems, they are systematic and ordered and learned in the context of the community. A survey of current work and findings in dialect studies follows.…

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 BOOK PROVIDES A COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION OF DIALECTOLOGY AS A DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE AND OF MAJOR ASPECTS OF AMERICAN ENGLISH DIALECTS. THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS DEFINE WHAT DIALECTS ARE AND HOW REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS DIFFER FROM ONE ANOTHER IN TERMS OF PRONUNCIATION, VOCABULARY, AND GRAMMAR. CHAPTER 3 NOTES THE PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT…

THE WORK PRESENTED IN THIS STUDY IS AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE. THE COMPLEXITY OF THE ENGLISH DIALECT SPOKEN IN NEW YORK CITY PARALLELS THE COMPLEXITY OF THE CITY'S CHANGING SOCIAL STRUCTURE. DATA GATHERED FROM THE LARGER SPEECH COMMUNITY SHOW THAT THE VARIATION IN INDIVIDUAL SPEECH PATTERNS IS REFLECTED IN A HIGHLY…

Describes features of articulatory shortcuts discovered among middle class, educated native speakers of Spanish in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is maintained that these features should be taught to students of Spanish in order that they may understand colloquial Spanish speech. (AM)

This booklet points out some of the characteristics of the varieties of English spoken in Riverside and in the rest of California. The first chapter provides a general discussion of language variation and change on the levels of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. The second chapter discusses California English and pronunciation and vocabulary…

The following articles are included in this anthology on Chicano speech: (1) "Mexican Spanish," D.N. Cardenas; (2) "The Archaic and the Modern in the Spanish of New Mexico," J. Ornstein; (3) "Problemas Lexicograficos del Espanol del Sudoeste," A.M. Espinosa, Jr.; (4) "Associative Interference in New Mexican Spanish," J.B. Rael; (5) "Some Aspects…

This volume contains an edited version of the papers presented at a 1969 conference called by the Center for Applied Linguistics in an effort to provide information to researchers, teachers, and administrators from various fields who have seen social dialects as contributing to the complexity of their disciplines. Ten scholars represented the…

This description of Appalachian speech, derived from one part of the final report of a research project on Appalachian Dialects, is intended as a reference work for educators, particularly reading specialists, English teachers, language arts specialists, and speech pathologists. Chapters deal with the following main topics: (1) a sociolinguistic…