Examines two sex-based variations in the Irish Sign Language of Dublin, Ireland, commonly referred to as "female" and "male" signs. The differences between women's knowledge of "male" signs and men's knowledge of female signs are a result of differences in cultural opportunities to acquire full facility with both…

Attempts to reconcile the similarities and differences among Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS) dialects by suggesting that Zamboangueno was formed gradually in a downward fashion from received Spanish, aided by two components. The first is pidginization that resulted in the Spanish garrison at Zamboanga, and the second was the arrival of Manila Bay…

Addresses the issue of diverse literacies and the problems of privileging a dominant form of literacy at the expense of those from non-mainstream cultures. Illustrates how the literacy practices of working-class families and communities can be incorporated into learning programs. Stresses the need to legitimate the vernacular literacies of the…

Explored the extent to which a model of the acoustic consequences of overlapping, sliding consonantal and vocalic gestures was used to account for stress-induced changes in F2 trajectories occurring in test words embedded in a carrier phrase. Three stress conditions were studied including contrastive stress on test words, contrastive stress on the…

The spread of English has increased opportunities for native English speakers in the United States to interact with speakers of other Englishes (WE). These native speakers are rarely encouraged to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for intercultural communication, often resulting in a one-way communicative burden on the world English…

Based on an investigation of spellings of German punk fanzines, this article sketches a framework for the analysis of nonstandard spellings in media texts. The analysis distinguishes between a number of spelling types, which include both representations of spoken language and purely graphemic modifications, and three patterns of spelling usage:…

Suggests that variation in spelling, like other levels of language variety, reflects social practices in speech communities. While the social identities and stances encoded in such variation are not simple to interpret, they offer another mode of investigation of language in social space and practice. (Author/VWL)

Presents three studies that provide a test of gender-as-culture, or "two cultures," hypothesis proposed by Maltz and Borker (1982) to explain male/female differences in language use. Finds that gender preferences for language use among undergraduate students function in ways that are consistent with stylistic preferences that distinguish national…

Offers insight into English in the multilingual nation of South Africa at the turn of the new millennium. Describes the social history of English in South Africa to provide the background against which this special issue of this journal came about. Highlights features of each of the articles included in the issue. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the extent to which users of Black South African English (BSAE) command the vowel system of English. One mother tongue speaker each of English, Southern Sotho, and Zulu read a set of stimulus words representing various monothong contrasts in standard South African English. Results are discussed in relation to the question of whether…

Attempts to show that the move to stem the popularity of Singlish (Singapore English) is another manifestation of the notion of creative destruction, currently being proposed as a strategy to improve partial destruction of existing economic ideas and structures that rapidly obsolesce with the emergence of new ones. Argues that attempts to replace…

Variation in the past-tense model of the verb "be" is widespread amongst English dialects, and is often considered to be the result of analogical levelling. Through an analysis of non-standard "was" in buckie English, a variety spoken in a small fishing town in northeast Scotland, this article shows that the historical record…

Demonstrates the specific ways in which the influence of Chinese manifests itself in the structure of the noun phrases containing relative-clause modifiers in colloquial Singapore English. Argues that while previous researchers have been correct in pointing out the substratal influence of Chinese, they have not gone far enough in articulating the…

Part of a large-scale study on variation in American Sign Language, this article examines variation in the form of the sign DEAF, which can be produced by moving the forefinger from ear to chin, from chin to ear, or by contacting the lower cheek. Multivariate analysis of more than 1600 tokens of DEAF extracted from sociolinguistic interviews shows…

Highlights modes of evidence in large corpus research that may be significant for Sociolinguistics. Suggests that corpus data can help Sociolinguistics engage with issues and variations in usage that are less abstract then phonetics, phonology, and grammar but more proximate to the socially vital issues of the 20th century. (Author/VWL)