This paper states that the language called "Ebonics" is believed to be over 300 years old and that a great deal of the language was created while Black slaves were being brought from Africa to the Americas. Noting that in January of this year the Linguistic Society of America recognized Ebonics as an official language with just as much…

Multiculturalism and its attendant meanings have undergone several metamorphoses. Among many reasons, rapid technological change, the media of mass communication, easy world travel, and availability of higher education are altering both the way individuals look at their culture and the way cultures look at the individual's sense of self, leaving…

This book challenges the dominant vision of adult education and the modernist principles underlying contemporary adult education practice. It reviews the emergence of technical rationality as a driving force behind adult education today and examines the critique of the empiricist-analytical tradition of science, considering science as an ideology.…

This book of essays offers perspectives for college teachers facing the perplexities of today's focus on cultural issues in literature programs. The book presents ideas from 19 scholars and teachers relating to theories of culture-oriented criticism and teaching, contexts for these activities, and specific, culture-focused texts significant for…

Presenting the voices, perspectives, and experiences of authors from all over the world, this book presents a collage of ideas and images about well-written children's books. It contains 19 essays that discuss censorship, violence, raw images in picture books, depictions of the black family, the myth of emancipated women, political correctness in…

Autobiography is now debated as ultimately problematic, a charge that may impede the growth of a growing cultural pedagogy. As a tool in the classroom, it is under siege for many reasons: because it does not teach "real-world" skills; because in asking students to deal with painful memories, it may impede intellectual and emotional growth; and…

Growing out of a series of lectures given at universities in the United States, Canada, and England, this book reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time. It draws dramatic connections between the imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it, describing a general pattern of relationships between the…

Using multicultural readers for writing courses runs two risks--"pockmarks and pustules." Pockmarks refer to problems with the multicultural readers or books themselves, while pustules refers to characteristics associated with readers or the ones who read the books. Pockmark No. 1 is that readings may create negative opinions or…

Several specific maxims of English conversation that suggest interpersonal cooperation in the process of communication are applied to conversation in Japanese. The maxims concern implicature, a proposition implied in an utterance in a particular context but not expressly stated. It is proposed that: (1) while it is easy to overstate or exaggerate…

This book discusses the act of understanding in mathematics. The first chapter, "Understanding and Meaning," inquires into the various senses and uses of the word "understanding" in ordinary language and discusses the notion of meaning and relations between understanding and meaning. The second chapter, "Components and…

The concept of gender in language encompasses three ideas: (1) sex, or classification as masculine, feminine, or neuter; (2) epicene, a proform (substitute word) whose referent is masculine or feminine; and (3) ecology, the relationship between organisms and their environment. Gender classification in language indicates that original speakers of…

Preservice teachers enrolled in a reading methods course at a large university in the southwestern United States engage in a multicultural project which requires collaborative research. Groups are formed at the beginning of the semester, and either choose or are assigned a specific culture to research. Students then investigate the history and…

Robert L. Stevenson recently described the problems facing international communications researchers: the field has no common focal variable, no common method, and no common literature--despite this, he professed pleasure at the state of the field. This paper takes Stevenson as a starting point to analyze international communications through a case…

Standard histories of public relations privilege the field's association with business enterprise, and traditionally place the origins of the field in the press agentry of the 19th century and in the rise of corporate concern with public opinion in the first decade of the 20th century. However, the roots of public relations reach both farther and…

Through personal investigative reporting and compelling writing, H. G. Bissinger in "Friday Night Lights" (1991) explores the culture of high school football from a variety of perspectives including: students, parents, coaches, teachers, school boards, local politicians, community values regarding race, gender and education, regional…