In the United States, beliefs about language are inextricably linked with social status and economic opportunity. Courts, therefore, have been reluctant to resolve issues of language choice and use by methodically moving toward a synthesis of law that could be applied in current controversies over language policies. (Author/GC)

Examines one section of "The Review of Research in Education" for 1983 for ideas or information helpful to reading teachers. (FL)

Proposes the use of analogies as a means of helping secondary school students become mature and versatile readers. Offers an example of how analogy was used in one lesson. (FL)

Discusses the various functions of the Spanish gerund/participle: (1) as a constituent in the progressive construction, (2) as an adverb, (3) as an adverbial, and (4) as the head of clause. (EKN)

Examines Australian Italian and some characteristics that distinguish it from standard Italian, and discusses the problem of which to teach in the schools. (EKN)

Reviews some problems which have risen from the neglect of actual language behavior data in favor of data comprised solely of intuitions as to sentences' grammaticality. Discusses a study of syntactic variation across sex in Japanese as an example of research using socially situated real speech. (EKN)

Reports experiments in which college students provided color names for a series of color stimuli, matched color names with the same stimuli, and described colors represented by a series of elaborate color terms. Sex-related differences were found in the matching task. Women used more elaborate descriptions than men. (Author/AMH)

Notes that contemporary poets are writing sensitive and imaginative poetry that offers children insights into life and fun. (FL)

Explains several techniques for improving students' vocabulary through increasing their interest in and sensitivity to language. (JL)

Argues that sentences in the "have a V" frame are not idiosyncratic, but exhibit orderly and systematic behavior and are governed by strict semantic rules. Discusses 10 subtypes, each with a slightly different semantic formula. (EKN)

Hails the vitality of the French language in the Quebec region as it manifests itself through advertisements, from political slogans to storefront signs. Discusses the relationship between the language of the Quebecois and their culture, and offers an effective visual commentary through numerous illustrations. (MES)

Describes a study which investigated how much teachers of children with severe learning disabilities alter their grammatical complexity, sentence length, and vocabulary to match the developmental level of their students. (AM)

Presents the first part of a glossary of new social and political terms. Each entry is followed by a paragraph defining its meaning and origin, and by one or more quotations, where the word appears in unusually extensive contexts. Quotations are taken mostly from the news media. (MES)

Examines how one interprets and reacts to dirty-word descriptors. Subjects judged how much they would like a fictitious person described with dirty and non-dirty adjective pairs. Liking was influenced by: (1) semantic interpretation, (2) intrinsicalness of the adjective for the person described, and (3) contextual relations between speaker and…

Discusses results of a questionnaire survey on the use of dialect words by older adults in Canada's Prince Edward Island. (HTH)