This report, part of a series that offers population and housing data collected by Census 2000, presents data on the language spoken at home and the ability to speak English of U.S. people over age 4 years. It describes population distributions for the country, including regions, states, counties, and places with populations of 100,000 or more.…

This collection of papers presents a kaleidoscope of shifting identities and loyalties in Western Europe and beyond, explaining how change is manifest in a variety of linguistic and other ways. After "Introduction" (Mike Holt and Paul Gubbins), 11 papers focus on: (1) "Language, Nationalism and Globalism: Educational Consequences of…

Using oral survey methods, this study examined potential language maintenance or loss of Mayan languages among the Guatemalan-Maya communities of Southeast Florida. Among dislocated immigrants and their children, the language of the dominant socio-economic forces often displaces other languages (Fishman, 1967). A Guatemalan community in Los…

The goal of this guidebook is to help writers activate their brains to stir up more and better ideas and details. The guide's thesis is that "good writing combines fresh ideas energized by vivid details." Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are devoted to providing thinking options for writers. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss options for paragraphing and…

Developed as part of the Milieu Language Teaching Project at the John F. Kennedy Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, this KIDTALK Behavior-Language Coding Protocol and manual measures behavior occurring during adult-child interactions. The manual is divided into 5 distinct sections: (1) the adult behavior codes describe…

The three papers presented here are critiques to a Doctoral Dissertation defense titled "Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints, and Apologies." The responses are written by the "disputants" or members of the candidate's dissertation review committee. The first paper, "Den empiriske undersogelse i 'Interlanguage Pragmatics'" (The Empirical…

CORDON is a computerized system for tracing and documenting changes in the use and frequency of word forms within textual language corpora. In its new form currently under development, CORDON will address the emergence of neologisms, both new words and new terminology within special areas (generally new uses of existing words). The system detects…

Children enjoy listening to bouncy rhythms and reciting catchy rhymes. Poetry provides a rich vehicle for helping children explore how language sounds and works. Such exploration helps develop skills related to language usage, listening, vocabulary acquisition, and auditory memory, while also fostering an understanding of thematically related…

By blending reading aloud, in particular "performance reading," with follow-up discussion, related activities, and plenty of wordplay, parents can prepare their children to think, communicate, and succeed in the adult world. Performance reading helps parents learn to read wordless books to relate to infants/toddlers; explore sounds of words to…

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…

Noting the importance of pragmatic behavior, or the socially-appropriate use of language, to parents of preschool children, this study examined developmental changes in the pragmatic teaching of preschoolers and differences in parents' goals for pragmatic teaching in private versus public interactions. Participating in the study were 29…

Based on Miguel de Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that Quixote's misperceptions are understandable; writers often describe one object to sound as if it were something else; and metaphors help readers see with new eyes. The main activity of the lesson involves students…

This paper uses data from the 1990 and 2000 Census of Population and the Census 2000 Supplemental Survey to examine how U.S. cities are being reshaped by immigration. Overall, immigrants have a similar socioeconomic profile to that of persons of the same race/ethnicity born in the United States. Among African Americans, immigrants are doing better…

This book looks at language practices in Mexican American households in Tucson (Arizona), using language as a window to peer into the complexities of women's and children's lives in the borderlands. The notion is presented that the complexity inherent in the borderlands in general and in Tucson in particular is a formative factor in the language…

This book examines oral and written communicative practices of a binational network of Mexican immigrants in Chicago and their relatives and friends remaining in three rural Mexican towns. The book's primary goals are to demonstrate the richness of the linguistic and cultural resources available to adult Mexicanos and to provide a basis for…