Discusses two conflicting hypotheses concerning the nature of the New Zealand English short vowel system. Concludes that both hypotheses are to a certain extent wrong and to a certain extent correct. (Author/VWL)

When readers fail to relate to the cultural context of writers, gross misunderstanding results. When professional readers whose first language is English fail to enter the discourse of professional literary writers or authors who are bi- or multi-lingual and use English for literary creativity, blame is laid on the writers' 'poor' linguistic…

Immigrants' age of arrival (AOA) in a country where a second language (L2) must be learned has consistently been shown to affect the degree of perceived L2 foreign accent. Although the effect of AOA appears strong, AOA is typically correlated with other variables that might influence degree of foreign accent. This study examined the pronunciation…

The Muskogee dialect letters provide one of the most interesting combinations of fictional viewpoints and political commentary in American Indian letters. This article features the life story of Thomas E. Moore. This article also presents the fictional literary works of Moore and compares his dialect writings to Alexander Posey. Moore is the most…

Singapore's annual Speak Mandarin Campaign has been largely successful in shifting the language patterns of its Chinese citizens from Chinese dialects to Mandarin in all sectors. However, there has been a notable exception: the effort to have Chinese Singaporeans give their children Mandarin names, rather than dialect ones. In this paper, we…

In "The New Language of the Old West," "Deadwood"'s creator and executive producer David Milch offers an extended exposition of the television show's language: "Language--both obscene and complicated--was one of the few resources of society that was available to these people.... It's very well documented that the obscenity…

Using data consisting of descriptive and expressive-narrative essays written in 1969 and 1979 by black 17-year-old students in the stratified probability sample from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a study investigated which language patterns differentiated the NAEP essays written by black students in 1969 from those…

This paper proposes a tentative notational or marking system which attempts to provide more information on the sociolinguistic constraints upon the use of linguistic features than has been the case in other systems. A review of other studies in language variation, particularly those of William Labov, suggests that much can be done toward…

Representative research studies of the interference of Vernacular Black English (VBE) on beginning reading of VBE speakers at the phonological, grammatical, and lexical and content levels are examined. The following conclusions emerge: (1) phonological interference in learning to read has not been established; (2) VBE does not clearly interfere…

Twenty-four English speakers from various regions of India were tested for the intelligibility of their speech. Recordings of speech in a variety of contexts were evaluated by listeners from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, and Germany. On the basis of the resulting intelligibility scores, factors which tend to hinder…

This discussion begins with a brief description of three approaches to teaching standard Spanish as a second dialect (S.S.S.D.), called the "eradication" approach, the "second dialect" approach, and the "both dialects" approach, which is favored here. Because the teacher of standard Spanish as a second dialect is…

The Swedish address system is in a state of rapid change. Consequently, Swedes are now more than ever sensitive to the seeming lack of generally accepted rules of usage. This paper attempts to codify the rules for usage of the personal pronouns "du" and "ni." In so doing, it finds that "du" may be used to express…

This document presents a series of lectures on various aspects of the language problems of inner-city children delivered during the second semester of the 1969-70 academic year at the Department of Urban and Overseas English Programs of the School of Education of Indiana University. The papers are: Roger W. Shuy, "Sociolinguistic Strategies for…

Samples of taped readings recorded by a black and a white speaker, each reading the identical two stories, were played to four groups of white teachers, 87 in number. The latter were asked to evaluate certain characteristics of the speakers, using an adjective checklist and multiple choice questions. Results indicated that the black speaker and…

Previous studies have demonstrated that certain differences in speech behavior can be related to the social characteristics of speakers. However, these studies have not explicitly examined the effect of level of linguistic analysis on correlations observed between language variables and status variables. Three levels of analysis of a linguistic…