While language switching among multilinguals has been studied in a wide variety of contexts, few attempts have been made to generalize or to integrate findings into useful communication theory. Since language switching is an important part of personal as well as group identity and since issues surrounding language identity are often a focal point…

Current patterns of Patois (introduced by West Indian Creoles) as used by young Jamaicans in England is presented. Forty-five British-born individuals, aged 16 to 23, whose parents were Jamaican immigrants, participated in a study structured to elicit a wide range of speech patterns. Subjects differed greatly in educational background and in…

The language separation approach to bilingual teaching is compared to three kinds of language alternation approaches, "flipflopping,""concurrent translation," and the "New Concurrent Approach" (NCA). The approaches are categorized as conventional, unstructured, and structured, respectively. The effectiveness of the NCA is compared favorably to the…

This study examines the occurrence of transfer in the simultaneous acquisition of French and Hebrew by 57 native English-speaking children in a primary grades French/Hebrew immersion program in Montreal. The study focuses on three issues: (1) whether transfer of genetically related first and second languages differs quantitatively and…

A unifying methodology of diffusion studies is presented treating geographical, sociological, and historical phonomena of language within the same framework. Patterns of linguistic innovation and the social and psychological motivations for such a change, both in the individual and in society, are summarized in their functions as predictors of…

Writing teachers should consider cultural pluralism as a rich resource in their classrooms, rather than as a distraction with which to cope. Because speakers of nonstandard English have important language skills in at least two different dialects, teachers should not only teach the standard dialect but also invite nonstandard English speaking…

Insight into processes involved in child bilingualism is provided by this account of the "primary language acquisition" (in the sense of Lamendella, 1977) of two languages, English and Hebrew, by a 4 1/2 year old subject. The child's re-entry into her first language, Hebrew, after a year spent in an all-English environment, is traced. Of central…

Developments in the linguistic and non-linguistic scenes in the Philippines indicate the emergence of a dialect of English that should appropriately be labelled Philippine English. Filipinos paradoxically have emancipated themselves from American English by taking over the code for their own creative uses. Philippine English has become and will…

Bilingual education, the objective of which is to render bilingual a group of monolingual or quasi-monolingual speakers, is distinguished from the "education of bilinguals," whose goal it is to teach the content of school subjects through the medium of two rather than one language. The present paper establishes this distinction and justifies the…

Many personal names in Temne (a Mel language spoken in Sierra Leone) are borrowed from other languages, containing foreign sounds and sequences which are unpronounceable for Temne speakers when they appear in other words. These exceptions are treated as instances of phonological stereotyping (cases remaining resistant to assimilation processes).…

The alternating and mixed use of Swedish and Finnish and special trade slang in three relatively small firms (employing a total of 678 employees, 40 percent of whom were Swedish-speaking, 56 percent Finnish-speaking, and 4 percent bilingual) in the bilingual city of Vasa, Finland was analyzed. (CB)

Suggests that speech act theory can help researchers and teachers in professional communication to define indirectness more precisely and to determine when it is appropriate and can provide them with a means of analyzing texts and refining rhetorical principles. (ARH)

The bilingual speech of members of Spanish, Portuguese, and Algerian communities in France was examined, and a model proposed for classification of code-switching according to speakers' intentions and the dynamics of the interaction. (Author/CB)

This document was written to support the work of Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs. The message provided is straightforward: we can meet the challenge of supporting first and second language development in preschool children. This paper is organized around four questions: (1) Can we facilitate children's acquisition of English…

Assesses how discrimination and biculturalism have affected the Chicanos' ability to communicate bilingually in a monolingual society. Using a historical perspective, the sociocultural significance of Chicano bilingualism is discussed in terms of code switching, language dominance, and cultural values. (JAC)