Suggesting that America should strive for linguistic and cultural pluralism, this special issue gathers in one place the latest thoughts of scholars on topics related to the concept of cultural pluralism, i.e., English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) and standard English to speakers of a nonstandard dialect (SESOD). Kenneth Croft, James Ney,…

This study investigated the hypothesis that an employer's hiring decisions are influenced by certain speech characteristics of prospective employees. Simulated job interviews of four different speakers were played for 62 employers involved in actual hiring. Sets of semantic differential scales were used to measure employer's attitudes towards the…

The ways speakers of Black English modify features of their spoken dialect in the process of adapting their language to writing are examined in this dissertation, on the basis of a corpus of writing from 41 black students enrolled in a St. Louis community college composition course. Each student is represented by 500 to 1000 words of writing…

Misinformation and ambiguity as features of social communication in Northern Thai villages are examined. The questions of how well Northern Thai villagers understand each others' verbal communications, and how accurate their statements actually are, are considered. (Author/RM)

Nonsensical statements about the inferiority of non-standard English should be revealed as nonsense by linguistic analysis--there being no point in marshalling empirical evidence to refute meaningless propositions.

Describes the phonology of Hainan, with particular attention to the tone system. (Author/AM)

Discusses the applicability of the notion of structured variability in language to contrastive analysis. (Author/AM)

This article criticizes a resolution drafted by the Executive Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. It argues that the framers of the resolution create misleading impressions about the sociolinguistic situation in the U.S. (Author/AM)

Discusses the sociolinguistic hypotheses of deficit and difference, criticizing the latter for deriving a "functional equivalence" from clearly different social contexts, leading to passivity and lack of results in current school practice. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

This article shows that the language situation in Quebec cannot be characterized as a diglossic one (as defined by Ferguson) because of the links existing between Standard Canadian French and "joual." Due to political factors, Quebec is moving toward a mixed standard language. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

The language situation in Quebec is discussed from the point of view of the influence of the British conquest, the history of education in the province, the make-up of the working class, and the position of Quebec in the North American continent. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

This article discusses the problem of choosing a language style for literary purposes in Quebec. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

Considers the historical background and the demographical characteristics of those residents of St. Augustine, Florida, who are descended from the city's original Spanish and Minorcan population. Included are a list and analysis of words found in the English dialect which represent the lexical vestiges of colonial Florida Spanish. (SED)

Considers four linguistic assumptions which bear on any multidialectal teaching situation: There is no single monolithic Standard English in the United States, a given native speaker is not structurally or linguistically deficient, differences among dialects are superficial, and the matter of dialects is one of social status. (RB)

Data are reported and interpreted involving language imitation, comprehension, and free production of two English dialects. Results indicate that the two dialect systems function behaviorally as separate cognitive systems. (ST)