DURING THE PAST FEW YEARS INTEREST IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS, THE SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE RELATION OF LINGUISTIC FORMS AND SOCIAL MEANING, HAS GREATLY ACCELERATED. IN CONTRAST TO THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, MANY OF THE MAIN FIGURES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS ARE LINGUISTS WHO HAVE FOUND THAT SOCIAL FEATURES ARE CONTINUALLY CENTRAL TO…

The research investigated the nature and frequency of hesitation phenomena in speech as presented within content segments featuring interaction among family members on three modes of television programming: documentary, prime time, and soap opera. A sample of videotape recordings for each program format was content-analyzed by noting repetitions,…

This dissertation describes a study of the Black English Vernacular (BEV) based on 350 compositions written in the college classroom by 42 black students from working class and lower class families in a predominantly white university. The correlation between certain extralinguistic variables and over 20 linguistic variables was examined. Although…

Although the middle class child may come to school with a fairly large and useful vocabulary, teachers must be concerned with the extension of that vocabulary beyond its present limits. While the language of the middle class child is probably not an important concern in the choice of reading methods or the selection of word lists, it does have…

This analysis seeks to link discourse structure and semantic or lexical systems. The example is given of a Cuna curing chant named "the way of the pepper," in which 53 names for pepper ("kapur") are used in a projection of a paradigmatic axis (the lexical taxonomy) onto a syntagmatic axis. A corollary of the principle of…

This book attempts to introduce the reader to techniques of communication control, in listening and speaking as well as reading and writing. To this end, the use of a simplified vocabulary called Every Man's English is advocated. Section 2 presents some principles of Every Man's English. The contribution of Ogden's Basic English, a core vocabulary…

Despite the recent focus on the role of dialect differences in creating learning difficulties for speakers of nonstandard dialects of English, research has tended to concentrate on difficulties related to speaking and reading, while ignoring those involved in teaching writing to these students. This paper attempts to meet the need for such studies…

Although many would like to see the monolithic structure of society altered to allow cultural pluralism to flourish, it should be realized that for at least the next generation, large segments of minority citizens will remain in a socially and economically disadvantaged status, penalized because their life styles and languages differ from the…

The purpose of this book is "to familiarize the student of linguistics with the social context of speech, and to familiarize the student of society with language as a referent and dimension of social behavior." An attempt is made at a conceptual integration of the literature of sociolinguistics (with emphasis on work published in the 1960's) so…

Charles A. Ferguson's concept of "diglossia" (1959, 1964) is used in analyzing sign language. As in Haitian Creole or Swiss German, "two or more varieties" of sign language are "used by the same speakers under different conditions"--these are here called "High" (H) sign language and "Low" (L) sign language. H sign language is formally taught…

For the linguist interested in typology and language universals, this paper suggests the usefulness of a taxonomy of copula and copula-like constructions in the world's languages and the elaboration of hypotheses of synchronic variation and diachronic change in this part of language. For the linguist interested in child language development, the…

This study was designed to investigate, describe, and compare the intonation patterns of Black English and Standard English speaking children in a reading (formal) and free discourse (informal) situation. Black English was defined as the linguistic code of the subjects sampled from the inner city black poverty area schools, and Standard English as…

Today's inclusion of semantics within the overall language design offers proof against the earlier mistaken view that semantics was irrelevant to the study of language. Sociolinguistics have reassessed language as a social matrix that encompasses the sum of linguistic variation present in a given community. Variability in language is described by…

This paper is based on an investigation of an increasing tendency in modern German to use the second person singular imperative without the suffix "e." All major works on German grammar, including the standard reference books on the subject, require this suffix for all weak and most strong verbs. (Those verbs which change their stem vowel from "e"…

This paper reports one aspect of the author's research on the phonology of the Spanish spoken in Tucson, Arizona. The specific aspect of the research considered there concerns "levels" of speech. "Levels" refers to the systematic variation in speech form that can be observed in the speech of one individual. The empirical…