Article urges a positive attitude toward ghetto speech. (DM)

The authors discuss a series of studies in which the main concern is with how, or if, teachers have particular attitudes about the language of school children. (Author/MS)

The author argues that a child is linguistically sophisticated by the time he starts school and that his language should be respected even if it does not fit the correct" pattern of the school. (MM)

The relevancy of standard versus nonstandard speech and language patterns is examined relative to its impact upon academic training of speech clinicians and upon clinical competencies. (Author)

Asserts that feminist thinkers must self-consciously and critically confront various traditions of political discourse, feminist and nonfeminist. Reviews a number of these traditions and examines several modes that seem promising for the creation of a feminist discourse that rejects domination. (Author/GC)

Any attempt to impose Black English on our schools as a separate language should be vigorously opposed. Institutionalizing Black English will only tend to create a further educational handicap for Black children. (Author)

Discusses Providence Island Sign Language (PSL), an autochthonous and relatively immature language of about 20 speakers. It is a nascent and evolving language whose description can produce rich results for linguistic theory. Such a description will also be an explanation of the phylogeny of a linguistic system. (Author/PJM)

Modal verbs in Chinese are characterized in terms of internal and external modality; the former defines a state a noun is in or a quality a noun has while the latter defines a circumstantial factor that affects an event. Modal verbs and their compounds are contrasted in Mandarin and Amoy dialects. (Author/PJM)

Surveys the various representations of African American language found in contemporary children's picture books. Focuses on dialect, how varied African American language is, and how closely African American language is tied to the psychology of oppression. (TB)

Describes three examples illustrating the nature and extent of contact-induced change in the Linxia dialect, relating to extensive lexicosemantic diffusion resulting in areal convergence, coexisting markers representing two different types of borrowing, and a postpositional conditional marker as an example of significant syntactic and phonological…

The tracing of the origin of the name of a Tidewater, Virginia, group of watermen who spoke a distinctive dialect illustrates the power of language in marking the group's social parameters and distinguishing that group from other area watermen. (34 references) (CB)

Discusses the politics of English and suggests that English varieties of the inner city and the socially disenfranchised continue to be stigmatized by speakers of more esteemed varieties. (Author/VWL)

The case of dialect emergence in Thyboron, Denmark over the past century is discusses. A historical demographic profile from the town's census data enables comparative analysis of the input of dialects and various linguistic forms that were in competition. (Author/VWL)