Hilliard, a professor and expert on African culture, speaks about the racial and cultural bias of standardized tests, multiculturalism, the concept of race, Afrocentric teaching, Ebonics, recruiting and retaining African-American teachers, and the future classroom. (SK)

Suggests that Ebonics deserves respect as a genuine spoken dialect, widely used and important in American culture. Notes that students who are fluent in it benefit when they are allowed to add standard English to their repertoire and taught the appropriate occasions for each way of speaking. (RS)

Literature regarding Southwest Spanish suggests gender agreement with nouns is being lost. A study of recorded speech from 11 Spanish speakers in San Antonio (Texas) shows gender agreement is neither random nor largely nonstandard, suggesting gender marking is a rule still observed in this dialect. (Author/MSE)

Examines linguistic variation on an Internet Relay Chat channel with respect to the hypothesis, based on the model of Milroy and Milroy (1992) that standard variants tend to be associated with weak social network ties, while vernacular variants are associated with strong network ties. (Author/VWL)

Highlights the recognition of Meankieli, a former Finnish dialect, in the Torne Valley region of Sweden. The recognition of Meankieli as a language rather than a dialect in Swedish minority language legislation is an important language-planning decision with the potential to affect the whole linguistic ecology of the Torne Valley. (Author/VWL)

Examined nonlinguists' beliefs about language through dialogue in which African-American Vernacular English is the focus. Respondents are observed reasoning about language, and analyses reveal the structure of the conversation and the structure of participants' folk beliefs about language. (JP) (47 references)

Analyzes the word order in noun phrases with a genitive modifier in the colloquial speech of the Russian diaspora in Finland. Informants are considered as either dialect speakers or non-dialect speakers. The study demonstrates how intralinguistic, interlinguistic, and extralinguistic factors operate cojointly, inducing language change. (Author/VWL)

Examines an area of sociolinguistic methodology that thus far has received relatively little theoretical attention: the composition and analysis of orthographic transcriptions of non-standard speech. Addresses the following aspects: linguistic/semiotic properties of orthographic transcription, and the different functions of orthographic writing…

Discusses three themes that involve linguistic situations that have their roots in the extreme mobility that has characterized societies since the late 1940's: social typology of immigrnat-based societies andinsular socities; acquisition of native phonology by immigrant offspring; interlopers as agents of linguistic change. (Author/VWL)

Illustrates substrate reinforcement in the development of three current dialects of Melanesian Pidgin. Evidence of earlier variability is presented and the sociolinguistic conditions that later led to greater stability are described. Grammatical features that differentiate the dialects are examined. For each feature, it is shown that at least two…

The processing costs involved in regional accent normalization were evaluated by measuring differences in lexical decision latencies for targets placed at the end of sentences with different French regional accents. Over a series of 6 experiments, the authors examined the time course of comprehension disruption by manipulating the duration and…

This article focuses on the ways in which a small group consisting mostly of Black queer youth makes sense of their use of language to assert agency in a world that is often heterosexist, homophobic, ageist, and racist. The author draws from the work of Gee and Anzalda to identify what youth call Gaybonics, as a Borderland Discourse that is…

The ability of speakers to exaggerate speech sounds ("hyperarticulation") has led to the theory that the targets themselves must be hyperarticulated. Johnson, Flemming, and Wright (1993) found that perceptual "best exemplar" choices for vowels were more extreme than listeners' own productions. Our first experiment, using their…

In the last 15 years or so, Malaysian English has begun to come into its own as a dialect peculiar to its own region and yet intelligible on the whole to English speakers everywhere. There is evidence that English is undergoing a transitional stage in Malaysia; use of English is progressively reduced as use of Bahasa Malaysia is increased. The…

As studies indicate that dialect usage is not a barrier to reading, teachers can create an effective reading program for black students not by giving instruction in standard English, but by changing their own attitude toward black dialect. Showing that dialect users reencode standard English into their own language patterns when reading orally, Y.…