Investigated the effects of standard and nonstandard language on listener perception. College students rated audiotapes delivered in Hawaiian Creole English or standard English. Speaker dialect significantly impacted listener perception. Listeners rated standard English higher on superiority traits and speech quality and Hawaiian Creole English…

Presents a content analysis of the electronic debate on Ebonics that spanned over 18 months, drawing scholars from all over the world, and culminating in over 70 postings on an electronic bulletin board. Demonstrates that in contesting the issues, using the national social debate on Ebonics, linguists seek to assert their power as a group by…

Discusses problems and insights gained during the preparation of a bilingual dictionary of Spanish--a Romance and ultimately Indo-European language--and Swahili, a coastal Bantu language of the Niger-Congo stock of African languages. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on the quest of contested speech forms for legitimacy as languages rather than dialects, the distinction being explored solely in a political context. Suggests that although the European Union supports the role of nation states in the legitimization of languages, the regular use of French and English has enhanced the status of these two…

Investigates the extent to which users of Black South African English (BSAE) command the vowel system of English. One mother tongue speaker each of English, Southern Sotho, and Zulu read a set of stimulus words representing various monothong contrasts in standard South African English. Results are discussed in relation to the question of whether…

Variation in the past-tense model of the verb "be" is widespread amongst English dialects, and is often considered to be the result of analogical levelling. Through an analysis of non-standard "was" in buckie English, a variety spoken in a small fishing town in northeast Scotland, this article shows that the historical record…

This essay examines Kenneth Burke's puzzling work on pure persuasion to suggest that pure persuasion has four characteristics, that it is: (1) primarily consummatory in purpose or becomes instrumental or resistant indirectly or secondarily; (2) a near relation of dramatic performance, ritual, and prayer; (3) creates and maintains identity; and (4)…

Frederick Douglass, as a nineteenth-century writer, experimented with all manner of discourses including sentimentality, romance and, more significantly, the vernacular tradition. In his works like "My Bondage" and "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass", the confidence of a writer willing to experiment with contrasting forms and willing to make a…

This paper examines the choice to translate plays from "Hochdeutsch" (the standard form of the German language) into local dialect in German-speaking Switzerland. It first looks at the creative process of translating for the amateur stage and then at the reasons behind the choice to translate. It argues that this choice reflects a desire…

The issue of dialect and education and, in particular, the issue of which code to use as the medium of instruction has generated much heated debate in bidialectal societies. This debate is reflected in the literature on language policy in education which is divided into three main areas: (i) the use of the standard variety as medium of…

Purpose: To evaluate the role of dialect on phonemic awareness and nonword spelling tasks. These tasks were selected for their reliance on phonological and orthographic processing, which may be influenced by dialect use. Method: Eighty typically developing African American children in Grades 1 and 3 were first screened for dialect use and then…

Mauritius is a multilingual postcolonial island of the Indian Ocean. Although the French-lexified creole, Mauritian Creole/Kreol, is the native language of 70% of the Mauritian population, it is excluded from the education system. Kreol lacks prestige because it is seen as broken French and associated with the local Creoles, a socioeconomically…

The concept of "Ubuntu" has recently received a lot of attention in spite of the fact that there is no consensus about its meaning. African scholars have strived to attain a common meaning and English translation, and while they agree that it is typically and solely African, the closest some have come up with is "African humanism". A South African…

This volume gathers a sampling of educators' ideas on the issue of the role of the non-standard dialect in the teaching of Spanish to Spanish speakers. Part one, "Rationale for the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish Speaking," deals with philosophy and theory and contains papers by Guadalupe Valdes Fallis and Nasario Garcia. Part two,…

This Gulf Arabic text is designed for those who want to acquire a conversational tool beyond the basic level; it is also of interest to Arabists, anthropologists, and Arabic dialectologists. The language in this text is used in informal situations by the indigenous populations of the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. The text contains 21 lessons…