A program designed to decrease the number of linguistically differentiated, nonstandard speakers of English in Texas classrooms and to help potential dropouts attain proficiency in the use of English (thereby allowing them to achieve mobility in the dominant Anglo-American culture) is described in this report. The program provides linguistically…

This paper considers the problem of teaching formal composition skills to those whose repertories lack formal standard speaking style. The approach advocated here is bidialectal and is based on the idea that control of a variety of language styles is a useful tool and that productive competence of formal composition style is a mandatory skill for…

This paper seeks to understand the role of culturally-specific styles of discourse in the classroom. The paper uses and expands upon three categories of classroom language use (control, curriculum, and critique) to present data on how a Puerto Rican American teacher uses repetition and discourse styles that have African and African American…

This issue includes the following articles: "Towards a Sociolinguistics of Style" (Alan Bell, Gary Johnson); "Engendering Identities: Pronoun Selection as an Indicator of Salient Intergroup Identities" (Miriam Meyerhoff); "A Majority Sound Change in a Minority Community" (Carmen Fought); "Addressing the Actuation…

The role and significance of speech-language pathology (SLP) is not often considered in studies of language planning. SLP has tended to be considered more as an issue for health policy than for language policy. However, the health focus of SLP does interact with language planning especially in education where SLP assessments have implications for…

As the several specific applications in this paper demonstrate, multidimensional scaling provides a long-needed means for investigating and describing spatial relationships among speech varieties. It is especially applicable to the relationships among varieties of a single language (or more properly, linguistic "cline"), which, as is…

The research and theoretical rationale for differences between (urban) black and white students, particularly in achievement in language development, are discussed along with implications for the classroom. Theories about language acquisition and capacity that have developed to account for the poor school performance of urban black students…

This article reports the results of research carried out in London using five-year-old children of working class and middle class backgrounds. Speech samples were collected and compared on the basis of grammatical categories. It was discovered that working class children used more pronouns than their middle class counterparts in third person…

A consensus has prevailed among educators that Americans of verying ethnic, social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds who must communicate with each other in social, academic, and occupational situations might achieve a greater degree of rapport if the dialect of the English mutually spoken and the speech mannerisms used were standardized.…

The language proficiency of four groups of children, Negro and white, in one southern community, Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, is examined. The goals of this study were threefold: (1) to study the development of language patterns in first grade children from these socioeconomic groups; (2) to determine the effectiveness of the Gloria and David…

This study of vocabulary change investigates the regional vocabularies found in eight of the Southern states and seeks conclusions about the relative changes in uniformity in current local use. Assumptions, procedures, and techniques for research are presented here. The results reported were obtained from a printed vocabulary questionnaire…

Foreign language teaching methodology is confronted with the problem of teaching Spanish to English-dominant native Spanish speakers. Linguistic documentation is lacking to accurately evaluate the linguistic competence of the bilingual student, documentation also useful in the preparation of adequate instructional materials. This paper describes…

Speech perception research is reviewed and organized around issues relevant to second language acquisition. Issues discussed include the concept of a critical period for speech perception as well as the effects of linguistic training and/or linguistic experience on speech perception. Speech perception in bilinguals, the relationship between speech…

This study looks at the retraction phenomenon of the alveolar fricatives [s] and [z] in Cariocan Portuguese, the dialect used in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and its correlation with selected social characteristics of the study's informants. No prior study exists that focuses only on this phonological feature in this dialect. Before describing…

Prator (1968) argued strongly for promoting a single standard of English, maintaining that schools have an obligation to teach a native standard of English. The assumption that the educational structure is a productive forum for directing language use is questioned. The report begins with a discussion of the controversy surrounding United States…