Examines the extent to which sociocultural features influence the emergence of a standard Nigerian English. (Author/AM)

Proposes an analysis of Spanish indefinite "se" which takes into consideration regional variations. (AM)

Presents a unit on slang to help cultivate in students some positive attitudes toward their language use and to help students respect language differences. (TJ)

In second language learning, the phonetic features of a dialect of the native language are often more important than those of the standard form of the language. Positive or negative transfer from the native dialect to the target language may occur. Details of Swabian-English transfer are discussed. (CHK)

Explores the debate over the teaching of black English in the public schools. Often ignored is that proponents of the recognition of black English have almost always advocated supporting standard English by using approaches that take black English into account. The reason for recognizing Ebonics is usually to implement strategies for teaching…

Suggests that teachers of African American students have an obligation to familiarize themselves with some of the important differences in their students' language and culture that affect their learning in the classroom. Describes the rich oral tradition and group-centered ethos of African American culture. (RS)

Investigates the extent to which traditional regional characteristics persist in the linguistic repertoire of school children and then on the manner in which dialectal feature and the level of children's awareness of them interact with learning to read and write. Data from a sample of children in the first to fourth years of elementary schools…

Describes the unicode project, which is working toward a single computer encoding scheme for all the worlds' scripts. It focuses on the special challenge of encoding Chinese characters, and uses the example of Hokkien, a Chinese dialect spoken by most people in Taiwan, to explore the problem of unorthodox, unstable, or unofficial scripts.…

Discusses four general areas of linguistics studies that are particularly relevant to literacy issues: (1) discourse analysis, including text analysis, spoken and written language, and home and school discourse; (2) relationships between speech and writing, the distance between dialects and written norms, and developmental writing; (3)…

Describes a study that sought to characterize the Scotch-Irish influence on the dialect of southeastern Pennsylvania in particular and American English in general. A questionnaire was used to obtain lexical and grammatical data from 97 subjects. The study concludes that the Scotch-Irish linguistic heritage is rapidly disappearing. (19 references)…

Investigation of speech of Baghdadi men and women showed that, in Baghdad, the prestige variety of spoken Arabic was in the direction of the standard, and that more women than men favored this variety. However, in the past, when Baghdadi women had less access to standard Arabic, men more often spoke a dialect approximating the standard variety.…

Analyzes the depiction of Black characters in children's fiction series since 1968. Discusses the following new trends: (1) revisions that eliminate stereotypes; (2) introduction of realistic contemporary Black characters; (3) tokenism; and (4) elimination of Black characters altogether. (FMW)

Argues that the focus of literacy studies or applied linguistics should not be language, or literacy, but social practices. Introduces a concept of language usage called "Discourse," incorporating words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes. (FMW)

Proposes that literacy must be judged against social background. Analyzes the racial and social differences in the interpretations of a story by a working-class Black student, a working-class White student, and an upper-class White student. (FMW)