This dissertation explores the relationship between quantitative phonetic measurements and listener identification of accents of English, focusing on phonetic distance and its perceptual correlates across various English accent varieties. The Levenshtein distance (LD) measure, which quantifies string similarity by calculating the minimum cost of…

For too long, the debate about Ebonics has been about the validity of the language and not about how the perception of the language impacts those that speak it. Ebonics has been considered inappropriate and inadequate as a language in institutions of higher education since the moment Black people in the United States were allowed access. However,…

Since COVID-19 closed schools in March 2020, international development experts, politicians, and celebrities across the globe have raised alarm about the pandemic's impacts on girls' education, particularly in Africa. These warnings, which link school closures with untimely pregnancy and marriage, reflect belief in the multiplicative power of…

Research suggests that girls acquire language faster than boys, with gender differences most pronounced in vocabulary acquisition during early childhood. This study examines the role of gender in the acquisition of vocabulary and morphosyntax in Palestinian Arabic-speaking children aged 18 to 36 months. Using the Palestinian Arabic Communicative…

HSL and SSSL are two endangered sign languages of Hawai'i and Papua New Guinea, respectively. Mouthings of spoken words in signing, especially in smaller sign languages, is a growing topic in sign language linguistics. Here, I present an analysis of mouthings in HSL and SSSL. Mouthings in these languages may present patterns that are previously…

This dissertation examines native speakers' word recognition of, differentiation between, and social attitudes toward varieties of Arabic. It is a particularly interesting test case because of the Arabic unique regional variation situation and the available literature lacks data on how Arabic speakers perceive different accents, with a particular…

Background: The dialect spoken by children influences diagnostic decision-making regarding the identification and severity of speech sound disorder (SSD). Aims: The primary objective was to review papers that examined the influence of dialect on the identification of SSD in Vietnamese-speaking children. Methods & Procedures: Five studies of…

We examined the naturalistic pronunciation development of two groups of L2 speakers over 10 years. Initially, 50 beginner ESL students participated in production tasks; despite attrition, the tasks were administered eight more times. Here we report listener judgements of accentedness, comprehensibility and fluency for the remaining six Mandarin…

In sociolinguistic contexts where standardized languages coexist with regional dialects, the study of differential item functioning is a valuable tool for examining certain linguistic uses or varieties as threats to score validity. From an ecological perspective, this paper describes three stages in the study of differential item functioning…

In this autoethnography, María Cioè-Peña recounts her experiences of Black erasure in bilingual education in US schools, where the focus is on language and an imagined mixed-race collective, centering culture to circumvent race and treating language as connective yet racially neutral. But languages and how language users are perceived are not…

Foundational principles of formal math language in mathematics classrooms are necessary for students' ability to succeed academically. However, cultural dialects such as Black language are vilified within the scope of education, particularly in mathematics education, despite evidence that acknowledging students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds…

For educators committed to promoting social equity, the question of how to address dialect hegemony is increasingly important. While linguists have long accepted the concept of dialect equality, educators have struggled with the issue, sparking a history of controversy and debate underscoring larger social issues of diversity and equity. For…

This article examines language classrooms as communicative settings for learners' development of sociolinguistic competence involving target language variation in a study abroad context. Specifically, it investigates how two Spanish teachers in Peru imparted knowledge of the social and contextual appropriateness of local linguistic variants that…

Background: There is a global need for synthetic speech development in multiple languages and dialects, as many children who cannot communicate using their natural voice struggle to find synthetic voices on high-technology devices that match their age, social and linguistic background. Aims: To document multiple stakeholders' perspectives…

Purpose: Word learning requires the creation of phonological and semantic representations and links in long-term memory. Phonological distance of a given word from the spoken language affects children's lexical-phonological representations and processing. The study investigates the role of the phonological distance of Modern Standard Arabic (StA)…