Paris examines texts worn on objects (like clothing or backpacks), delivered over electronic media, and rapped by youth emcees at a multiethnic high school. He argues that these are identity texts, used by young people to express ethnic and linguistic differences. (Contains 2 figures and 7 notes.)

Collins et al. 2008 offers a principles-and-parameters-based analysis of an AAVE construction first described in Spears 1998, in which nominal phrases such as "John's ass" appear to have exactly the same denotation, and behavior with respect to familiar conditions on anaphora, as the possessor ["John," and similarly for pronominal possessors.…

This study is aimed at investigating the rating and intelligibility of different non-native varieties of English, namely French English, Japanese English and Jordanian English by native English speakers and their attitudes towards these foreign accents. To achieve the goals of this study, the researchers used a web-based questionnaire which…

Research into reading development and reading disabilities has been dominated by phonologically guided theories for several decades. In this volume, the authors of 11 chapters report on a wide array of current research topics, examining the scope, limits and implications of a phonological theory. The chapters are organized in four sections. The…

Repeated assessments of literacy skills have shown that Aboriginal students do not achieve at the same level as their non-Aboriginal peers. Many Aboriginal students speak Aboriginal English, a dialect different from the Standard Australian English used in schools. Research shows that it is crucial for educators in bidialectal contexts to be aware…

The field of literacy studies has seen decades of calls for scholarship and instruction that address issues of dialect diversity, identity, and power but few empirical studies that document students' engagement in classroom activities designed to address these issues. The goal of this article is to describe how three bidialectal African American…

This study investigates the complex interplay between national and local objectives of formal education in the bidialectal context of Cyprus. Even though the state and the Ministry of Education and Culture urge teachers to employ the standard language variety in education, the dialect is often used as a medium of interaction and even instruction…

Background/Context: Although progress has been made since members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication passed the Students' Right to Their Own Language resolution (1974), there still remains a demand to examine youth perceptions of language. Such examinations can help teachers and researchers improve curricular choices, honor…

Three-quarters of Singapore's population consists of ethnic Chinese, and yet, learning Chinese (Mandarin) has been a headache for many Singapore students. Recently, many scholars have argued that the rhetoric of language planning for Mandarin Chinese should be shifted from emphasizing its cultural value to stressing its economic value since…

Previous evidence shows that nouns are easier for many language users to retrieve than verbs, but scant research has been conducted with children in bilectal environments (where both standard and non-standard forms of a language are spoken). This study investigates object and action naming in children who are native speakers of a non-standard…

Since the introduction of the Education for All policy of the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (GATE) in Trinidad and Tobago, more tertiary level classrooms have been furnished with mixed linguistic and academic abilities and have accommodated more non-traditional tertiary-level entrants into the educational system. The expansion of the…

In many English language classrooms, teaching pronunciation is granted the least attention. When ESL teachers defend the poor pronunciation skills of their students, their arguments could either be described as a cop-out with respect to their inability to teach their students proper pronunciation or they could be regarded as taking a stand against…

Students who grow up speaking regional dialects benefit from learning code switching (CS) strategies to allow bidialectal communication across their social worlds. This rationale proposes that students' home language of Appalachian English is acceptable at home and should be preserved; however, another set of language patterns, those of Standard…

This study reports on the linguistic behaviour of 39 university students from Moravia (in the east of the Czech Republic) living at a hall of residence in Prague, Bohemia (an area covering the west/central parts of the Czech Republic). In Bohemia, Moravian dialects and Standard Czech (SC)--an archaic and semi-artificial standard dialect that is…

In this article I explore ethical issues in relation to the topic of Aboriginal students who speak a dialect of English. Taking the form of a retrospective inquiry, I draw on data from an earlier study that examined Aboriginal English in the broader context of Aboriginal language loss and revival. Three interrelated ethical issues are discussed:…