"The present efforts to teach a prestige form of speech to nonstandard speakers are educationally wasteful and the effective realization is socially improbable, unless the express desire and cooperation of those learning it are forthcoming. Appears in "The Florida FL Reporter special anthology issue, "Linguistic-Cultural Differences and American…

The divergence controversy is addressed in this holistic examination of Vernacular Black English (VBE). The debate over VBE stems from Labov's conclusion that the vernaculars of Black and White dialects in the South reveal completely different patterns of development. This study is based on patterns obtained from the writer's earlier research on…

Because the spoken rhythm of Black English differs from that of standard varieties of American English, speakers of Black English are more likely to write sentence fragments. (DD)

Concludes that only a few of the 43 features of black English dialect influence the way in which 223 black fourth, fifth, and sixth graders spell words. (DD)

This paper discusses a facet of linguistics known as socio-dialectology, whose subject matter is variation between idiolects. The relationship between sociolinguistic stratification and dialectal variation is examined. (CHK)

Thoughts on a dialectological study in Colombia. (SK)

Research supported by the Princeton University Council on Research, the Duke University Research Council, the Duke Endowment Fellowship Fund, and the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society. (DD)

The crux of the problem lies not in Black English itself, but in the attitudes toward it. (Author)

Special issue on French dialects. (RL)

Discusses the use of Tirilongo,'' an informal code of Southwest Spanish in the Ysleta area of El Paso, Texas. (DS)

This writer takes the position that black English does exist and that teachers of black children should know the grammar of this language so that they can better deal with teaching the children who speak it. (DM)

To investigate speech-language clinicians' attitudes regarding treatment goal setting for children who were speakers of Black English, questionnaires based on W. Wolfram and R. Fasold's conceivable goals in teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects were distributed to 103 clinicians. (Author/CL)

Notes that familiarity with the language of students--and especially awareness of the features of their languages that make acquisition of educated English difficult--enables the teacher to use a variety of techniques. Suggests that tolerance and acceptance of a panoply of dialects is a must, not a choice. (RS)

Discusses the close relationship between historical linguistics and dialectology, pointing out, through analysis and reconstruction of Taiwanese dialects, that the tasks of dialectologists do not stop at the making of linguistic atlases and must go beyond those tasks to reconstruct the proto-forms. (two references) (Author/CB)

Investigated African American Vernacular English dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa, and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee--specifically productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African-American speakers from Davenport and Memphis. (Author/VWL)