Research supported by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity grant 1492.

This review of the literature on cultural adjustment is divided into four sections: the nature of cultural adjustment; acculturation as a model of cultural adjustment; psychological responses to acculturation; and a model of cultural adjustment developed by the author as a result of his immigration from Puerto Rico to the United States mainland.…

Language variation, be it foreign or dialect, receives little tolerance and understanding by the general public. Thus, there are two major challenges for the decade of the 1980s in language arts instruction. The first is for teachers to become thoroughly informed about the nature of language and its role in our society. A knowledge of language…

Racist language is more pervasive than sexist language. Not only are there obvious racial slurs, but also most English black and black-oriented words have negative meanings. One study found over 134 synonyms for whiteness, 44 of which were favorable, and only 10 had any semblance of negative connotations. In the same study, 120 synonyms for…

The language-based education of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has proved more productive than the earlier apprentice learning since it offers cognitive development. The first priority of a modern curriculum should be such cognitive development, and language remains the most suitable tool for this purpose. Politically, the full enjoyment…

The subjectivistic problem for knowledge and communication associated with philosopher Immanuel Kant is that everything we know may in fact be determined by the structure of our own minds and not by the actual nature of external reality. Ernst Cassirer's contribution to the solution of this problem is the notion of "symbols" produced by…

The first part of this essay argues specifically that legal speech acts are not statements but question/answer constructions. The focus in this section is on the underlying interrogative structure of the legal decision. The second part of the paper touches on significant topics related to the concept of legal speech acts, including the philosophic…

The author outlines the socio-cultural and language problems of three main types of developing nations. The first type, the "new developing nations," (sub-Saharan and East Africa) have little to draw upon in terms of a useable socio-cultural or political past. The language problems reflect emphasis on political integration, for which…

Many actions have been taken recently to bring about a revival of the French language in Acadiana (Acadia), a "triangulated area, delimited by, but not including, the cities of Lake Charles, Alexandria, and New Orleans." Historically, the Acadians "spoke exclusively and happily their native French language," but they became…

The questionnaire presented here was designed to be administered to a representative sample of Ethiopian children enrolled in primary and secondary schools. Responses to be elicited pertain to --(1) personal use of language in several domains of speech behavior, (2) use of language by others in situations which the respondent has had an…

In order to develop language awareness and critical thinking skills, an introductory writing course was taught at the community college level in three phases. First, the subjectivity of perceived reality and language choice was demonstrated through use of photographs, prose, and poetry. The second phase dealt with the role of language in defining…

The principal purpose of this publication is to present a selected review and synthesis of the literature on the reading process. Section one describes an overview of the reading process. Various models of reading acquisition and their implications for reading are presented in section two. Section three considers a number of practical elements…

An inquiry into how language functions in the life of a bilingual minority group in process of cultural change, this study investigated the acculturation and assimilation of individuals of Mexican descent living in Tucson, Arizona. Specifically, the language usage and interpersonal relations of individuals from representative families in the…

This paper surveys the teaching of second languages in Irish primary and post-primary schools. In the centralized primary school system, with primary teacher-training directed towards state-controlled qualifying examinations, government policy now favors the teaching of Irish side by side with English (also an official language). With the…