Challenges the new, legally binding provision that spoken Standard English should be taught to all school pupils who do not already speak it. The socially sinister implications of the compulsory curriculum, the flawed description of Standard and non-Standard English, and the resulting lack of flexibility, negotiation, and contestation are all…

Explores several models of cognitive and structural perspectives involving minority-language situations, and attempts to integrate them into a framework of predictive propositions that elaborate psychosocial climates of maintenance, majority-minority encounter, and interactive strategies. (65 references) (Author/CB)

Discusses the consequences of the dominance of English for a small language like Swedish and a small country like Sweden. Presents a survey of contrastive studies, which reveal that texts and writing in the mother tongue differ between cultures. Discusses studies of the current situation in Sweden, which reveal a serious threat towards certain…

The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual children and deaf and hearing adults. We investigated…

A study of the difference between knowledge and use of two languages by bilinguals in a partially bilingual situation looks at what is known about language knowledge and language usage, the linguistic and communication tensions affecting monolinguals in a community, some special cases, and the possibilities for diachronic analysis of language…

A preliminary version of an oral proficiency test in English and Spanish for bilingual speakers was revised after analysis of the results of a pilot study in which the item pool was administered to 45 bilingual first-, fifth- and ninth-graders. Analyses of items and independent variables are described. (KM)

After reviewing literature on Puerto Rican immigration and the mental health of Puerto Ricans residing in the mainland U.S., this paper describes a study conducted to determine the effects of migration on the self concept of forty young adult Puerto Ricans. Subjects were selected from an alternative high school in the Bronx, New York, and were…

In response to a 1979 mandate, a survey was conducted to determine the number of non English speaking school age children in Rhode Island. This document contains instruments used in the survey, as well as tabulated results. Included are (1) a fact sheet distributed to school districts about the district total by language groups; (2) a…

Elaborates on cognitive/academic language proficiency and basic interpersonal communicative skills. Discusses assumptions regarding bilingual program exit and entry fallacies and implications for U.S. bilingual education. Argues that failure to adequately conceptualize the construes of language proficiency and its cross-language dimensions causes…

Uses data from the Public Use Sample Tapes of the 1981 Canadian Census to examine both inter- and intraethnic occupational inequality. Results indicate that social background variables, in particular gender and education, are more important than ethnicity in explaining occupational inequality. (Author/KS)

The privileged position of English in Zambia is discussed, followed by an argument that using English as the language of instruction is counterproductive. Practical and sociocultural implications of teaching "standard" English are considered. (28 references) (Author/LB)

Childhood bilingualism may develop toward a steady state of balanced competence in 2 languages or toward an imbalanced competence in which one of the child's languages begins to undergo attrition or early stabilization. In child second language learning an analogous distinction is often drawn between additive and subtractive bilingualism. This…

The activation of arousal components for emotion-laden words in English (e.g. kiss, death) was examined in two groups of participants: English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, emotion-laden words were rated on valence and perceived arousal. These norms were used to construct prime-target word pairs that were used in…

It is well recognized that the incidence of atypical language lateralization is increased in patients with focal epilepsy. The hypothesis that shifts in language dominance are particularly likely when epileptic lesions are located in close vicinity to the so-called language-eloquent areas rather than in more remote brain regions such as the…

This study highlights the complexities associated with learning a heritage language (HL) abroad, specifically with regard to identity, expectations, and beliefs about language and language learning, by examining the ways that HL learners talk about themselves. These are important topics to study because perceptions of language learning have been…