Asserting that all dialect variation is accountable for in terms of social factors, this article strongly critizes the methods, assumptions and conclusions of geography-oriented dialectology. (FB)

Past research has established that listeners can accommodate a wide range of talkers in understanding language. How this adjustment operates, however, is a matter of debate. Here, listeners were exposed to spoken words from a speaker of an American English dialect in which the vowel /ae/ is raised before /g/, but not before /k/. Results from two…

Purpose: Facilitating language development in children with specific language impairment (SLI) who are learning African American English (AAE) as their first dialect requires clinicians to consider grammatical, lexical, and cultural differences. The purpose of this article is to examine 2 intervention methods that have an extensive history of…

Purpose: This was a comparative study of changes across a school year in multilevel language indicators, including African American English (AAE) features, in stories written by third-grade students participating in a writing lab approach to language instruction and intervention. Methods: Original stories written in September, January, and May by…

This study examines the role of abstractness during the activation of a lexical representation. Abstractness and conflict are directly modeled in our approach by invoking lexical representations in terms of contrastive phonological features. In two priming experiments with English nouns differing only in vowel height of their stem vowels (e.g.,…

O'Connor, an author of realistic fiction for children, shares her attempts to strike a balance between carefree, uncensored, authentic, realistic writing and age-appropriate writing. Of course, complicating that balancing act is the fact that what seems age-appropriate to her might not seem so to everyone. O'Connor suggests that while it may be…

Purpose: The contemporary practices of delivering speech, language, and hearing services in schools reflect palpable gains in professional sensitivity to linguistic and cultural diversity. Method: This article reviews the dominant research themes on the oral language of African American preschoolers who contribute to such diversity in the United…

The 804 entries in this bibliography are divided into four major categories. The first category, regional dialects, is concerned with those varieties of English which are confined within specific areas of the continental United States. The second, social dialects, is concerned with varieties of English which have features that tend to be…

The production of third-person /s/ on English verbs seems to be ahead of comprehension. Mainstream American English (MAE) is contrasted with African American English (AAE), in which /s/ is rarely supplied. Two studies explored what information children get solely from /s/ on the end of a verb. Sixty-five MAE- and 65 AAE-speaking four- to…

A CONFERENCE WAS HELD ON AUGUST 3-5, 1964 TO BRING TOGETHER SCHOLARS IN DIALECTOLOGY AND RELATED FIELDS. THE ENTIRE CONFERENCE WAS TAPE RECORDED AND A TYPESCRIPT MADE. THE CONTENTS OF THE REPORT ENCOMPASS BOTH THE PANEL PAPERS PRESENTED AND DISCUSSIONS ON (1) SOCIAL DIALECTOLOGY, (2) FIELD PROJECTS, (3) SCHOOL AND COLLEGE TEACHING PROGRAMS, (4)…

Explores the characteristics of a useful myth and identifies and describes several in the field of social dialectology: autonomous linguistics, standard/nonstandard polarity, bidialectalism, and community accountability. (KM)

Discusses what effect dialectal differences may have on learning to read. (WR)

To determine the linguistic structure of the Appalachian region, 9 interviewees from each of 13 states (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Maryland, New York, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) were chosen by selected criteria. The interviewees were classified as rustic, modern, and…

After briefly outlining Bernstein's personal and educational history, the paper goes on to review the scope of his work over the past 30 years, his theoretical contribution and his position among colleagues in the post-WWII era of British sociology. There follows a more detailed examination of the main tenets of his theory, pointing out that…

This study documents and accounts for maintenance and change in dialectal features of Salvadoran Spanish in the United States, especially "voseo", as opposed to "tuteo", terms signifying the use of the second person singular familiar pronouns vos and tu , with their corresponding verb forms. It compares two distinct Salvadoran…