A central concern in linguistics is assessing the linguistic competence of individuals or groups. Formal linguists usually accomplish this by the study of intuitions with little regard for observed usage, while survey sociolinguists usually depend on observations – especially the data of “spontaneous” interviews – with little regard for intuitions. In this paper I argue that survey sociolinguists need to make greater use of repeated recordings and elicited intuitions.

The existence of this need is illustrated in most detail by an attempt to replicate an earlier implicational analysis of pronominal variation in the Guyanese creole continuum. It is shown that with repeated sampling and the inclusion of elicited intuitions, the discontinuities on which implicational scaling depends disappear almost entirely. With a clearer idea of what speakers can say, however, the sociolinguistic interpretation of what they do say in the spontaneous interviews and recordings is rendered more reliable and revealing.

In the conclusion, some of the theoretical implications and methodological difficulties involved in extending the use of repeated recordings and elicited intuitions in sociolinguistic surveys more generally are discussed. (Sociolinguistic survey methodology, variation, style, implicational scaling, creoles)

The nonuse of available slang terms for cash among British bank and building society cashiers is noted and an explanation sought in the field of social control. The possible relevance of the Whorfian hypothesis is explored, and it is suggested that the in-house terms discussed have social and psychological functions in addition to the representational. (Financial terminology, social control, language functions, Whorfian hypothesis).

An ethnographic-folkloristic approach to the study of children's peer group culture is illustrated with a study of children's practice of and lore about the sharing of treats in ritualized exchanges that are a widely recognized feature of Israeli childhood culture. These exchanges are a taken-for-granted part of children's daily experiences yet become the topic of intense gossip and the measure of “character” when the norm of generalized reciprocity which underlies them is breached. The rules of verbal and nonverbal conduct associated with them are formulated, and the social function they play in delineating and reaffirming the boundaries of a child's larger, diffuse affiliative group is discussed. (Ethnography of communication, interaction rituals, exchange, communication competence, peer group culture)

As scholars have begun to reach a consensus on the Black English Vernacular (BEV) over the last decade, three important assumptions about that variety have emerged: (a) the grammars of children and adults are essentially alike, (b) BEV is decreolizing, and (c) most differences between BEV and white speech are the result of the persistence of creole features. However, these assumptions are largely based on comparisons of the speech of North American black children to that of Caribbean creole speakers, with no real attempt to establish the direction of grammatical change in BEV. Our work with black children and elderly adults in Texas tries to determine the direction of grammatical change in black English. This work suggests that all three of the assumptions listed above are unwarranted. The grammars of elderly adults and children are structurally, not just quantitatively different. The differences between the two varieties indicate that BEV is not decreolizing but is actually diverging from white speech. Finally, the differences suggest that differences between black and white speech are sometimes the result of contemporary developments rather than of the persistence of creole features. (Black English, decreolization, divergence, language change, reanalysis, sociolinguistics)

This paper describes the functions of a verbal derivational suffix found in the Ngayarda languages Panyjima, Martuthunira, Yinyjiparnti, and Kurrama. This suffix, which appears at first blush to be an essentially syntactic device very like the reciprocal suffix found in other Australian languages, may be used to indicate the existence of a particular kin relationship between participants involved in the action described by a verb. The paper presents firstly the more general functions of the suffix in the Ngayarda languages and then discusses the use of the suffix to mark kin relationships. It is argued that the general “collective activity” meaning of the suffix has generalised to the marking of certain kin relationships through the recognition that collective activity is a feature of these particular relationships. The successful analysis of the data thus relies on a knowledge of the social uses to which utterances involving the suffix are put. (Anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, syntactic theory, cultural anthropology, Australian linguistics)

Quantitative analyses of large data sets make use of both linguistic and sociological categories in sociolinguistic studies. While the linguistic categories are generally well-defined and there are sufficient tokens for further definition based on mathematical manipulation, the social characteristics such as socioeconomic class or ethnicity are neither. The familiar problem of grouping speakers by such sociological characteristics prior to quantitative analysis is addressed and an alternative solution – principal components analysis – is suggested. Principal components analysis is used here as a heuristic for grouping speakers solely on the basis of linguistic behaviour; the groups thus defined can then be described according to sociological characteristics. In addition, by naming the principal components, the major linguistic and social dimensions of the variation in the data can be identified. Principal components analysis was applied to vowel variation data collected as part of a sociolinguistic survey of English in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. (Sociolinguistics, variation studies, quantitative methods in linguistics, dialectology, Australian English, role of migrants in language change)

Modern bureaucratic institutions are notorious for producing documents that are difficult to understand. Much attention has been paid to the language of these materials; little is known about the contexts in which these documents are used and their potential effects on functional literacy. Drawing on research in a midwestern credit union, this paper discusses several factors that seem to characterize how and why credit unions and their members use credit union documents: the characteristics of document availability, the structure of interactions in which documents are used, attitudes and beliefs about the documents, and the functions of documents. (Literate practices, conversational analysis, bureaucratic institutions, politics of language, plain language movement).

Herein I examine the parallel, contrasting analyses of expressive patterns proposed by Bernstein for language, by Lomax for song, and by my interpretation of the arts and cultures of two Melanesian societies. The general thesis of this paper is that expressive patterns are related to cultural patterns in systematic ways, and that analysis of societies in terms of a contrast between individualism and group orientation reveals and documents one of those ways. Description of social structures in relation to this contrast is old, but its extension to expressive patterns is recent in anthropology. I argue that this model accounts for fundamental structural distinctions which underlie cultural contrasts in expressive patterns. (Sociolinguistics, conversational analysis, Melanesia, anthropological linguistics, ethnography of speech, isomorphism of expressive forms and social structure)

Cantonese and non-Cantonese students of the Guangzhou (Canton) Foreign Language Institute took part in a matched-guise experiment, expressing judgments about two samples of speech produced by the same person but presented as coming from two different speakers. In one sample the person spoke good Putonghua (Mandarin), in the other a Putonghua heavily influenced by Cantonese. All judges tended to agree that what they thought was the better Putonghua speaker would have a better chance for social advancement. However, Cantonese judges also showed some positive evaluation of a “heavy Cantonese accent” in the sphere of personal empathy. Such empathy was stronger among male than among female Cantonese. Similar attitudes regarding a “high” (Putonghua) and a “low” (Cantonese) variant in a multilingual society are typical for most Western societies that sociolinguists have studied. They now seem to be equally typical for an Oriental, socialist society like that of China. (Chinese dialects, evaluative reactions, comparative sociolinguistics)

The characteristics of the language of legislation are derived from its role in the institution of law. An analysis of the institutional context reveals links among history, social function, participant roles, accepted goals of legislation, and language use. The nature of an Act of Parliament as a perpetual speech act creates a frozen authoritative text so that the language itself becomes a component of the law. If legislation is to be both stable and flexible, institutional communicative strategies are required to organise linguistic means to these sociolinguistic ends. (Law, legislation, register, speech acts, communicative competence, communicative strategies)

Many personal names in Temne (a Mel language spoken in Sierra Leone) are borrowed from other languages, and some contain foreign sounds and sequences which are unpronounceable for Temne speakers when they appear in other words. Contrary to what would be expected within a model of borrowing in which foreign sounds and sequences are modified over time to conform with the borrowers' language, the foreign sounds and sequences which occur in Temne names are stable. This paper treats these exceptions to the Temne phonological System as instances of phonological stereotyping – cases in which sounds and sequences, although they may be exceptions to the core phonology of a language, have acquired expressive meaning. (Linguistic borrowing, phonology, personal names, Sierra Leone)

In 1977, a bilingual education project began in rural areas of Puno, Peru, as a direct result of Peru's 1972 Education Reform. This paper presents results of an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study comparing Quechua language use and maintenance between: 1) a bilingual education school and community, and 2) a nonbilingual education school and community. Classroom observation indicated a significant change in teacher–pupil language use and an improvement in pupil participation in the bilingual education school. Community observation and interviews indicated that community members both valued and used their language. Yet the project has had difficulties expanding or even maintaining its implementation. (Quechua; Puno, Peru; Peru; Andes; bilingual education; classroom language use; ethnography; sociolinguistics; community development; language planning; language maintenance; educational policy)

Berbice Dutch is one of two recently rediscovered Dutch-based Creole languages spoken in Guyana. It is spoken in the county of Berbice, which corresponds to the former Dutch colony of Berbice, founded in the early seventeenth century.

This language possesses certain features that make it unique in comparison to other European language-based Creoles spoken in the Atlantic region. Because of these unique features, it represents a promising test case for the presence of substrate influence, and as such, is of obvious relevance for the present creolist debate between substratists and universalists.

The article discusses four different conceivable hypotheses to explain the origin of Berbice Dutch. The first of these assumes that a mixed Dutch–Kalaịarḅ trading jargon was developed in Africa as a result of the operations of the slave traders, and that this formed the basis of Berbice Dutch.

The second hypothesis depends critically on the ethnic homogeneity of the slaves. This hypothesis would assume that the planters/overseers in Berbice attempted to learn those aspects of Eastern Ịjọ that could be utilized on the plantations.

The third hypothesis assumes that Berbice Dutch is genetically descended from Eastern Ịjọ, but that this is not obvious due to large-scale relexification.

The fourth hypothesis assumes that Eastern Ịjọ was replaced by Berbice Dutch under the catalysing influence of (creole) Dutch, rather as the fully inflected Romani language was replaced in England by the creolized Anglo-romani under the catalysing influence of English.

The hypothesis that is selected as probably the best is the fourth, where it is argued that Berbice Dutch was adopted as the language of the Berbice slaves because it offered a means of expressing the identity of a newly created “ethnic” group.

The most important moral that can be drawn from this article is that the development of each Creole must be examined individually. Only after such an examination has taken place for a significant number of Creoles will it be possible to define what is meant by creolization. In addition to the detailed linguistic examination required, it will also be necessary to carry out detailed (socio)historical work demonstrating if possible that the linguistic sequence of events is supported by the available historical data. (Creole language, substrate, Ịjọ language, ethnicity, mixed language)

This article reports the emergence of a new “Americanized” argot in post-Stalinist Russia. It attempts to qualify the type of communicative code characteristic of the argot and to illuminate the link between the code and the communicative competence of argot-speaking groups. The article examines the pattern of recruitment into argot-speaking groups. It speculates on the set of relationships between this pattern and the process of socialization in the wider social milieu at school and in the families of different socioeconomic classes. (Sociolinguistics, symbolic anthropology, social change, Slavonic and Soviet studies, social boundaries and “primary groups,” revitalization movements)

Much of the research concerning “women's language” has focused on differences in pitch and intonation, expressions of uncertainty, and politeness and correctness of form; all predicated on the assumption that women are socially and linguistically conservative and therefore more likely to use standard or prestige forms. This is a study of the derogatory terms (“dirty” words) that women use to refer to men. The frequency and variance of response that results from the study calls into question the assumption that women are more prone to use standard forms of speech, and suggests that the standard/nonstandard distinction is more appropriately applied to the contrast between public versus private discourse than to that of the speech patterns of women versus the language use of men. (Women's language, linguistic taboos, response suppression, prestige forms, public and private discourse)

In applied sociolinguistics in West Germany the notion has been influential that the indigenous working class is separated from the middle class by a linguistic barrier and thus is at a linguistic disadvantage, as well as suffering other forms of disadvantage. The paper places this view in its context within German work on language and society, examines it critically, and outlines why, in the author's view, it is of questionable validity. (Sociolinguistics, dialectology, education, German)

To investigate forms and functions of imprecise numerical expressions in biomedical slide talks, tokens were extracted from fifty-two talks presented at the 1979 annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Imprecise expressions include rounding, extreme rounding (to multiples of five or ten), ranges (both explicit and implicit), common fractions, and common multiples, all of which can be hedged, either simply or multiply. Imprecision can be occasioned by factors such as preliminary nature of results, small number of experimental animals, questionably applicable technique or apparatus, and inability to measure all members of a class. Rhetorically, imprecision foregrounds other, more precise quantities which the experimenter considers important, and thus, it can be seen as modality. Imprecision marks the talks as preinformation in Ziman's model of the social production of science and also as simultaneous popularization and peer communication. (Biomedical slide talks, imprecise numerical expressions, scientific rhetoric, modality, Zimanian social production of science)

Most researchers of Arabic sociolinguistics assume the existence of a sociolinguistic continuum with a local vernacular at the bottom and the standard variety at the top. Those researchers seem to equate the terms “prestige” and “standard”; consequently, they tend to consider Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the only prestige variety in all settings. This article presents evidence showing that if an adequate description of sociolinguistic variation of spoken Arabic is to be met, it is necessary to posit not only one standard speech variety, MSA, but also other prestigious local or regional varieties which act as local spoken standards competing with MSA in informal settings. It will be shown in the reported cases that in certain contexts speakers tend to switch from their local forms – though these latter may be identical to MSA – to other local features characteristic of other dominant social groups and that happen to be marked [–MSA], These local prestigious norms act like the standard spoken norms in informal settings. (Diglossic model, prestigious varieties, stereotypes, dominant social groups, competing standards, spoken Arabic).

Philippine Creole Spanish, formed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, underwent partial decreolization toward the end of the Spanish presence in the Philippines, particularly in the city of Zamboanga. Following the American occupation of the Philippines, virtually all Spanish linguistic influence has disappeared, but contemporary Zamboangueño continues to exhibit continuing incorporation of elements of standard Spanish, in the nearly total absence of a pool of Spanish speakers. The present study explores the status of the Zamboangueño dialect, discusses the various stages of decreolization in the direction of Spanish, and suggests possible avenues for the continued introduction of elements from an acrolect which, for all intents and purposes, is no longer generally available to residents of Zamboanga. (Creole studies, contact vernaculars)