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A system of classification for tellings and retellings by Panama's Kuna Indians reveals the dimensions of their structure and function, textually, contextually, strategically, and ethnographically. Kuna verbal life can be characterized in terms of three distinct ritual-ceremonial traditions marked by three distinct languages, settings, sets of official actors, and speech events and two basic patterns in the organization and performance of discourse. A constant interaction of poetry and discourse is also characteristic of Kuna verbal life. The typology deals with the intersection and interplay of saying or reporting, and retelling or reformulating. Five types of telling-retelling are distinguished as: (1) a telling followed immediately and sequentially by a retelling; (2) a telling followed by a retelling to a different audience in a different setting; (3) telling of the same content in one way for one purpose in one context and in a different way for another purpose in another context; (4) a range of contexts for performance of magical texts; and (5) performance of the same narrative content as the central verbal event of two separate and discrete ritual-ceremonial traditions, by different performers, in different linguistic varieties, in different contexts. Attention to these different telling-retelling relationships allows for focus on interplay of allusive and non-allusive language, rhetorical strategies, verbal expression of new information, and the Kuna theory and practice of magic and narration. (Author/MSE)

This paper demonstrates, with reference to the Samal of Tagtabon Island, how the structure of local domestic groups and the statistical distribution of residence types can be derived from a detailed description of the decision rules used by Samal native actors themselves in making, evaluating and predicting residence choices. Considering the census data alone, a matrilineal principle or bias appears to dominate the selection of residence locations. But this apparent matrilineal tendency is an artifact of the rule which Tagtabon Samal use in making decisions about residence, a rule which makes no reference to any matrilineal principle. Nine assessments (decision criteria) for residence rules are given. In the selection of a mode of residence a person's age category is of primary importance. In terms of residence locale, the most important phenomenon by far is the preference ranking of kin classes, operative in residence decisions throughout a person's life. (CFM)

This paper attempts to elucidate the relationship between linguistic form, interactional strategies and social meaning on the basis of a detailed study of a natural conversation. The investigation is based on a conversation recorded in an institution for Mexican immigrants by a linguist, a native American of Mexican ancestry, and program advisor of the institution. His interlocutor was a community counselor employed in the program. Two types of information were utilized. Turns containing a code switch were first examined as to their place within the structure of the total conversation. Then the switched phrase was substituted with a phrase from the other language to determine what the code switch contributed to the meaning of the whole passage. These examples of bilingual communication indicate that language usage is closely tied to the position of Chicanos as a minority group within the English-speaking majority. Selection of alternate forms is related to a variety of social factors such as ethnic identity, age and sex, and degree of solidarity or confidentiality. (CFM)

The 75 Metis of Mission Metis, Alberta, exhibit three general types of linguistic behavior according to age. Traditional Metis, over 50, are trilingual in English, French, and Cree. Those aged 30-50 speak English and some Cree and understand but do not speak French. Those under 30 speak English. The Mission Metis English and Cree are not exceptional but the French is idiosyncratic as seen in the affrication of dental stops, vowel raising, treatment of gender, and expression of possession. The idiosyncracies suggest the existence of discrete sociolinguistic niches along a continuum characterizing lifestyle and social aspirations, as illustrated by three linguistic case histories. Traditional Metis use French and Cree as personal codes and English as a transactional code. However, they attach no prestige to any language and apparently have no favorite, thus accepting trilingualism as the basis of their identity. Their speech events take place most commonly at home and in the bush. Traditional Metis frequently demonstrate code-switching and code-mixing, especially at the morphological level, as illustrated in three narratives. Despite parallels, Mission Metis people are different from Cajuns. Their education should stress literacy and cultural maintenance through traditional skills, bodily expression, and oral narratives. (SB)

The Pacific area is generally acknowledged to manifest great linguistic diversity. Such diversity is generally assumed to be dysfunctional, an obstacle to efficient functioning of society. Such diversity must, however, have its functions at least in the circumstances in which it arose. It is also generally assumed that such diversity is the result of a communication density too slight to permit uniformity to be maintained. However, in numerous actual cases, feeble communication density seemingly cannot be the explanation for persistent diversity. Therefore two assumptions can be made: (1) an ongoing process of diversification led gradually to the present level of diversity, and (2) this diversification cannot reasonably be attributed to isolation. It can therefore be assumed that diversity itself may in some circumstances offer selective advantages. Only some very inconclusive suggestions concerning such advantages can be made at present. However, it also seems that different kinds of diversity should be distinguished, and that some may not be as onerous as has been assumed. (Author/AM)

The language situation of immigrants to Australia, or social bilinguals, is distinguished from that of second language learners, or cultural bilinguals. The former lag behind in employment and school achievement. The solution proposed entails learning English, though both children and adults appear to reach a plateau in learning after initial progress. This study suggests mother tongue maintenance as a solution. Evidence from linguistic theory is cited from Fillmore and McCawley. Bilinguals should be given the opportunity to observe norms in both of their languages, and bilingual education is seen as a program that takes the student's two languages in his social environment into account. Four bilingual education models are described (transitional, emphasis on the native language, emphasis on the second language, and balanced), the balanced model being seen as most suitable for Australia. The Multilingual Project described here, a form of bilingual education primarily concerned with concept learning, has developed independent study units in social studies. 600 students in fifteen secondary schools are participating, and materials are provided in English and Arabic, Greek, Italian, Turkish, Serbian and Croatian. The goal of the project is to allow students to opt for aspects of each heritage rather than totally rejecting or accepting either one. (CLK)

This article investigates a specific foreign language (FL) learning problem, the substitution of /s,z/ for English unvoiced and voiced "th" by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic, and concludes that the facts are better explained in terms of language transfer than by an explanation in terms of inherent difficulty independent of native language. A careful contrastive analysis can make quite precise predictions about the substitution that is made, the learners who make such substitutions and the circumstances under which the substitution is most common. However, it is argued that for the present case a contrastive analysis of the conventional kind, comparing native and target language as static systems, is useless. What is required is a sociolinguistic analysis of the native language, as it is a pattern of sociolinguistic variation which is being transferred to English. (Author)

The linguistic varieties in use in the Chicano speech community of East Austin (Texas) and the attitudes toward them were studied. Data were collected from field work done in a section of Austin that comprised over half of the Chicano population. The section was a practically segregated urban neighborhood and somewhat isolated from other ethnic influences; the only Anglos were those who owned shops in the area, but lived elsewhere. From the 92 residents who were interviewed, it was found that East Austin speakers had access to a language repertoire that included English and 4 varieties of Spanish--Northern Mexican Spanish, Popular Spanish, Espanol Mixtureado or code-switching, and Calo. Therefore, the study took into account the community's language repertoire and the varieties that this repertoire encompassed as well as some of the different social functions served by these varieties. English was felt to be superior to the vernacular, especially for second- and third-generation speakers. Those experiencing upward mobility preferred to speak English and looked down on the local varieties, declaring they did not use them. A feeling of linguistic inferiority was particularly strong among older informants; the younger speakers seemed to express ethnic pride in their ways of speaking. (NQ)

Sometimes descriptions of known facts about a language fail to be explanatory in a satisfying way, because they ignore parallelisms in related languages, including chronologically earlier stages of the same language. This article examines several Romance languages and dialects in terms of similarities in morphological evolutionary development. Consideration of comparative data indicates that the polarization of standards can overlay similar patterns of variation in different regions and that an explanatory description of nonstandard usage needs the added dimension offered by use of comparative and historical data. (Author/DB)

The data for the study were gathered in the course of a larger sociolinguistic survey carried out among francophones from Welland and Sudbury, Ontario. Among other things, the acquisition of spoken English by bilingual francophone students from these cities was studied in depth, using error analysis. The present study attempts to show that in a bilingual environment, the language most often spoken between parents and children plays a major role in the language acquisition of the children. For the study the spoken English of a sample of 15 Grade 2 children, selected from the French language schools of Welland and Sudbury, was analyzed. This sample was divided in two groups. Group I included children who spoke mostly French with their parents at home. Group II children spoke mostly English. The results of our study show that: (1) Group II children commit a lower proportion of interference errors (errors attributable to the influence of French) than Group I children. On the basis of these results we can say that the language most often spoken between children and parents seems to have a significant influence on the language acquisition of Grade 2 children in a bilingual environment. (Author/KM)

This report is the result of a sociolinguistic survey of the French-speaking minority of Welland, Ontario, most of which is bilingual. Interviews were carried out and taped in French with sixty French-speaking adults. Two series of closed questions and one series of open questions were asked, the former yielding detailed data concerning the linguistic aptitude and linguistic habits of the person interviewed. Results indicate that the subjects' linguistic aptitudes and habits are influenced by four principal variables: age, sex, social rank, and language or habit considered. Given the variation of linguistic aptitudes and habits according to age, predictions can be made concerning the evolution and preservation of French. The open questions yielded a significant linguistic corpus which should make possible a detailed analysis of spoken French in Welland. English elements in the subjects' French are also reported in relation to the four above-mentioned variables. A sample questionnaire is appended. (Text is in French.) (Author/AM)

This is a tongue-in-cheek rendering of an imaginary linguist's attempt to prove that a grammatical rule is not in fact optional, but conditioned. Through manipulation of the data, use of computers, etc., he succeeds in "proving" this. He also "proves" that this conditioning is contextual; that the rule which exhibits it is essentially probabilistic; and that hyperbolic tan functions are a feature of the competence underlying the human language faculty. An alternative, much simpler hypothesis is presented, but rejected on the grounds that, although it is compatible with the data, it is not "empirical" enough. Assumptions implicit in variable rule descriptions (VRD's) are examined, with the conclusion that the VRD approach has unfortunate methodological comsequences for linguistic theory. It is further concluded that probabilistic grammar is not a theory. (Author/AM)

This analysis seeks to link discourse structure and semantic or lexical systems. The example is given of a Cuna curing chant named "the way of the pepper," in which 53 names for pepper ("kapur") are used in a projection of a paradigmatic axis (the lexical taxonomy) onto a syntagmatic axis. A corollary of the principle of viewing discourse from this perspective is that uses of speech or discourse structures actually serve to define or elaborate certain linguistic sub-systems. This is termed "ecology of language." This and other examples suggest other areas for future research, namely the full range of principles by which paradigmatic systems are projected onto syntagmatic discourse structures, the relation of this principle to other basic principles, and the kinds of linguistic variation (phonological, or lexical, for example) manipulated in the process of discourse organization. (Author/AM)

Current medical practice expects the minority patient to bend his linguistic and cultural background to that of the physician, a situation which interferes with effective doctor/patient communication. This study examines the problems in doctor/patient communication in the cross-cultural medical interview, with a special focus on the black, inner-city patient. Three types of investigation were followed. Evaluative questionnaires were administered to patients and doctors to determine subjective evidence for or against communication breakdown in the medical history interview; actual verbal exchanges between doctor and patient were observed, recorded, and typescripted; and extant automated routines for eliciting medical histories by means of a computerized console were examined. On a continuum with doctors speaking doctor language on one end, and patients speaking patient language on the other, the breakdown appears at either end. Communication appears to take place successfully at the center of the continuum. Since the burden for communication has traditionally been placed on the patient, it is suggested that the medical profession assume a more responsible attitude to this problem. One suggestion entails exposing medical sutdents to minority languages and cultures. Two sample questionnaires are appended. (Author/AM)

The purpose of this essay is to expand the conceptual content of folkloric performance as a communicative phenomenon, as spoken art. Performance is seen as representing an interpretive frame, whose nature may vary. This framing is accomplished through the use of culturally conventionalized metacommunication (communication about communication), which will vary from community to community; the task of ethnography of performance is to uncover these means. The metalanguage employed in the evaluation of performance, and the esthetic standards expressed therein, constitute another essential consideration in the ethnography of performance. The association of performance with particular genres is a significant aspect of the patterning of performance within communities. Another key aspect of performance systems is the manipulation of conventional systems to fashion novel ones. The emergent quality of performance resides in the interplay between communicative resources, individual competence, and the goals of the participants, within the context of particular situations. The three kinds of structure emergent in performance are text, event, and social structure. Finally, performance by its very nature has implications for the creation of social structure in performance. This final consideration opens the way to additional considerations concerning the role of the performer in society. (Author/AM)

The relevance of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to language instruction is discussed. English as a second language has traditionally been ignored by English departments, and second language teaching in general has received little attention in language departments because of the emphasis on literary studies. ESL and EFL have emerged under the aegis of linguists interested in language acquisition, and have traditionally been directed at foreign students, while neglecting segments of the American population that are proficient in other languages or are in need of instruction in English as a second dialect. Psycholinguistics has contributed to alter this situation by attempting to understand the learning process. Sociolinguistic studies have contributed by: (1) examining what elements of culture and what cultural patterns are necessary to facilitate the communication process between different cultural groups, (2) defining the study and the awareness of the language teaching process, and (3) studying motivation and language attitudes. (CLK)

A sociolinguistic, ethnographic analysis of Christian Science oral testimonies is reported in this study. The study is based on the analysis of transcripts of four testimonial meetings of a branch church, interpreted through knowledge of Christian Science official literature, informal interaction with Christian Scientists, and knowledge of other testimonial meetings attended by the author over a one-year period. While traditional social science and linguistic approaches are drawn on, this study differs qualitatively from these approaches by focusing primary attention on the situated production of these speech acts as accomplishments of a particular community. The purpose of this ethnography is to demonstrate how the management of these acts achieves the communication of a complex, shared transcendence which is analyzed as a coparticipation in a transcendent province of meaning which unites Christian Scientists as a community. While this study focuses exclusively on particular speech acts of one community, it is suggested that the methods used are applicable to the study of transcendent communication in general. (Author/JM)

The role of the particle "o.k." in service encounter dialogue is discussed. A service encounter is defined as a situation of interaction between a "posted" server and a second party (a customer) who invokes the server's participation as an operator of a "serving post." It is suggested that approval or acceptance is often only part of what is being conveyed when the term "o.k." is used. In particular, it is argued that this term is attuned to punctuating interactional units within the encounter. The server's use of the term seems to operate as an acknowledgement that it is the server's turn to take some verbal or non-verbal action. The customer's use of the term may indicate intention to release the server from further obligation to provide the requested commodity. It is concluded that the term "o.k." has at least two possible functions: (1) that of signifying approval, acceptance, confirmation; and (2) that of providing a bridge, a linking device between two stages or phases of the encounter. (AM)

Little is known about how children gain interpersonal access in settings where adults are not present or are unavailable. This study sought to describe children's strategies for access into and withdrawal from peer interactive episodes in a nursery school. Data were collected from direct observations of two groups of children. One group attended morning sessions, the other afternoon sessions, and each group consisted of about 25 children. The first phase of data collection involved three weeks of unobtrusive monitoring, and was followed by two months of participant observation. Five months of video- taping peer interaction followed. Strategies were defined as being (1) episode access strategy; (2) episode withdrawal strategy; (3) access response; and (4) withdrawal response. Findings indicate that children have more complex strategies for access than for withdrawal routines. It is further concluded that access routines are learned in everyday peer activities, but that withdrawal routines may be dependent on formal training by adults. (AM)

Research was conducted to examine the language acquisition of a Mexican-American child who has been brought up in a linguistic environment where code-switching between Spanish and English is the dominant style of speaking. In addition, the relation of code- switching to the acquisition of bilingualism is analyzed. The speech of the subject, a two-year-old boy in a middle class bilingual family, was recorded and analyzed for nine months. Observations concerning the child's speech habits and linguistic repertoire were also considered in the analysis. Documentation is provided on the structure and rules of code-switching. It is concluded that code-switching appears not to be detrimental to the development of bilingualism, but, on the contrary, seems to be one approach to the simultaneous acquisition and maintenance of two languages. (AMH)

The nature of linguistic variation is examined, particularly the ways in which phonology, morphology, syntax, and other aspects of language vary according to social and situational contexts. A distinction must be made between a difference in frequency of a linguistic variable that carries meaning, and a difference in frequency which carries no meaning but is the manifestation of the more or less frequent usage of a form in a situational context. Although the analysis of variation in phonology by defining phonological variables can be accepted as contributing to a better understanding of the kinds of information that differences in form may be conveying, the parallel extension of the notion of variable to non-phonological variation may in many cases be unrevealing. One difference between phonological and non-phonological variables is that phonological variables with social and stylistic meaning need not have referential meaning, while non-phonological variables are defined so that all variants of this variable must have the same referential meaning. It is proposed that the notions of sociolinguistic variables and variable rules be restricted to the analysis of forms that communicate social and stylistic significance through their variation. (AM)

This volume is based on field work conducted in 1960 in Papeete and in a rural district of Tahiti, under the guidance of Douglas Oliver. Section two, which is based on a Ph.D. thesis (Kay 1963), develops the hypothesis that Tahitian words for social classification and the common French translations are semantically equivalent for most native speakers of Tahitian. This means that when a French word is used, the Tahitian meaning is intended. Section three, which attempts to relate the data in section two to more recent anthropological research, develops the hypothesis that words designating racial/social types in Brazilian Portuguese do not constitute a shared semantic system which permits native speakers to communicate effectively in this domain. This semantic ambiguity may be due to a desire to slur class and race distinctions. Section four discusses the implications of these hypotheses for semantic theory, and presents research on other sets of words whose meanings seem to imply underlying notions of quantity and statistical distribution. (Author/AM)

The factors that are involved in the choice of address to women as compared to men by speakers of American English were investigated in public interactions regarding provision of a service. In addition to proper names, there are two major types of address forms in general usage: the traditional respect forms, such as "ma'am" and "sir," and the so-called terms of endearment. A third possibility is that people may avoid using any address form at all. It was found that two of the three major address types occurring in service encounters can be and are used in absolutely parallel fashion to men and women. The use of the third address type, terms of endearment, in a non-reciprocal pattern paralleling its use by adults to children, carries the implication that the addressee is in some way subordinate to the speaker. Cases were found in which women were addressed by these intimate forms while men were not, but the opposite was not found. (SW)

Six Samoan children ranging in age from 2 to 16 were the subjects of a study to document the spontaneous production of the deictic verbs "sau" ("to come") and "aumai" ("to bring/give"). "Aumai" appears to be used before "sau" and is generally used more frequently than "sau." Imperatives with "aumai" tend to be directed to higher status persons or to peers. These results reflect the fact that the young child is supported and encouraged to make demands for objects, and also instructed to share objects with younger siblings. The order of acquisition and frequency further reflects the fact that within the household, higher status persons generally issue directives of this type to lower status persons. The effectiveness of these sociocultural constraints is evident in the fact that a semantic feature analysis predicts the reverse order of acquisition and frequency. (JB)

Attitudes of four groups of elementary school students toward 10 socially relevant concepts, e.g., "self,""monolingual French Canadians,""bilingual English Canadians," and other areas are studied. Two of the groups were grade five and six English-speaking Canadian Students who had participated in either an "early" or a "late" French immersion program. For purposes of comparison, an otherwise comparable group of English-speaking Canadian students with no French immersion experience was included, along with a group of French-speaking Canadian students in a totally French-language school program. The paired dissimilarity ratings of the 10 concepts were subjected to multidimensional scaling analyses and analyses of variance. The results indicate that while language and ethnicity (French vs. English) were important dimensions along which all four groups judged social similarities, extensive experience with the other group's language (as exemplified here in "early" French immersion experience) led to a reduction in the extensity of the language-ethnicity dimension. It also reduced the differences perceived between self, one's own ethno-linguistic group, and the relevant other ethno-linguistic group. (Author/SW)

The effect of Finnish language experiences on the way native speakers of English evaluate errors made by Finns in producing English was examined. The study was designed to show the role of the criterion of acceptability in the evaluation process and to establish some of the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors that may affect the acceptability scale of a native speaker. Study variables include: age of the native speaker, whether the speaker is American or British, marriage to a Finn, length of stay in Finland, the amount of Finnish used, and whether the speaker teaches only practical skills or practical skills and another area such as literature or history. The Quirk-Svartvik method of measuring variations in acceptability, involving an operation test and a judgment test, and a test measuring interference from Finnish were administered. The results show a disagreement with regard to acceptability, unacceptability, and dubiousness of the test sentences. The six sociolinguistic variables produced statistically significant information. The effects of the four most influential variables of nationality, amount of Finnish used, length of stay in Finland, and field of teaching are described. (SW)

The assumption that question-answer sequences consist of two moves was examined using data from recordings of second-grade classrooms in Austin, Texas. Interactions initiated by children's spontaneous questions in informal, small group settings were evaluated. Twenty-nine dialogue samples are presented and analyzed. Four issues in the study of interaction are discussed: the selection of data for analysis, the use of "null set" in discourse, recognition of a "notable absence," and the usefulness of a two-move unit for describing events in conversation. The data indicate that answers are negotiated, and that three moves, rather than two, are required to accomplish an inquiry sequence: a question, a reply, and an evaluation. The status of a reply as answer or nonanswer is not determined until a questioner contributes his evaluation. A replier therefore does not know how his reply fits into an on-going conversation until the questioner reacts to it. (SW)

This volume, one in a series on modern language testing, collects four essays dealing with current approaches to lanquage testing. The introduction traces the development of language testing theory and examines the role of linguistics in this area. "The Psycholinguistic Basis," by E. Ingram, discusses some interpretations of the term "psycholinguistics" and relates them to traditional and recent language testing practices. "Psychometric Considerations in Language Testing," by J.L.D. Clark, discusses aspects of psychometric practice with regard to three broad categories of purpose within the area of language testing: (1) prognostic testing, (2) diagnostic testing, and (3) proficiency testing. "The Sociolinguistic Foundations of Language Testing," by J.A. Fishman and R.L. Cooper, illustrates the usefulness of a sociolinguistic approach and provides justification for it by the construction of language assessment procedures. "Pragmatics and Language Testing," by J.W. Oller, Jr., discusses in historical perspective the major concepts of pragmatics and relates them to language testing. (AM)

Recent directions in ethnographic study of classroom interaction are surveyed for the help they can give to an analysis of classroom language and conversation. Many studies emphasize that children's responses to school tasks are directly influenced by values learned at home and that these factors add to the complexity of communication in the classroom. Studies of the communication process are reviewed for their contribution to the exploration of the relationships between words, vocal and kinesic systems, and the interpretive procedures of participants in classroom conversation. Particular attention is given to studies of acquired contextualization conventions, that is, non-lexical and non-grammatical signaling of communicative intent, and to the way those conventions lead to interpretive differences in ethnically mixed settings or in interaction between children and adults. An example of an episode in a classroom is given to illustrate these conventions and the misinterpretation that can arise. It is suggested that the factors discussed may begin to provide a solution to the problem of what it is about school and classroom environment that leads some children to learn and others to fall behind. (AMH)

As a result of the Turkish language reform, modern Turkish spans a range of styles from traditional to reformed, the former preferred by right-wing, traditionalist, and religious sectors of the population, the latter by left-wing, modernist, and secular sectors. Turkish students evaluate the two styles differently, and attribute attitudes and values to writers on the basis of their linguistic style. To define more precisely the means by which Turkish university students attribute social and political attitudes and values to individuals on the basis of the style of Turkish they use, a study was carried out in which matched pairs of paragraphs, differing only in use of traditional or reformed lexicon, were presented to students for rating of their putative authors on attitude and semantic differential scales. Results indicate that pairs of old and new terms cannot be considered synonymous in modern Turkish. Choice of terminology communicates important messages about the political and social ideology of the speaker; and these messages will be interpreted differently on the basis of the political and social ideology of the listener. (Author/AM)

It has been claimed that error analysis (EA) has two broad aims and two levels of application: pedagogical (relevant to syllabus design and second language teaching) and psycholinguistic (relevant to language learning studies). At the moment, EA's pedagogical claims are stronger than its psycholinguistic ones. In its early days, EA defined its object of study as the native and the target language and the points of similarity between them. This was based on the notions of contrastive analysis and interference. From criticism of this approach grew the notion of interlanguage. This, too, is open to criticism. It is proposed that a new approach is needed toward the learner's knowledge and use of the target language, one which is neither purely psycholinguistic nor pedagogical, but which incorporates a sociolinguistic element. The suggested approach describes the learner's language in terms of his or her "linguistic repertoire," which includes the native language and the target language. (AM)

There is a great deal of knowledge required to send or receive a message of "no." The acquisition of communicative competence, i.e., the ability to interpret the full meaning of a message and the ability to properly formulate such messages, requires three levels of knowledge. These three levels are all needed in the interpretation of the message of negation. First of all, a person from another culture must find the appropriate form function relationship. Next, one needs to learn which social parameters enter into the speech act. Finally, it is essential to get a group on the underlying values of the society. Examples of ways of saying no across several cultures are given. The examples illustrate that confusion can easily arise when both participants in the speech act do not possess communicative competence at all three levels. (EKN)

This study examines quantitatively the systems of tense, mood, and aspect in Puerto Rican Spanish spoken in the United States. In the community under investigation, code-switching is an integral part of the communicative repertoire; also, the codes tend to be switched at points around which the surface structures of Spanish and English map onto each other. It is hypothesized, therefore, that Puerto Rican Spanish verb usage is being reinterpreted on the model of English. Standard Spanish and English verbal systems are compared, with particular attention to those areas where the two systems differ. The informants were 12 long-term residents of El Barrio in East Harlem, New York. Six were Spanish-dominant and six, English-dominant. Comparative data were also collected from"prestige" Spanish speakers, as well as from 15th century Spanish, modern Andalusian Spanish, and English. Systematic quantitative analysis revealed that: (1) an overwhelming stability exists in the systems of tense, mood, and aspect in Puerto Rican Spanish spoken in the United States; and (2) the relative importance of the various verb forms has remained basically unchanged in Spanish since the 15th century. (AMH)

The communication of "person" has been a particularly elusive area of Japanese discourse. The elusive status of the person term (as distinguished from the Indo-European personal pronoun) raises the question of whether such terms, along with titles, kin terms, proper names, age-status terms, and zero forms, may all be part of a single system for differentiating self and other. Approaching the definition of person in the context of discourse eliminates some of the complexity of defining the entire system of terms, by shifting the emphasis from terms for person to communication of person. The continuum of person in Japanese is deictic, and the deictic zero point of Japanese discourse is the speaker's primary group rather than the individual speaker. The question of variability of self by which the Japanese have been defined is more a matter of focus than real difference in self/other relationships. In Japanese the focus is on the continuum itself while in English it is on the poles. An organization of discourse that seems enormously contradictory can be resolved by a multiple perspective that includes the relationships between discourse utterances, the social participants producing them, and the relationships they are negotiating in discourse. The point along the continuum between speaker and addressee that an utterance defines is generated only by participants in a particular discourse. This opens further questions as to whether Japanese social life is organized deictically and can be analyzed from a similar perspective. (MSE)

African Wolof society is divided into a number of ranked status groups or castes, the largest of which is the high-ranking noble caste. Wolof conceive of two styles of speaking, the restrained or noble-like and the elaborated or "griot"-like, and the two styles are connected by the presence or absence of "kerse," honor and self-control. The linguistic phenomena relevant to social rank are found in all aspects of speech performance: paralinguistic phenomena (such as intonation), phonology, syntax, and lexicon. Intonational features provide the most striking differences in style. Phonological differences seem to be related to differences in speech tempo. The griot style uses syntactic devices that lengthen the total utterance but add little or nothing to its meaning, while the noble style uses shorter, blander forms and intentional errors as a sign of high rank. The variants can also signal high and low rank within a caste. The use of intentional error can create confusion between a high-ranking individual and a linguistically incompetent foreigner. The linguistic system as a whole may have shifted in the direction of the high-status variant, and the reduction in surface elaboration is consistent with high-rank restraint and nonfluency, possibly arising from the general population's desire to appear more high-ranking. Thus the cultural valuation of speech can influence both the form and the direction of language change. (MSE)

Hospitality patterns of the Bororo Indians are illustrated in two examples: the etiquette due to a visiting chief from another Bororo village, and the etiquette due any common visitor from another Bororo village. Formal hospitality differs greatly from the usual etiquette. At a visiting chief's arrival, he enters as the last of his group and waits in a central location until the village chief arrives to have an oral duel with him, which establishes their wisdom and rights; the last to speak is the winner. In this duel the importance of names, titles, ornaments, and other social codes of ownership symbolic of survival is expressed. A common visitor goes to the central plaza and shouts out all his personal names and waits to be invited into the meetingplace of the men's council for a long and detailed interview, focusing on his family's names, in order to be placed properly for eating and sleeping in a home of his name-category ("mother,""father,""godmother,""godfather"). Name categories also determine seating. Every person a Bororo may call by a kinship term is inserted into a system of food, shelter, and gift reciprocity. The origin of the kinship ties is in the tradition that a Bororo is not just a descendant of an ancestor but a representative of a mythological hero associated with the name-category. In naming a child the Bororo attempt not to "lose names." A hierarchy of social prestige is expressed in kin terms. However, naming practices do not reflect any formal kinship system--kinship is a secondary effect of naming practices. (MSE)

In the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in northern India the speech styles of men and women differ markedly in a number of ways. One mode of communication, tuneful weeping, is exclusive to women. This behavior is distinguished from spontaneous crying caused by pain, and is used only in certain prescribed social situations, and not necessarily in sorrow. It is accompanied by a well-organized set of statements on certain topics and themes, "wept statements," that are used only with weeping. Vocal embellishments to wept statements enrich their emotional charge, and the degree of affection in the situation can affect the length of the weeping. It is often done with a weeping partner, and the usual topics are memories of the past lived with the weeping partner, the fear of an unknown future in an unknown place, apologies for not being as dutiful or respectful as possible, and appeals for forgiveness and requests not to be forgotten. Male response to female weeping is in a normal conversational tone. Typical weeping situations include a woman's leaving her home for her husband's, visits from kinsmen, reunions of women long separated, a period after initial mourning in which the women sit around the dead body and weep, or in a quarrel when grievances are being aired. Under the given conditions, women are obliged to weep or be considered antisocial. However, many modern young women are refusing to weep and this mode of communication may become obsolete. (MSE)

An examination of the play situations in which children are successful in learning second languages was undertaken based on observations that children in foreign language settings learn languages quickly in the process of daily play activities. A wide variety of activities were examined, including play phone conversations, soccer, elastic rope jumping, card and board games, role playing, and object-based fantasy. Structural elements examined include play with minimal language, contextualized formulae, turn exchanges, gestural support, imitation, explicit instruction, role assignment, and arguments. It was found that: (1) in different types of games children appear to routinely use their activity knowledge as if there were no language barrier; (2) language use differs considerably in various activities; (3) factors seeming to facilitate learning were redundancy with action that made words meaningful, availability of simple models to copy, and cooperative attitudes by the partner that led to instruction or willingness to interpret the learner's tries; (4) the foundation for children's language learning through play is their prior knowledge of the activity structure of the general game type, or in complex games, the specific game; and (5) the language learned in games varies in complexity, with the easiest to learn consisting of syntactically simple, highly repetitive formulae, and with the social success and sense of participation through the language acting as other benefits. (Author/MSE)

Aboriginal discourse in central Australia is characterized by a refusal to impose a way of thinking on others, and correct discourse either carries a consensus or is abandoned. In addition, participants avoid being exposed personally in public settings, and good interactional style forbids speakers from forcing themselves on fellow participants in a manner leading to such exposure. Embarrassment occurs when public attention becomes focused on a person in a way that individualizes his participation. This discourse structure conflicts with Anglo-Australian behavior in many kinds of intercultural interactions. Government representatives are impatient to reach decisive resolutions, and hesitation in Aboriginal assemblies may result in loss of beneficial agreements. Aboriginal children in Australian schools often fail to respond to questions when singled out in class, and answers are often single words and highly repetitive of what has already been said. In addition, Aboriginal children speak when not addressed and often fail to "take turns", a hallmark of Aboriginal speech collaboration that generally goes unrecognized. Australian eductors have viewed the secondary socialization of Aboriginal children in Australian schools as an effort to individualize their collective modes of self-perception and social interaction. Such interactional asymmetries are repeated throughout Australian society in all ordinary intercultural contacts, and the Anglo-Australians' relative assertiveness assists their dominance over Aboriginal people. (MSE)

Two claims are made concerning the interrelationship of language acquisition and socialization processes: (1) the process of acquiring language is deeply affected by the process of becoming a competent member of a society; and (2) the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized to a large extent through language and through acquiring knowledge of its functions, social distribution, and interpretations in and across socially defined situations. These claims are supported with evidence derived from a comparison of the social development of children in three societies: Anglo-American white middle class, Kaluli (Papua New Guinea), and Samoan. Specific theoretical arguments and methodological procedures for an ethnological approach to language development are presented, focusing on developmental research with interests and roots in language development rather than anthropological studies of socialization. Five specific aspects of the ethnological model of language acquisition are addressed: (1) the cultural organization of intentionality in language use; (2) the integration of sociocultural knowledge and code knowledge; (3) the unevenness of language development and the priority contexts for language acquisition; (4) the relationship between child language and caregiver language, specifically the lack of match between them; and (5) the role of biology in language acquisition. (MSE)

Kindergarten-aged children's use of parallel constructions in their peer storytelling, while not common, reflect children's interest in the organizational principle of theme and variation. Semantic and syntactic parallelism represent two of many ways in which some youngsters employ theme and variation in their storytelling. The constructions give a sense of cohesiveness to narrative efforts and provide a mechanism for organizing descriptions of the fictive world. Semantic parallelism, the more common form, emphasizes cataloging skills. In these constructions the children hold constant the stated and then implied syntactic frame as well as the central idea of the meaning set, and variation develops as they consider the range of phenomena that can be appropriately described within that central idea. This cataloging gives narrators a resource for fleshing out their stories, augmenting the storyteller role. Audience members can capitalize on the central idea of a meaning set in attempting to co-narrate and to comment. In responding to audience contributions, narrators deal with the issues of speaking rights and the boundaries of the narrative itself. (Author/MSE)

Two speech styles, origin-myth telling and ritual wailing, found among the Shokleng Indians of south Brazil are analyzed from the perspective of two specific functions of speech style: (1) for indexing or highlighting the subject matter in certain contexts, and (2) for relating the contexts and subject matters to other contexts and subject matters based the iconicity of its signals (pronunciation differences, distinct intonational patterns, etc.) with other linguistic and nonlinguistic signals employed in the culture. It is argued that there are certain formal-functional regularities in the relation between the special speech style and the everyday code, characterized as expressive restriction and formal amplification, and that the Shokleng speech styles use pragmatic (nonsemantic) features, taking the marked value of some pragmatic variable in everyday code and fixing it in the speech style. Formal amplification, an alternative form of marking, is found in the alternating use of semantically equivalent forms. The indexing function of the speech styles, which is stated as a hypothesis about the Shokleng styles, is seen to have a more general relevance in that speech styles tend to occur in connection with contexts or subject matters that are areas of cultural emphasis. The second speech style function considered, the iconic function, works both to lead to meanings in various directions and to pull together or bring into focus those diverse regions of the system to which it leads. (MSE)