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Discusses the accomplishments, or lack of accomplishments, of linguistics to date and makes suggestions for the improvement of linguistics' contribution to the study and teaching of American English. (Available from the University of Alabama Press, Periodicals Department, P.O. Box 2877, University, Alabama 35486.) (AM)

The article discusses the concept of pedagogical linguistic justice and its importance in linguistics teaching. It emphasizes the need for small teaching strategies to contribute to equity, diversity, and inclusion in the field. The authors advocate for an incremental and reflective approach, recognizing biases and imbalances in linguistics courses. They reference James Lang's Small Teaching framework and provide practical approaches for instructors to advance linguistic justice in their classrooms. The article also discusses the importance of incorporating small teaching strategies to address the colonial legacy in linguistics and promote linguistic justice and inclusion. The strategies outlined aim to challenge misconceptions, promote critical thinking, and engage students in a reflective learning process. The text explores the engagement of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in teaching, acknowledging the limitations and structural factors that may impact pedagogical choices. It highlights the importance of linguistic justice and the autonomy of individuals in the field of linguistics. The given text is a list of references and author biographies for a publication called "Teaching American Speech," which focuses on linguistics and language education with an emphasis on inclusive and equitable teaching practices. The publication aims to provide resources and insights for educators in the field of linguistics. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the need for linguists to change their approach to teaching Creole languages in order to rectify historical biases and promote equitable inclusion. The authors developed the Mis/Underrepresented Languages: Teaching and Inclusion (MULTI) Project, which provides pedagogical resources for integrating Creole language data and expertise into linguistics courses. The project aims to amplify the voices of Creole language users and empower educators to incorporate Creole languages into their classrooms. It includes resources such as video clips of interviews with Creole users, contextualized problem sets, and a facilitation guide for incorporating these materials into curricula. The text also emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusivity in linguistics education, particularly in relation to underrepresented languages and language varieties. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the importance of including heritage speaker perspectives in undergraduate linguistics education. It emphasizes the need for instructors to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for heritage speakers, acknowledging their diversity and providing individual evaluation and support. The text proposes interventions for introductory linguistics courses to include discussions on bi- and multilingualism from a heritage speaker perspective. It argues for asset-based pedagogies that prioritize students' diverse positionalities and views them as resources to nurture. The article also discusses the importance of centering heritage speaker perspectives in linguistics courses, improving the learning environment for all students and celebrating student differences. Additionally, the given text provides references and author information for a research project aiming to enhance the understanding and teaching of Creole languages in the linguistics classroom. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses how to implement Skills-Based Grading (SBG) in linguistics courses, using our novel application to a university-level semantics course as a case study. Particular focus is given to transitioning to SBG from traditional grading. Regardless of the grading system, all courses start out from a set of desired learning objectives, with final grades intended to reflect the extent to which these objectives have been achieved.

The article focuses on offering a specific linguistics course and heavily on my linguistics background to prompt students to examine language, power, the media, and politics. It mentions lessons on linguistic determinism, etymology, and prescriptivism engaged even the most reticent students and effort to create an Advanced Placement (AP) linguistics course. It also mentions increased focus on STEM in school curricula.

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including linguistic work, interview with Piers Morgan and use of nigga that demonstrate the variability of its meaning.

The article offers information related to the corpus based sociolinguistics activities in an active-learning language classrooms. It mentions the scholarly evidence which shows that active learning classroom practices are beneficial to students. It also mentions randomized and controlled trials of medical interventions.

This article considers how linguists (more specifically, linguists from the U.S. South) view their responsibility to advance educational equality and justice. Drawing upon insights learned from working with inclusive groups of Southern K-12 educators, the authors call upon linguists to broaden their focus and extend their engagement efforts from K-12 to the sphere of higher education. African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian American students and faculty are particularly underrepresented in linguistics departments. These disparities require linguists to think more deeply about what linguistics is, who it is for, and who it benefits so that they might develop strategies and models for social change. This article provides theoretical discussion on these issues and offers practical strategies that linguists can use to address underrepresentation, broaden participation, and promote inclusive student achievement in higher education. With their disciplinary insights into communication, culture, educational equity, and linguistic justice, linguists--particularly Southern linguists--are well positioned to contribute to educational justice in ways that benefit our discipline, speakers, communities, and academia at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of a Pittsburgher's voicing of a Texan reinforces Dennis Preston's observation that imitations of others' dialects are often selective and inaccurate. This article argues that the activity of sounding Southern represented in this imitation is evaluated according to a set of norms that are different from the norms relevant to everyday, native uses of Southern speech. Sounding Southern in this sense does not mean adopting a Southern accent, but rather deploying a few morphosyntactic and prosodic devices in order to perform a stereotypical Southern character. Drawing on the idea of semiotic enregisterment, the author argues that there is more than one process of vernacular norm-formation; dialect styling is not (just) a matter of adopting or exaggerating the features of a dialect as it is used in routine ways, but rather, at least in some cases, a matter of adopting a specialized set of performance norms that overlap only slightly, if at all, with the norms that shape routine uses of the dialect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on internal and external perceptions of Southern United States English generally confirms long-standing accounts: it still awakens both negative and positive judgments in both outsiders (redneck but hospitable) and insiders (insecurity but local/regional pride). Differences lie in the details of recent research that focuses on the specific elements of these response types and emerge from two sources: (1) up-to-date experimental work, specifically, implicit attitude measures and studies of neurosociolinguistic responses, as well as (2) largely qualitative, in-depth discourse and conversational analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about mini-experiments across the English linguistics coursework that combines educational benefits of experimental participation with content directly related to coursework goals. Topics discussed include student participation in experiments having a long standing role in curriculums including psychology, communication, and linguistics.

The article examines a curriculum titled "Discovering DARE: Linguistic Lessons from the Dictionary of American Regional English related to the field of language variation. Topics discussed include the implementation of teacher training in language variation, and the curriculum providing instructions on language variation and change in American English based on DARE materials.

The article talks about language in use, stating that it conforms to a complex systems requirement as defined by scientists and mathematicians during the end of the twentieth century. Topics discussed include the A-curve which is defined as the nonlinear distribution of the variants for any given linguistic feature.

This article offers a new approach to dialect attitudes and ideologies that combines argumentation theory with conversation-analytic techniques. This rhetorically oriented, qualitative approach is used to explore how socioindexical and language-related meanings of folk linguistic concepts are constructed in conversations among oklahoma english speakers. "Twang" was selected as a test case because it is often mentioned by nonlinguists as a common descriptor of differences among American english dialects. The analysis reveals a complex socioindexical profile of twang that integrates language-related, spatial, temporal, sociocultural, and historical associations. It also reveals implicit discursive schemes of speech valorization that represent twang as a socially authenticating linguistic resource. Participants use gradient representations of twang to index symbolic social boundaries between unmarked and "lesser" forms of whiteness in the American South. The article shows that propositional processes of sociolinguistic indexicality engage experiential, affective, performative, perceptual, and identity-related processes: participants demonstrate these interrelated engagements when they rationalize, justify, valorize, and illustrate their individual experiences with linguistic variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses linguistics and development of writing. Topics discussed include students of sociolinguistics and contemporary English, spoken and written language and pictographic systems. Further, other topics which includes petroglyphs, alphabetic writing and cultural exchange are also discussed.

The article traces the history of the suffix ish, its origins, and details how its form and meaning has changed over time. Topics covered include the definition of degrammaticalization, examples of utterances with ish and instances cited in the book "Degrammaticalization: Three Common Controversies," by Marc Piercce indicating that ish has continued to degrammaticalize.

In light of Mishoe and Montgomery's 1994 analysis of the double modal's pragmatic function in mitigating face-threatening situations this article assesses the perception of the double modal in the context of a medical consultation. In an experiment using a modified matched-guise technique and a between-subjects design, a group of respondents listened to a recording of a doctor using a naturally occurring double modal in consultation with a patient, while a control group heard the same recording with one of the modals removed. Attitudes of the respondents were measured indirectly though responses to a semantic differential test, and the ratings of the two groups were compared. While previous language attitude studies of nonprestige varieties show the usage of nonstandard features has a downgrading effect on the perception of a speaker's competence, this study found no downgrading effects. Instead, double modal guises were rated significantly higher for adjectives measuring solidarity, particularly the single adjective polite. That is, a doctor heard using a double modal was perceived as being more polite than the same doctor when the double modal was removed with no downgrading of the competence of the doctor, indicating that the double modal perceived--at least in doctor-patient consultations--as a good faith means to negotiate an imbalanced and face-threatening situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While historical approaches to degree modifier constructions in English are often conducted in the light of grammaticalization theory, this study of two intensifying constructions in American English, and in which awful/terrible/horrible function as degree adverbs, as in I was hungry awful or You are scaring me terrible, offers a somewhat different diachronic picture. Although these constructions display unusual morphosyntactic features, the interest here lies in the way(s) they emerged. Relying on data from historical corpora and the Internet, the author argues that the constructions embarked on intertwining pathways of development in which grammaticalization was not the only--and maybe also not the main--process of linguistic change at work. The study highlights a fundamental process of analogization that has strengthened a higher-level construction, , the productivity of which as an instantiation of the degree modifier construction seems to be on the increase in American English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Censuses offer bountiful but underexploited sources for studies of linguistic usage, especially with their detailed geographic and demographic information about respondents. To demonstrate potential uses of census data, this study explores the regional variation in 1880 U.S. Census respondents when referring to establishments serving alcoholic beverages and to those establishments' employees. The analysis shows distinct regional patterns of using barkeeper rather than bartender (more common in the South), of referring to a workplace as a tavern (overwhelmingly a Middle Atlantic phenomenon), and of speaking of attending bar rather than tending or keeping it (also concentrated in the Middle Atlantic). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a synchronic quantitative study of adjectives in the semantic field of STRANGENESS in a large North American city, Toronto, the largest urban center in Canada. The analysis is based on nearly 2,000 adjectives, representing 11 different types, as in She's really weird and She's odd. The distribution of these adjectives in apparent time provides startling evidence of change. The adjective strange is quickly moving out of favor, and weird has expanded dramatically, usurping all other forms. Neither linguistic nor social factors are implicated in this change, suggesting that lexical replacement is the prevailing mechanism driving the development. Consideration of the Broader context reveals that renewal and recycling of these adjectives is rooted in the history of English and is progressing in parallel at least across British and North American English. The actuation of the shift toward weird may be rooted in developments in literature and mass media, revealing that adjectives are a vibrant area of the grammar that may be used to track cultural influences on linguistic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]