Factors Affecting the Acquisition and Use of the Standard Dialect by Aboriginal Youth.

This paper examines factors impacting the acquisition and use of the standard dialect by Australia's Aboriginal youth. It explains that acquisition of a second dialect has implications for the learner's cognitive-affective and sociocultural life and argues that preservation of an "insider" perspective (related to identity) is a key reason for maintaining the first dialect, even when stigmatized in the wider community and inferior to the standard dialect for accessing goods and services in the larger world. The paper suggests that second dialect acquisition may differ from second language acquisition, because the two dialects are in competition in the same life space in a way that first and second languages may not be. The paper considers three areas from which the insider perspective is derived: historical factors associated with Aboriginal English and Australian English; sociolinguistic factors associated with Aboriginal English and Australian English (identity, structure, and function); and psycholinguistic factors associated with Aboriginal English and Australian English (the way it operates to maintain a distinctive world view). The paper concludes that to come to terms with historical, sociolinguistic, and psycholinguistic factors, there must be a radical two-way approach that brings two histories and two dialects into the education system. (Contains 27 references.) (SM)