Drawing a distinction between lexical and phonological variation reveals differences in sociolinguistic patterning. A comparison of dialects within the Durham, England speech community is discussed on these levels. Phonetic motivation, speech style, and social and situational factors are shown to interact in complex ways in connected speech…

Educators must begin to take folk language seriously. Many of the situations in our classrooms are set up within unrealistic language frames because teachers are intimidated by code switching and because there is too little information about when and why people switch speech styles. (Author/WI)

Drawing on recent work in variationist sociolinguistics, sociology of language and linguistic anthropology, focuses on new approaches to explaining gender differentiated patterns of sound change and language shift, the success or failure of planned linguistic reforms, and changes in the social evaluation of gendered speech styles. (Author/VWL)

Refines the concepts of powerful and powerless speech styles by investigating evaluative reactions to hedges and hesitations in a simulated courtroom context. Indicates that a low level of hedges and hesitations produced the most positive evaluations of authoritativeness and attractiveness. Reveals that these variables affected perceptions of…

Based on an interview study of 138 kindergarten children, the data for the most part did not support Bernstein's ideas. Speech style indicators did not cluster into elaborated and restricted variants. Neither social control strategies nor school achievement scores were differentially related to elaborated and restricted variants. (PD)

Investigation of commonalities in children's language across tasks showed that children with literate and oral speech styles made both contrastive and similar types of adaptations when portraying events through play and oral narration. As they moved from playing to narrating, both groups edited more carefully and employed more explicit language.…

Purpose: The authors sought to investigate interactions among intelligibility-enhancing speech cues (i.e., semantic context, clearly produced speech, and visual information) across a range of masking conditions. Method: Sentence recognition in noise was assessed for 29 normal-hearing listeners. Testing included semantically normal and anomalous…

Examined patronization of young adults by older adults. Young adults were provided with single vignette of short conversation between older and younger person. Eight versions of vignette were devised independently varying elder's age and speech style (neutral versus nonlistening versus disapproving versus parental). Patronizing elders were…

A study investigated the distribution of post-vocalic /r/ in Singapore English as it may relate to social factors, particularly whether usage appears to be perceived as a prestige feature by those who use it. Informants were 21 subjects from various social backgrounds. Three speech styles representing a range of stylistic variation were elicited:…

Comparative statistical data are presented on speech dynamic (as contrasted with lexical and rhetorical) aspects of major speech styles. Representative samples of story retelling, lectures, speeches, sermons, interviews, and panel discussions serve to determine posited differences between casual and careful speech. Data are drawn from 15,393…

Focuses on activities that took place in courses on contemporary French society. In these courses, students and instructor attempted to develop a series of analytical tools from a systematic body of visual, oral, and textual materials in order to increase cultural understanding and speech styles of French-speaking communities or social groups.…

Considers the socio-stylistic distinction of the French variable morpho-syntactic particle "ne." The interspeaker axes of variation in "ne" are summarized, and intraspeaker data deriving from a corpus of spoken French are considered. Examines intraspeaker variation in "ne" by focusing on the use of the variable by a single speaker in both speech…

Describes a study using matched-guise technique designed to (1) determine how West Welsh preadolescents would react to Welsh speakers reading a passage of prose in one of three language varieties (Received Pronunciation English, Welsh-Accented English, Welsh) and (2) to examine what effect language of testing might have on children's social…

A study of how teachers form initial impressions of pupils examined the relative influence of speech style, physical appearance, and written work on teacher judgments of pupils on a wide range of classroom personality and cognitive variables. Pupil voice and accent were found to be a strong influence in judgments about the child as a learner.…

This study assesses whether third graders verbalize gender differences in dominance in mixed- and same-sex interactions, using data from tape-recordings of 43 pairs of white children (14 female and 12 male same-sex dyads and 17 different-sex dyads) playing checkers in same- or mixed-sex conditions. Children develop gender-differentiated speech…