Spring 1984
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01/01/1984
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Publication English Interference Loans as a Resource in the Functional Expansion of St. Lucian Creole(1984-04-01) Jones, SteveThis paper is a study of language contact between French Creole and English on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Although much of the discussion is related to grammatical questions, the implications go beyond issues in descriptive linguistics. The nature of English-Creole contact is an important question for St. Lucian education and social life in general, especially given the increased promotion of Creole as a medium of contact between the St. Lucian government and people, and the possibilities of the future use of Creole as a medium of education and literacy. The study gives some evidence that English-Creole contact in St. Lucia is a phenomenon that may provide one of the mechanisms for the use of St. Lucian Creole (SLC) as an official or literary language, as demonstrated by the speech of St. Lucians in official and literary settings. The first part of the paper outlines the material and social history of the island as it relates to the language situation, particularly to forms of English- Creole contact. The second part reviews some models of language contact phenomena developed by linguists in the past several years, and describes some terminology taken from a study of a socially analagous situation on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica. The third part is a discussion of some material from Creole texts which were recorded in St. Lucia in official or literary settings, and a description of some of the formal aspects of English-Creole contact, specifically English interference loans in Creole discourse. By way of conclusion, the paper discusses problems of language development raised by St. Lucian language planners and educators, as they relate to the phenomena described in the study.Publication Language Education Policy in Hawaii: Two Case Studies and Some Current Issues(1984-04-01) Huebner, ThomAny language policy (and even the absence of a formal language policy constitutes, in effect, a language policy) reflects the social, political, and economic context of public education. At the same time, the effect of that policy on society extends beyond the generation receiving direct services under it, for it influences what that generation brings to the task of educating its children. The current study explores the relationship between language policy and non-linguistic, non-educational issues in two case studies, both set in Hawaii. The first involves the loss of Hawaiian, the indigenous language, to English, an immigrant language during the Nineteenth Century. The second involves the linguistic assimilation of the Japanese during the first half of the Twentieth Century. While both involve language loss, the long-term effects in each situation have been quite different. The two case studies provide a historical backdrop for understanding the contemporary setting. The second part of the paper examines several current issues in language policy and language planning in Hawaii, especially as they relate to programs of bilingual education.Publication Investigating Literacy: Approaches, Tools, and Their Consequences for Inquiry(1984-04-01) Weinstein, GailPublication Foreword(1984-04-01) Hymes, DellPublication Repairs in Conversation: A Demonstration of Competence(1984-04-01) Williams, JessicaIntroduction The field of speech errors and repairs is a relatively new one. Repairs have been studied from a number of anoles, notably by Scheqloff, Jefferson and Sacks (1977) and Jefferson (1974). Scheqloff et al. saw merit in investigating repairs because of their role as a "self-riqhtinq mechanism for the organization of language in social interaction." They focused, for the first time, on the repair rather than the error. Jefferson suggested in her paper that repairs miqht have an even more important role than the correctional one--that they are in fact, an interactional resource. The use of certain phrases, lexical items , or even speech acts may mark a speaker with a certain role or status within· a restricted domain. "Errors" and their repairs allow speakers a wide ranqe of meanino. Jefferson cites the lexical pair ''cop'' and ''officer" in repairs such as: I told that to thuh--uh--officer. She claims that the speaker beqan to say "cop" as evidenced by the use of "thuh" rather than "thee" which would ordinarily be used before a word beqinning with a vowel such as "officer." She contends that this pair ~mon~rates contrastive domains of talk, alan~ with their appropriate roles for speakers. She chooses clearly defined pairs such as the above, or "Negro" and"colored"; but of course, many utterances cannot be so clearly attached to specific roles or domains. The purpose of this study of simulated negotiation sessions is to present a taxonomy for certain types of repairs and give further evidence for the claim that repairs are an interactional resource and, as such, are a part of native speaker competence. It can be seen from the data below that, while structural changes made in repairs may vary a great deal, changes in content are generally of two types: those which adjust the force of an uttemnce and those which shift its focus. Because speakers are often well into the first portion of an utterance before changing strategies, the hearer is in a good position to decode both portions of the utterance. The hearer thus has access to two, sometimes contradictory, messages. Furthermore, the speaker may use these paired messages to imply dual meanings.Publication Pretty Is as Pretty Does: A Speech Act View of Sex Roles(1984-04-01) Wolfson, NessaPublication A Re-Examination of L1 Interference and L2 Complexity as Factors in Second Language Syllabus Design(1984-04-01) Pica, TeresaA fundamental weakness shared by second language syllabi is that they have been based on their authors' assumptions about language learning and have lacked an empirically supported, psycholinguistic grounding. The following article will review two major traditions in syllabus design which share this weakness. Underlying one tradition is the assumption that second language structures which are the most different from the learner's L1 are also the most difficult to learn, and therefore should be given strongest emphasis in the syllabus. In the other tradition, it is assumed that there is a direct relationship between linguistic complexity and learning difficulty, and that the syllabus, therefore, should present target structures to the learner in an order of increasing linguistic complexity. This article will re-examine the assumptions underlying these two traditions in syllabus design in light of recent findings from second language acquisition research.