This study examines the characteristics of a range of narrative and performance texts featuring Wenglish, the dialect of the South Wales Valleys, in terms of their linguistic and thematic content and their relation to the community. Part One comprises an introduction to Wenglish and an overview of research on English in South Wales and approaches to language in use. In Part Two the results of textual and discourse analysis of twenty-five texts (nine literary and seven formal performance excerpts and nine personal narratives) are presented. In Part Three insights arising from analysis are applied in three pieces of new creative work in dialect. A reference list of texts containing Wenglish is appended. Cultural outputs mirror and express the community which produces them and thus the formal and informal literary output of the South Wales Valleys both reflects and expresses some of the shared characteristics, values, beliefs and preoccupations of those communities. Analysis revealed recurrent thematic clusters (e.g. community, personal identity, world of work, sport) across the range of texts, suggesting the centrality of these themes and a close link between the texts and the community. From analysis of linguistic content, a ‘Wenglish index’ was calculated for each text. The literary texts generally had lower indices than the formal performance texts. The personal narratives, though informal, all had lower indices than the formal performance material, suggesting that in this latter category, dialect features are consciously exaggerated. Discourse analytical methods generated rich interpretive material at the level of individual texts. Insights from analysis proved useful at the initial and editing phases of new creative work. The possible practical application of Wenglish material in community and interpretive projects is also discussed.

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It is the purpose of this thesis to contribute a small part to the large picture of Texas dialect by describing the use of certain stressed sounds in one locality, Parker County, Texas, which lies in the General American speech division of the United States.

This doctoral dissertation focuses on the negotiation of power in schools and the social and academic experiences of First Nations and Metis children who speak a non-standard variety of English called Indigenous English. Indigenous English is a dialect of English spoken by many Indigenous peoples in Canada; it is especially discernable in the Prairie Provinces, yet it is not widely recognized by the majority of the population. This thesis explores the experience of dialect speakers of Indigenous English in the standard English School and educator perceptions of their literacy and language abilities. / This classroom study was conducted in an urban community in Saskatchewan. The focus of the research was a Grade 3/4 classroom with 25 students, six of whom were interviewed for this study. Additionally, interviews were conducted with eleven educators. The results of this study indicate that the First Nations children of this study speak a dialect of English that differs phonologically, morphologically, syntactically, and lexically from the Standard English spoken in Saskatchewan. The results of this PhD research indicate that Indigenous English-speaking students use discourse behaviour that differs from that of their White settler classmates. In examining the children's speech and classroom behaviour, it becomes apparent that silence, teasing, and story telling are important discourse characteristics of Indigenous English. / The findings indicate that White settler educators demonstrate little awareness of the systematic linguistic and discourse characteristics of Indigenous English and that this lack of awareness is apparent in White settler educators' descriptions of their approaches to teaching, literacy development, classroom management, evaluation, and referral of First Nations and Metis students for speech and language assessment. Other findings include denial of difference, and a race/class divide in the school and community. / Possible resolutions to the problems faced by these students may include teacher training and dialect awareness classes. This field has not been adequately explored and further research is needed to discover viable solutions to the issues experienced by dialect speakers of Indigenous English in the Standard English classroom.

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Recent discussions on African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) have focused on the linguistic divergence and convergence hypotheses. Some linguists (Ash and Myhill 1986; Bailey and Maynor 1987, 1989; Graff, Labov, and Harris 1986; Labov 1983, 1987; Labov and Harris 1986; Luthin 1987; Myhill and Harris 1986; Thomas 1989) claim that AAVE is diverging from White Vernacular English (WVE) on a national level. However, other linguists (Butters 1987, 1988, 1989; Vaughn-Cooke 1986, 1987; Wolfram 1987) have challenged the divergence hypothesis, and have argued that AAVE is actually converging with WVE. They point out that the data in most of the studies supporting the divergence hypothesis were incomparable and manifested age-grading. In addition, these studies investigated only a few linguistic features. Most importantly, most of these studies lack the time-depth data which are essential to investigate language change.This study analyzed the time-depth data of speech samples from thirty-two African-American subjects, sixteen from 1980 and sixteen from 1993, in Muncie, Indiana. The subjects were both males and females, equally divided into young adult and elderly speakers. The analysis of the study focused on twenty-three syntactic and five phonological features.The results from the study have found no innovative features, either syntactic or phonological, in the speech of Muncie AAVE subjects. More importantly, the findings of the study, based on the time-depth data, have shown that Muncie AAVE was not divergent with WVE, but convergent with it, at least from 1980 to 1993. Thus, the findings of the study do not support the divergence hypothesis. / Department of English

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The teaching of freshman composition can be a challenging and exciting endeavor if teachers are aware of current linguistic facts about the nature of language variations manifested by their students and the linguistic shortcomings of many textbooks. Awareness of the distinction of linguistic competence and linguistic performance can aid teachers in making freshman composition more realistic to students. These concepts are technically explained in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax by Noam Chomsky (1965), and are applied to dialect for teachers of composition by the Committee on CCCC Language Statement in Students' Right to Their Own Language (1974). With knowledge of linguistic principles, teachers can respond to their students' dialects humanistically and realistically and can teach academic English without making impressionistic and incorrect statements about non-academic variations from their students.

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