This article presents the results of a comparative study of two Hispanic communities in New York City: Washington Heights and Elmhurst/Corona. Our data on language proficiency, language use, and attitudes were gathered using a sociolinguistic questionnaire. However, the study benefited from the interactive process established between the researchers and the communities which they studied and in which they live and work.

Our data are analyzed along three dimensions. First, we compare data for the two Spanish-speaking communities. We discuss how the social status and the ethnic configuration of the community affect linguistic and attitudinal behaviors. Then, we analyze the data according to national origin. We discuss how the five nationality groups included in our study – Central Americans, Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and South Americans – differ in language proficiency, language use, and language attitudes. Finally, we compare the data for Dominicans in Washington Heights to that of Dominicans in Elmhurst/Corona. We examine how national origin and the language surround of the ethnic community interact in order to determine language use and attitudes. Some of the findings here differ from what may be supposed of such cases.

We suggest socioeducational and language policies for Hispanics in the United States based on the results of this study. (Sociology of language, sociolinguistics, language planning, ethnic studies, sociology, education of language minorities, language education, Central American, Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, South American Spanish in New York City)

This article examines the tense system of Samaná English, a lineal descendant of early nineteenth-century American Black English. Independent evidence from quantitative phonological, grammatical, and narrative analyses reveals the existence of a past tense marker comparable in surface form, function, and distribution to that of Standard English. In addition, we establish the presence of a narrative Historical Present, thus far unattested in Black English Vernacular (BEV), which appears in proportions and patterns of alternation with the past tense nearly identical to those associated with middle-class white American narrators. Comparison with varieties of contemporary BEV and English-based creoles shows a structural resemblance between Samaná English and the former, but not the latter. These findings have important implications for understanding the development of contemporary BEV. (Linguistic variation, narrative analysis, Black English Vernacular, pidgin and creole linguistics, Dominican Republic)

This article explores the relationship between the status of Javanese women and the politeness or formality of their speech. I examine the hypothesis that, cross-culturally, women will speak more politely than men as an expression of their secondary status. Ethnographic research from East Java reveals that Javanese women are required to be more polite within the family where they receive less polite speech and offer more. In the wider context of Javanese culture, however, it is Javanese men who strive to cultivate politeness for the purpose of expressing their superior status and authority. The potentially coercive or political power of politeness in Javanese is related to the ambiguity of the polite codes themselves, which may be used to express both deference or humility on the one hand and status, refinement, and power on the other. Speech patterns are linked to a number of social-structural variables: patterns of socialization, models of appropriate male and female linguistic behavior, and men's and women's social roles and typical spheres of interest. Where, as in Java, polite codes are associated with public power and control, we should expect that men may be especially concerned with the cultivation of polite styles of speech. (Politeness, gender roles, linguistic socialization, Indonesia)

Parallels between female communication strategies in the West and Japanese communication strategies are striking. Power figures prominently in descriptions of male-female behavior in the West and, by implication, in descriptions of Japanese linguistic behavior. Similarities between Western female and Japanese communication styles are taken not as an indication that Japanese linguistic behavior is feminine, but as indicative of the problems inherent in analyzing linguistic behavior in culturally bound-terms such as power. (Japanese sociolinguistics, language and the sexes, inter-cultural communication)

The sudden shift from power to solidarity in Iran in the face of the sociopolitical upheaval in the country has yielded some interesting changes in the forms of address in Persian. In general, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, forms of address in Persian have undergone a sociolinguistic simplification. In post-revolutionary Iran plain speech and forms of address marking solidarity have gained popularity, whereas asymmetrical forms reflecting the complex social class structure of pre-revolutionary Iran have gradually declined. This article gives a sociolinguistic account of the forms of address in present-day Iranian Persian and documents the impact of the revolution on this aspect of the Persian language. (Sociopolitical change, language change, forms of address, politeness systems, Iranian Persian)