here - Linguistic Society of America

"People often forget things or make mistakes in what they remember."The well-documented claim that jury instructions fail to explain the law clearly is driving a movement for reform. FollowingCalifornia's lead, a Massachusetts taskforce -- linguists and Massachusetts Bar Association members -- are investigating theeffects on comprehension of rewriting instructions into Plain English. This talk presents the motivation for our studies and ouremerging results.Peter Raper (University of the Free State) Session 64The ethnonym GriquaThe term Griqua in 1813 replaced Bastards for an ethnic group on the Orange River in South Africa. Recorded explanations ofGriqua have been rejected on linguistic and topographical grounds. The term Griqua is a contraction of Chariguriqua, an ancientpeople who inhabited the Great Berg River region in the Western Cape. The linguistic and topographic acceptability of givenexplanations of the name is discussed, including language of origin, and the occurrence or absence of clicks. A San (Bushman)etymology of the ethnonym Chariguriquas is postulated that is defensible on linguistic and topographical grounds.Chase Wesley Raymond (University of California, Los Angeles) Session 101Spanish dialect superiority in Latin America: the role of olk historical linguisticsThis mixed-method study analyzes the folk ideologies surrounding language in Latin America. Of interest are the bits of‘historical proof’—mentioned repeatedly—which, despite being inaccurate, nonetheless form part of the conscious culture ofmany speakers of Spanish throughout Latin America. Notions of “purity” and “age” are often evoked in evidencing claims ofdialect superiority, thereby erasing (in the sense of Irvine & Gal) indigenous languages/peoples from the linguistic history of theregion, as well as from the exclusive club of “Standard” Spanish speakers. This justification process allows speakers toauthenticate their ideologies as facts as opposed to mere opinions.Jeffrey Reaser (North Carolina State University) Session 52Using professional development webinars to increase teachers’ linguistic knowledgeWhile it has been acknowledged that teachers ought to be sociolinguistically aware, pre-service teacher education programstypically leave them without sophisticated knowledge about language variation. This paper describes the construction andimplementation of a professional development webinar for in-service teachers to learn about sociolinguistic information andbecome proficient in teaching the Voice of North Carolina dialect awareness curriculum. The teachers’ reactions to the webinarare also examined, including the connections they made between sociolinguistic information and their classrooms. Finally,information from follow up with webinar participants reveals the effects of the experience on teachers and their fall 2011teaching.Paul Reed (University of South Carolina) Session 80Michael Montgomery (University of South Carolina)Earlier African American English in an Appalachian enclaveStudy of earlier rural African American English in the American South–speech that may exhibit a quasi-creole past–has beenimpeded by the seemingly inescapable dearth of appropriate recordings. This paper uses recorded interviews by a folklorist in atiny enclave community in south central Kentucky formed by freed slaves following the Civil War (Montell 1970). It comparestwo features in AAE and cohort white speech: tense marking and verbal -s for subject concord. Lack of tense marking, often asubstratal feature, will be examined instrumentally. Verbal -s, a superstratal one, is known to be prevalent in white speechthroughout the region.Jodi Reich (Yale University) Session 34Philip E. Thuma (Macha Research Trust)Elena L. Grigorenko (Yale University)Multilingual lexicons: a study of Chitonga-English interactions in rural ZambiaWe report on the interaction of two languages in the lexical performance of primary school students in a multilingual community:(1) Chitonga, the local Bantu language, and (2) English, Zambia’s official language using assessments of Chitonga expressivevocabulary (EV) and fluency (Rapid Automatized Naming, RAN). The results show that school lessons positively affected overalllexical knowledge and fluency; however, 36% of non-target vocabulary responses contained switches to English. The number of196