In a study of evaluations of speech in a Canadian context, it was found that a variety which may be said to possess regional standard status was perceived most favourably on dimensions relating to competence, success, and status when compared to other forms, and as favourably as these other forms in terms of integrity and attractiveness. This is in distinction to typical findings involving a more straightforward dichotomy between standard and nonstandard speech, where the former is usually associated with high status and competence, but tends to be seen less favourably than nonstandard forms on the so-called solidarity dimensions of integrity and attractiveness. An attempt is made to explain these results, to integrate them with the existing literature, and to suggest new studies. (Standard speech, regional varieties, speech evaluation)

This article has two purposes. The first is to examine the relationship between topic and gender on the basis of observation of naturally occurring conversations among all-male, all-female, and mixed gender groups. The second is to undertake an analysis of the relative importance or triviality of these conversations as perceived by the conversants themselves. Several unexpected agreements and differences were found. (Sociolinguistics, conversational topic, gender-related language differences, intuition versus data-based investigation in the study of language, speech acts, English, United States)

The present research was carried out in Catania, a town of 600,000 inhabitants on the eastern coast of Sicily, and was motivated by the observation of cases of nonreciprocity of address to female teachers in secondary schools. While male teachers were always addressed with their academic, professional titles, which have great, overt prestige in southern Italy, women, on the contrary, were often addressed as signora or signorina ‘Mrs./Miss’ in the vocative form. The main objectives of the research were to find out (a) which schools were involved in this case of nonreciprocity; (b) how many female teachers considered it a sign of respect or an act of discrimination; (c) if the linguistic imbalance reflected a social one; and (d) what were its psychological causes. (Linguistic imbalance, nonreciprocity of titles, asymmetrical address, social imbalance, Italian)