Contributors' Column

Ronald Macaulay is emeritus professor of linguistics at Pitzer College. He was born and grew up in Scotland. He is the author of Language, Social Class, and Education: A Glasgow Study (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1977), Locating Dialect in Discourse: The Language of Honest Men and Bonnie Lasses in Ayr (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), and Standards and Variation in Urban Speech (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1997).

Laura Wright is a lecturer in English language at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the history of London dialect and the rise of standard English. She edited The Development of Standard English, 1300-1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

Sylvie Dubois is a professor in the Department of French Studies and in the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at Louisiana State University. She has coauthored, with Barbara M. Horvath, a number of articles on discourse and the sociolinguistics of Cajun English. Her other interests involve the varieties of spoken and written French in Louisiana and Louisiana Creole African American English.

Barbara M. Horvath is an honorary research associate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. She has coauthored, with Sylvie Dubois, a number of articles on discourse and the sociolinguistics of Cajun English. Her research interests also include change and variation in Australian English and the geolinguistics of Australian and New Zealand English.

H. Samy Alim is a doctoral candidate in educational linguistics at Stanford University. He is coauthor of Street Conscious Rap (with James G. Spady and Charles G. Lee, Philadelphia: Black History Museum Umum/Loh Pub., 1999) and is editor of Blacks Arts Quarterly. His dissertation investigates stylistic variation and identity in schools and society from the dual perspectives of quantitative sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.

Michael Shapiro is professor of Slavic and semiotic studies at Brown University. His most recent book is The Sense of Form in Literature and Language (New York: St. Martin's, 1998).

Michael C. Haley is professor of English at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is the author of The Semeiosis of Poetic Metaphor (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1998) and coauthor of Noam Chomsky (with Ronald F. Lunsford, New York: Twayne, 1994).