The art review is a genre that describes the artwork under discussion, educates its readers, as well as interprets and evaluates the work. It is a genre that plays a crucial role in the art community as it publicizes art, promotes artists, educates the public and enhances their appreciation of art. This study investigates this underexplored genre…

This paper explores how "English learners (ELs)" or who we prefer to call "multilingual learners" are labeled and positioned in policy documents and leading education research documents respectively. Attending to the urgent call for serving the growing number of linguistically and culturally diverse learners, this study delves…

At present, genre analysis of various types of texts has gained much attention by the researchers worldwide. The focus of genre analysis in this study is on the examination of thesis abstracts written by Pakistani students in the field of TEFL in connection with move structure, lexico-grammatical features and style of the writer. The corpus of…

In this paper, the BBC's stance on English language use is investigated by analysing its language guidelines provided in the 2003 BBC "News Styleguide." Before the analysis is tackled, a brief discussion of the use of language and style guides in the media is given to illustrate its complexities and effects on news providers. In order to…

The public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By…

Formality has long been of interest in the study of discourse, with periodic discussions of the best measure of formality and the relationship between formality and text categories. In this research, we explored what features predict formality as humans perceive the construct. We categorized a corpus consisting of 1,158 discourse samples published…

This study adopts the revised interpersonal model of metadiscourse to discover whether and to what extent Chinese authors employ a varying amount of Interactional Metadiscourse (IM) in the past decade in English abstracts of economics Research Articles (RAs). The data was drawn from a prestigious economics journal in China to compose a corpus of…

Research into language acquisition and oral language use was examined in order to identify key factors that contribute to the successful acquisition of second language (L2) listening ability. The factors were grouped into three major domains: affective, cognitive, and interpersonal. It is claimed that in each domain, proficient L2 listeners have…

This literature review focuses on presenting an overview of research on language and gender. An introduction to the factors influencing language use will first be made. Second, a brief discussion on sex and gender will be made to clarify the terminology used in the literature. Third, physical differences between men and women will also be pointed…

A lighthearted look at popular euphemisms and the reasons behind their creation and use. (RL)

This paper starts by examining recent work by applied linguists who argue that creativity is not only a property of especially skilled and gifted language users, but is pervasive in routine everyday practice. Also variously addressing literariness, language play and humour, this apparent democratization of creativity contributes to a more general…

Explores the many facets of graffiti as humor, with some educational asides about using graffiti to explain forms, styles, attitudes, and variations in language. (RL)

Critically examines contemporary interactional studies of the cultural specificity of human language. The study is a cross-cultural analysis of misconstrued communications in human interaction, ascertaining whether these interactions are crucially dependent on nonlinguistic variables. (CB)

Uses trademarks that are calculated misspellings, bumper sticker slogans, the strained and pretentious language of Howard Cosell, and governmental jargon to illustrate how to attune students to the magic and power of language, while poking fun at language abuse. (RL)

The functional approach, which views language as a potential for meaning in social situations, seems particularly relevant in analyzing the dynamic interaction between text and context. Function determines structure, and the context, which comes to define the function, determines the kinds of text that will be communicative. As the contextual…