The knowledge of diverse rhetorical relations is a remarkable component of competence in research article (RA) writing for learners' successful handling of scholarly writing tasks in English for academic purposes (EAP) programs. This study aimed to present a model of Rhetorical Markers (RMs) competence in writing EAP RAs. In so doing, a…

The relationship between the polite and conventional nature of friendly language and the sincerity of the writer's feelings is a central topic in linguistic and historical research on friendship in epistolary communication. This relationship can be understood in the context of the emotional values and conventionalised emotional practices that…

Within the endless stream of information available on the news media market, news headline language is characterised by several linguistic, pragmatic, rhetorical and functional features that distinguish it from other varieties of language that are not specialised. In the present study, the rhetorical features of English news headlines, through…

The article provides analysis of the interrupted communication as part of the communication in the election discourse. The authors explored the most typical reasons for the interrupted communication in the electoral discourse analyzed communication failures as a kind of ineffective communication. Communication failures are presented as a result of…

Research on reported speech is old, but scholars working in this field are inclined to see its roots in Davidson's (1968) paratactic account of indirect reports. Although Davidson aimed at a "truth-conditional" theory of indirect reports which could challenge ideational, use, and psychological theories, his paratactic view--of which the…

This review paper constitutes the first step within a larger research effort to develop an interactive pragmatics learning tool for second and foreign language (L2) learners and users of English. The tool will primarily endeavor to support pragmatics learning within the language use domain "workplace." Given this superordinate objective,…

This paper surveys the research methods and approaches used in the multidisciplinary field of applied language studies or language education over the last fourty years. Drawing on insights gained in psycho- and sociolinguistics, educational linguistics and linguistic anthropology with regard to language and culture, it is organized around five…

This review highlights recent doctoral research in the United States completed between the spring of 2006 and the fall of 2007 in the areas of language teaching and language learning. Topics of particular interest included language policy, second/foreign language pragmatics, computer-mediated communication, non-native-speaking teachers, academic…

The paper reviews research on the pragmatic language skills of language impaired and learning disabled students. Discourse skills are analyzed in terms of communicative intentions, presupposition, social organization of discourse, and context. Narrative skills are examined according to narrative structure, scripts, text cohesion, and audience…

Pragmatics is the theory of utterance interpretation, as contrasted with sentence interpretation, involving a variety of tasks: disambiguation, reference assignment, resolution of vaguenesses or indeterminacies, restoration of missing or ellipsed material, and recovery of the speaker's attitude and the effects of stylistic variation. The most…

Reviews distinctions between negative and positive letters and summarizes the advice commonly offered for conveying negative messages. Outlines the tenets of Grice's theory of conversational implicature, and discusses sociolinguistic explanations for the use of indirectness in negative messages. Analyzes the texts of several letters, using Grice's…

The different functions of the brain hemispheres as they relate to discourse analysis of narratives are examined through review of studies of the narratives of hemidecorticate (a disconnection of the two brain hemispheres) adolescents. Focus is on the role of pragmatics, discourse processing, and the use of pronouns. (Author/DB)

Examines the rating scale and the testing procedure of the oral interview for evidence of discourse competence. The paper suggests that a careful examination of the processing capabilities might serve as a valid indicator of their discourse competence. (24 references) (GLR)

To integrate many of the theoretical linguistic studies examining pronoun reference, this paper focuses on tracing the shift from purely transformational syntactic studies of intrasentential phenomena to the wider orientations of discourse and pragmatic studies. The first section describes the classic studies of pronominalization within the…

Examines imperatives regarding their different construction forms as well as the syntactic and pragmatic features of the imperative stem that influence the form and meaning of the tag attached to it. The conclusion is drawn that the imperative tag cannot be best analyzed as merely a frozen expression. (GLR)