The historic development of the cable phenomenon is traced through industry rhetoric that promised a multitude of services and "voices" in exchange for benign regulations. The current rhetoric of the "wired nation's" latest entrant into the broadband information delivery business--the telcos--also is examined in order to assess…

An applied linguistic framework is presented within which specific applications of media technologies may be applied to language learning. The first two parts of the paper focus on the impact of media on linguistic communication and the possibilities offered by media technologies such as newspapers, radio, television, telephone/telex, computer…