An evaluation of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) offered by Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. in this issue suggests a number of important opportunities for future research that may be based on interesting research findings produced over the past 3 decades in response to CMT. This reply to Gibbs argues that the main question for discourse processing remains…

In this essay, the author aims to show how a specific focus on interactionally emergent and rhetorically negotiated elements of a communicative situation can enrich the study of difference in composition research. She develops this argument by first identifying two strategies used by writing researchers when forwarding new understandings of…

This paper presents the author's response to Xiaoming Xi's article titled "How do we go about investigating test fairness?" In this response, the author focuses on test fairness and Toulmin's model of argument structure, Xi's proposal, and the challenges the proposal brings. Xi proposes an approach to investigating test fairness to guide…

This article arose out of an engagement in medical communication courses at a Gulf university. It deploys a theoretical framework derived from a (critical) sociocognitive approach to discourse analysis in order to investigate three aspects of medical discourse relating to childhood epilepsy: the cognitive processes that are entailed in relating…

This article presents the author's rejoinder to thinking about linking from issue 8(1). Particularly within the more embracing linking frameworks, e.g., Holland & Dorans (2006) and Holland (2007), there appears to be a major disjunction between (1) classification discourse: the supposed basis for classification, that is, the underlying theory…

Advances the development of a classification system, based on the salient speech act distinctions made by ordinary people, which can be of practical use in characterizing extended segments of discourse. Presents an attempt to use speech act theory in the quantitative study of interpersonal communication. (HTH)

Explores the question of what makes a discourse classification useful or appealing to teachers and examines the rise, reign, and fall of the scheme using narration, description, exposition, and argument as the four modes of discourse. (RL)

Explores the hypothesis that speech acts cannot be located without bringing in knowledge beyond that of the textual referent itself. Points out that speech acts are made up of sentence context pairs through which one must search for a formal motion of context as a framing of speech activities. (FL)

This article presents the difficulties literary pragmaticists have with literary genre, and asks to what extent linguists belonging to the Halliday tradition might be able to help. Literary pragmatists need a taxonomical apparatus that will apply to genres of all kinds, literary or otherwise. They also need to describe how different genres help…

Argues that rhetorical genre must be defined in terms of rhetorical action rather than form or substance. Proposes a conception of rhetorical genre based on conventionalized social motives found in recurrent situations. Points out the implications for rhetorical education: genres help students understand how to participate in community action. (PD)

A taxonomy of metadiscourse--defined as discourse that people use not to expand referential material but to help their readers connect, organize, interpret, evaluate, and develop attitudes toward that material--was proposed in "College Composition and Communication" (Vande Kopple, 1985). More surveying and classifying has been done since…

Analyzes four topics: (1) everyday discourse and judgments about language usage; (2) "social linguistics" and explanations for language differences in terms of categories such as class and gender; (3) the proposition that identity is constructed by language; and (4) the extent to which social categories are discursively constructed. (SK)

In spite of its numerous critics the concept "Bildung" is still one of the most important categories within the German speaking discussion on questions of education, learning and teaching. Apart from multiple differences there is a relatively great agreement in considering this concept as an irreplaceable category for educational…

Presents a classification of discourse, designed for the beginning writer, for which the basic taxon is the tactic--"any conscious decision of the writer to add to, subtract from, or alter in any way what he or she is writing." (JM)

This paper seeks to determine the essential qualities of proper nouns and to determine the differences between proper and common nouns by reviewing research and writings on the subject. Both proper and common nouns are found to connote the attributes of objects as their content. Common nouns, however, are those that identify a certain substance on…