This conceptual paper deals with ways in which gesture or embodied utterances create deictic expressions (i.e., deixis) that are relevant to second language teaching and learning. While many gesture types have been found to be material carriers of meaning (McNeill, 1992; Vygotsky, 1986), deictics have the ability and function to create new…

The article "Some Important Facts about Language Teaching/Learning: Basics and Assumptions" by Dr. Mahmoud M. S. Abdallah explores the foundational elements of language teaching and learning. It emphasizes the importance of language proficiency for personal, social, and professional success, highlighting the cognitive and societal…

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this…

Language operates according to rules. Rules mean prediction. The application of these language rules to persuasive campaigns through linguistic technology can result in major gains in advertising, political and marketing outcomes. For qualitative researchers in communications, marketing and messaging, one area of persuasive language technology can…

This article discusses some apparently paradoxical behavior of the English demonstratives "this/these" and "that/those" as determiners of proper nouns and as metaphorical signals of epistemic and affective stance within the proximal-distal opposition. It is argued that the apparent paradoxes are actually cases of shifting perspectives or points of…

Recent work addressing the phenomenon of perceptual simulation offers new and exciting avenues of investigating how to model knowledge representation. From the perspective of language, the simulation approach has given rise to new impetus to work on models of language understanding (e.g., Zwaan, 2004, and references therein), and provides a way of…

Reinterprets the findings of Kim "et al" (1994), who argue that the preference children and adults show for regular inflection for verbs and nouns with novel meanings should be attributed to their grammatically based sensitivity to the derivations of these verbs and nouns. This article argues for a semantic/functional instead of a grammatical…

Developing academic, or school-based, literacy poses a significant challenge for many students, because the language through which academic subjects are presented is markedly different from the social language that students use in everyday ordinary life. This article focuses on one aspect of academic language, the functions of nouns and nominal…

Discusses replacing foreign language study for students who are not highly motivated second language learners with a linguistics-based course on language awareness. Gives ideas for exercises on language and dialect differences and suggests that the course would also be a good accompaniment for more advanced foreign language classes. (EKN)

A course in general semantics has as its primary aim to help students become aware of the interactions between words, perceptions, and behavior, and particularly how language both affects and effects belief and even action. Students are encouraged not only to be more responsive to language, but also to become more skillful users of language…

Examines the means by which trade mark law establishes determinacy of form. The article probes how this points to assumptions about the nature of language that radically differ with those of orthodox 20th century linguistics, particularly in connection with the distinction between language and the use of language. (nine references) (CK)

Uses three approaches revolving around language issues as a basis for exploring emotions: universal semantics, emotionology, and the theory of "goal-action-outcome knowledge." Uses an approach that attempts to turn around the traditional, realistic picture of the relationship between emotions, cognition, and language. (73 references) (Author/CK)