The doctoral defence is the oral examination of the doctoral thesis. While it is a major milestone for doctoral candidates, this event is often shrouded in mystery. In this article, I explore the doctoral defence from an international perspective. I have studied the format of the defence based on written testimonies as well as the literature on…

The main aim of this paper is to examine the syntactic status of a selected text-corpus focus, with a special focus on the verb within its Verb-Phrase. The major claim is that the power of the verb in its VP is loaded syntactically through which the speaker's desire of the doublespeak within X-Phemism is achieved. In order to fulfill this claim, a…

With the rapid advancements of technology, online communication in both K-12 and post-secondary instruction has been widely implemented. Instructors as well as researchers have used various frameworks to evaluate different aspects of online discussions' quality. The online discussions take place synchronously or asynchronously in chat rooms,…

Introduction: The aim of this study was to analyze how oral argumentative strategies, argumentative sequences and interaction patterns relate to argumentative content and the required learning objectives. Method: Two different kinds of debates were analyzed. In the first, the participants defended one point of view, while in the second the…

This fascinating dialogue raised many questions. In this commentary I will focus on just three questions that particularly stimulated me to further reflection: "why classification?"; "what is ontology?" and "where does agency come from?" [This article provides a commentary on Eugene Matusov and Kiyotaka Miyazaki's…

In September 2011 in Rome at the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research conference, Eugene Matusov (USA), Kiyotaka Miyazaki (Japan), Jayne White (New Zealand), and Olga Dysthe (Norway) organized a symposium on Dialogic Pedagogy. Formally during the symposium and informally after the symposium several heated discussions started…

The increasing prevalence of mandatory Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) policies has ushered in rather dramatic dissertation genre change. The affordances of the medium offer expanded access and audience, availability of new compositional tools, and alternate formats, the implications of which are just beginning to appear in…

This paper examines language users' attitudes toward language reforms proposed by the Real Academia Española (RAE) (Spanish Royal Academy) in 2010 by analyzing readers' comments posted online in response to an article by "El País", the major newspaper in Spain, which presented those reforms. This project combines the theoretical notion…

The current study examined the utility of the recently released Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF; Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008) validity scales to detect feigned psychopathology in a criminal forensic setting. We used a known-groups design with the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS;…

Theoretical and empirical research on argument and argumentation in science education has intensified over the last two decades. The term argument in this review refers to the artifacts that a student or a group of students create when asked to articulate and justify claims or explanations whereas the term argumentation refers to the process of…

It is suggested that the strength of a categorical argument increases with the degree to which the conclusion and premise categories are similar to the members of the lowest level category that includes both premise and conclusion categories. (SLD)

This article presents a sketch for a theory of the rhetorics involved in categorisation and the creation of culture in online communities. Persuasion, or shaping perceptions of the world, is never incidental to social life, but living online necessarily involves persuasion as it is difficult to bring force to bear, although people can be…

A grammar based on speech acts to be used by second language teachers, syllabus planners, and instructional materials writers is outlined. The grammar proposes only two basic categories of speech act: (1) those involving a negotiation between speaker and addressee, and (2) those designed by the speaker to give information to the addressee. The…

A typology of the influencing strategies used in academic decision making in higher education institutions is proposed, then applied to one university program development project. The typology assumes two basic influence modes (pressure and legitimization) and seven types of organizational resources (expertise, money, information, time, rules,…

The approach taken to discourse analysis that classifies text types according to isolated linguistic features is criticized, and an alternative approach to argumentative texts is proposed. This approach looks at the process of argumentation as an instance of the problem-solving process. The argumentative text is then seen as moving from the…