A study investigated the reciprocal relationship between colors and semantic terms--just as certain semantic terms elicit thoughts of particular colors, so those colors may also elicit their reciprocal semantic terms. Twenty-six students were each shown 18 words: 3 each of bipolar pairs that expressed evaluation, activity, or potency. The students…

Indicates that, of the 11 types of regrettable messages that people reported, most (1) were said to those with whom they had a close relationship, (2) resulted from unchecked drives or feelings, and (3) were recognized and regretted immediately. (JD)

The first study indicates that (1) both messages and message sources differed significantly as a function of the sophistication of the strategies employed by the message source and (2) female sources were more positively evaluated than male sources. The second study reveals that evaluations of comforting messages varied as a direct, linear…

Finds that temporal markers modify the availability of preceding words: segmentation markers like "around two o'clock" and "then" reduce this availability, whereas continuity markers like "and" improve this availability. Supports the hypothesis that segmentation markers lead readers not to integrate new information…

Provides a taxonomy of dyadic speech events in everyday relating through a series of four studies. Identifies 29 speech events through a variety of multimethod procedures, including unstructured and structured diary records, judgment sorting tasks, and semantic-differential rating scales. Suggests that everyday relating is dominated by six kinds…

Fourier analysis, a common technique in engineering, breaks down a complex wave form into its simple sine wave components. Communication researchers have recently suggested that this technique may provide an index of the rhythm of conversation, since vocalizing and pausing produce a complex wave form pattern of alternation between two speakers. To…

Indicates that (1) males with low interpersonal orientation (IO) were least vocally active and expressive and least consistent in their speech performances, and (2) high IO males and low IO females tended to demonstrate greater speech convergence than either low IO males or high IO females. (JD)

Analyzes patterns of laughter in bookshop service encounters in England and Italy. Finds that in the English corpus, laughter is recurrently turn-initial, anticipating an account by the assistant in the same turn, whereas in the Italian corpus it is recurrently turn-final, leaving to the customer the possibility of eliciting an account and/or an…

Discusses bilingualism in written cuneiform texts from ancient Babylonia and Sumeria. Describes the development of formats and techniques that enabled two or more languages on a single document to coexist harmoniously and productively. (SR)

A study investigated properties of children's naturally occurring arguments. The arguments were sampled from transcripts of 20 discussions held in 4 fourth-grade classrooms. The principal findings were that children's arguments are filled with seemingly vague referring expressions; that the arguments sometimes do not contain explicit conclusions;…

A study investigated differences between older adult male and female voice patterns. In addition, the study examined whether certain differences between male and female speech characteristics were lifelong and not associated with the aging process. Subjects were 10 young (average age 30) and 10 old (average age 75) males and 10 young (average age…

Data on four infants between the ages of 12 and 20 months were collected to answer two questions about children's communication behavior. (1) Is there a correspondence between communicative intentions expressed in gestures and vocal utterances? If both spring from common organismic tendencies, it should be possible to discern an "indicating"…

This report proposes that people often plan their speech acts to affect their listeners' beliefs, goals, and emotional states and that such language use can be modeled by viewing speech acts as operators in a planning system, allowing both physical and speech acts to be integrated into plans. Methodological issues of how speech acts should be…

Reviews linguistic structures in the annual reports of a machine tool manufacturer. Concludes that, as profits decreased and the news became more negative, linguistic structures (including verb structures, thematic structures, context and cohesion, and condensations) suggested a factual, "objective" situation caused by circumstances not…

Uses examples of conversation drawn from a mediation session to show how intentions, as discursive formations, are central not only to both narrative structure and interaction sequences but to the politics of subject position in discourse as well. Discusses the management of subject position in terms of critical coherence points. (SR)