Internationally operating professionals in China study business English to develop their language proficiency and transcultural communicative competence. While a variety of business English textbooks are on the market and are used in China, their conceptualizations of culture tend to be nation-based, static, and predictable -- views of culture…

Anglicisms play a pivotal role in shaping media discourse in Kazakhstan, potentially influencing both the style and content of media texts. The communicative and pragmatic features of anglicisms in Kazakhstani news feeds, in addition, are deeply impacted by globalization. This research aims to analyze how anglicisms influence the perception and…

Among other things, learning to write entails learning how to use complex sentences effectively in discourse. Some research has therefore focused on relating measures of syntactic complexity to text quality. Apart from the fact that the existing research on this topic appears inconclusive, most of it has been conducted in English L1 contexts. This…

This corpus-based study explores the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations in both English and Arabic. The objective is to analyse how gratitude in academic discourse is structured in these languages and to explore any differences related to gender. The study examines 80 dissertations (40 in English and…

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with children's internalizing and externalizing problems. IPV is thought to impair mothers' ability to scaffold young children's emotion regulation through coregulated interactions. Mother-child language style matching (LSM) is an index of coregulation that has yet to be examined in…

The emergence of English as the international language of communication has increased the attention and concern given its teaching and learning. This survey-based study explores the attitudes of Spanish practitioners and undergraduate students towards English as the vehicular language in the field of medicine and towards Medical Electronic…

This article presents 2 case studies of intermediate university students of French, Casey and Melanie (both pseudonyms), and their developing use and understanding of stylistic variation over the course of an academic semester. It draws from a variety of data sources: classroom observation, learners' explanations of stylistic variants, learners'…

Recent studies of Asian American youth language practices have presented compelling insights about the identities and migration experiences of young people of Asian descent. This article offers a detailed examination of the relationship between language use and select issues concerning Asian American youth, including social life, schooling,…

Explores the effects of rater's accent and amount of linguistic experience on semantic differential ratings of three varieties of Irish accents: Standard, Rural, and Dublin. (EKN)

Investigates the role of accent in attributing guilt to persons accused of a crime. A 3x3 repeated-measures design required three groups to rate three accents (Received British Pronunciation, Broad Australian, Asian) on their probability of having committed a particular crime (embezzlement, damage to property, violence against a person). Results…

A study of 240 TV viewers who watched or listened to and watched news stories showed highly significant differences in their recorded perceptions of the information. The spoken narrative was responsible for the perception of violence in the stories. Discussion of the results also touches on the subject of verbal violence. (14 references) (CP)

Investigates the real and potential functions of English media in the milieu of social openness in post-Mao China. The unique position of China's English media reflects key characteristics of a "hybridized discourse" and a style of reporting that seems both keen to control and eager to please. (Author/VWL)

Because speaking was a major symbolic focus of 17th century Quakerism, a movement of radical puritanism, and distinctive ways of speaking represented the principal visible means by which the Quakers differentiated themselves from others, much of the religious and political conflict surrounding Quakerism implicated speaking in some way. One aspect…

Examines viewers' perceptions of characters and their speech to see if: (1) the language of the characters corresponds to the language of Black speech communities as described by sociolinguists; (2) White viewers perceive language as important in their perceptions of the characters; and (3) White viewers are more likely to identify with speakers…

The Japanese system of honorification shows respect either to the subject or to the direct or indirect object of the sentence. The selection of the polite or plain styles of speech determines the level of honorifics. The increase in mass communication and public speaking has led to a search for a reasonably polite but not old-fashioned or pompous…