Mathematical Argumentation skills have historically been overlooked in assessment, but the inclusion of Mathematical Argumentation in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as one of the Standards of Mathematical Practice challenges assessment developers to assess this mathematical practice. Explanation and justification of one's own thinking to a…

This paper first briefly reviews what Halliday and Hasan (1976) said about "(the) same." The paper then examines the understanding of this form by qualitatively analyzing 259 naturally occurring spoken tokens of "(the) same" in their discourse contexts. It focuses on the following questions with reference to the data: (1) What…

Contends that contemporary reading of "topos" is inherently metaphorical, having at its root a "place" metaphor with important ontological overtones. Indicates an imbalance by comparing two ways of interpreting the "place" metaphor, and the consequences for critics. (JK)

The concept of grammatical servitude, defined as the absence of semantic choice in linguistic constructions, minimizes dependence on intuition and subjective judgment in syntactic analysis. It also causes the researcher to neglect important communicative resources of the speaker. To remedy this problem, the use of semantics in syntactic analysis…

The primary goal of translation is to enable an audience in a Target Language to understand a text/discourse which was ultimately not intended for them. The primary goal of text-analysis is to further the understanding of phenomena inside one language. There are several similarities between translation and text-analysis: both translation and…

In Sundanese, a western Austronesian language, speech levels allow the speaker to establish social identity through talk alone, using multiple linguistic forms with very different pragmatic meanings. These words are deference and demeanor indexicals, as in the French formal versus informal second person. It is argued that although they do exist,…

The first phase of an ongoing study of communication in a naturalistic situation in which children talked to familiar children is described in this paper. The situation was one that encouraged pretend (or dramatic) play. Research was focused on (1) the amount of pretend play; (2) the amount of speech used for planning or managing the play; and (3)…

A new theory of speech acts is proposed that draws a fundamental distinction between speech acts proper--declaratives, interrogatives, and directives--and the myriad social actions that are performed using language such as making promises, making offers, issuing invitations, and asking questions. The theory states that sentences are usally meant…

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…

Defining peak as the climax of discourse, this paper argues that it is important to identify peak in order to get at the overall grammar of a given discourse. The paper presents case studies in which four instances of peak in narrative discourses occur in languages from four different parts of the world. It also illustrates the occurrence of a…

Sociopragmatic ambiguity (SPA) is claimed here to differ from other, better-known types of ambiguity, in terms of its locus, cause, and effect. SPA is characteristic of whole-discourse features rather than of lexical items or phrases. The ambiguity is one of social rather than ideational or semantic meaning. It is claimed that SPA arises through…

This paper discusses how to treat code-switching in translations. Examples include use of a word or phrase that is a common expression in the ordinary source language but comes from a related classical language (e.g., "terra nullius," a Latin phrase used in English, a word or expression borrowed from a dialect related to the source language (e.g.,…

This paper is concerned with a discourse-based approach to lexis and, in particular, the discourse role of lexical patterns or lexicalized sequences which are completely or partially preassembled and more or less fixed in form. Lexical patterns, their function in a community's codes, and the cultural differences that may arise in their use, are…

The purpose of this essay is to consider some of the practical implications of Martin Heideger's view that "Language is the house of Being," for the academic study of cultural transformation and intercultural communication. The paper describes the ontological basis of Heidegger's work, and the inquiry into Being, and contains sections on…

This analysis of repeated utterances in Japanese conversational discourse focuses on repetition as an expression of iconicity. In the analysis of a 30-minute conversation among 4 Japanese speakers, the iconic meanings expressed by both reduplication and conversational repetition are highlighted. The iconicity characteristic of conversational data…