This discussion of gender constructs compares them with racial constructs, and examines ways in which language tends to dichotomize or polarize them, and to reject ambiguity as unacceptable. Other curiosities about sexual categorization are noted, including the fact that femaleness is subsumed under the category of "man," which in turn…

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…

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…

The first part of this essay argues specifically that legal speech acts are not statements but question/answer constructions. The focus in this section is on the underlying interrogative structure of the legal decision. The second part of the paper touches on significant topics related to the concept of legal speech acts, including the philosophic…

A study examined the validity of the distinction between interactional language, used to express social relations and personal attitudes, and transactional language, which conveys factual or prepositional information and is message oriented, within and across languages and cultures. Data were drawn from natural telephone conversations of three…

A discussion of women's oral discourse patterns focuses on the uses made of minimal responses, hedges, and tag questions. The analysis draws on transcriptions of conversations among a group of women friends over a period of months. It is proposed that the conventional treatment of these forms as "weak" is inappropriate in all-female…

Among both first- and second-generation immigrant groups in New Zealand and Australia, women maintain the ethnic language (EL) longer than men. Compared with men's networks, women's networks encourage more extensive use of EL in social interactions, and women value the social and affective functions expressed by EL. (Contains 71 references.…

The phenomenon of language is discussed and suggestions are made for using its unique aspects to enhance classroom second language teaching and learning. Five main points are made about language: (1) it differs in kind, not simply in degree, from other species' communicative behaviors; (2) the wonder of human language is rivaled by only one other…

A study examined language socialization in Dominica (West Indies), focusing on the use of a French-based creole, Patwa, in a situation of linguistic and social change. Despite claims that Patwa is integral to Dominican identity, rural caregivers choose to speak English to language-learning children, contributing to rapid attrition of Patwa.…

A study examined traditional Hindi songs typically sung by women during north Indian weddings, using pragmatic and semantic analysis. Some historical and cultural background for the practice of women's singing at weddings is offered. It is suggested that gender roles are defined and regulated through the language of this speech event, and that…

While little attention has been given in historiography to the language of historical narrative, and the role language plays in portraying history, the discipline of linguistics, and particularly the subdisciplines of discourse analysis and functional linguistics, have given increasing attention to the discourse of history. Recently, a group of…

This paper describes an educator's decision to change careers from that of foreign service officer to teacher of English as a Second Language is traced to a December 1985 event in Korea in which the American Cultural Center in Kwangju was occupied by protesting Korean students. Analysis of this event and its effect on the educator focuses on the…

Gender is a structure of language and an attendant attribute for each noun and all of its immediate qualifiers, providing a set of categories into which the nouns of languages are divided. Through the phenomenon of concord, verbs, adjectives, and articles are made to agree with nouns in gender, person, number, and case. Gender classifies language…

The practice of "chismeando" (gossiping, in Spanish) is examined as it is defined and engaged in by a group of women from the Dominican Republic. It is argued that the stories told in chismeando are repositories of sociocultural knowledge. Women's participation in the practice provides the women with a framework for understanding and…

The use of rhetorical voice in literature and news reporting is examined and its implications for classroom study of literature are discussed. Analysis is based on Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the novel and the definition of "voice" as an identifiable social role or position that a character enacts, and "ventriloquation" as the…