This study examines a social network site (SNS) where specific interlocutors communicate by combining aspects of academic American English (AE), digital language (DL), and African American Language (AAL)--creating a digital form of AAL or digital AAL (DAAL). This article describes the features of DAAL in the discursive, online context of MySpace,…

Provides representative examples of the problems that diminish the utility of current metadiscourse theories, and proposes an alternative theory that locates metadiscourse within the larger context of speech act theory. Defines metadiscourse as indicators of expositive illocutionary acts, and provides a taxonomy of metadiscursive functions and…

Argues that traditional views of organizational communication have fallen short because they misapprehended and oversimplified the realities of rhetorical behavior in organizations and because they offered weak theoretical underpinnings for the study of business communication. (FL)

Many recent studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) have addressed the question of orality and literacy. This article examines a relatively recent subgenre of CMC, that of written online sports commentary, that provides us with written CMC that is clearly based on firmly established oral genres, those of radio and television sports…

Compares electronic support groups to electronic hobby groups to demonstrate the difference in terms of the rhetorical behavior of participants. Finds that some discourse characteristics and rhetorical features are common to all groups, others are unique to the special requirements of electronic support groups. (PA)

Examines the syntactic and stylistic features of an emergent phenomenon called Interactive Written Discourse (IWD), the written language occurring in simultaneous terminal-to-terminal typed dialogues. Finds that IWD is a naturally occurring register and a hybrid language variety, displaying characteristics of both oral and written language. Notes…

Explores research relating parts of clauses to the communicative roles they play. Proposes that M. A. K. Halliday's system of analyzing sentences into one or more kinds of themes and a rheme is a useful system in conducting such research. Discusses implications of this system for understanding discourse production, structure, or reception. (RDS)

Explores ethnic and gender differences in classroom conversational styles by comparing student involvement in face-to-face and computer-mediated discussions. Finds that white males participated more frequently than other groups in the face-to-face setting, and white women benefited more from computer-mediated communication. Notes Hispanic women…