Everyone has a name. Names are more than a symbol or label. The culture of a people finds expression in the language they employ. When personal names are studied historically, philosophically, etymologically, and psychologically the reflection of the social and natural environment can be perceived. This paper focuses on the analysis of the…

A study examined advice-giving interactions between Swedish district nurses and patients, comparing these sequences with parallel interactions between British health visitors and first-time mothers in previous research. Analysis focused on how advice-giving is organized in the settings, including how advice is initiated and designed, its…

The social orientation of 60 American and 60 Philippine mothers representing two levels of social class was assessed through the verbal regulatory appeal strategies which they employed in five hypothetical everyday situations involving their 4-year-old children. Social orientation was assessed through the mothers' responses to the Bearison and…

This paper considers a distinction frequently used in sociolinguistics and ethnography of speaking to describe speech events: their formality or informality. Three principle meanings of "formality" found in the literature concern whether the formality relates to properties of a communicative code, properties of the social setting in…

This is a comparative analysis of the Japanese and American languages and cultures. The following are discussed: verbs, kinship terms, category terms, apologies and thanks, honorifics and postpositional particles, and levels of usage. A final section relates conclusions about linguistic patterns to culture patterns. (AM)

A study analyzed four major classes of discourse marker in Brazilian Portuguese: "ne" and other requests for feedback; "ai," a sequential connector; "ah, bom," and other turn initiators; and "assim," a marker of explanation. Distribution in various discourse functions and sociodemographic conditioning, and…

A study investigated the production of conventional conversational openings by five advanced learners of Kiswahili with experience in the Kiswahili speaking environment. Native speakers of Kiswahili usually engage in lengthy openings including several phatic inquiries (PIs) and phatic responses (PRs). The number and manner in which the PIs and PRs…

Examines differences in the rhetorical structures of English and Japanese newspaper editorials by (1) measuring and describing textual features; and (2) conducting an experiment in which native English speakers and bilingual English-Japanese speakers reordered the scrambled texts of editorials. Results indicated that certain rhetorical patterns…

In studying the role of context in speech act performance, the tradition has been to use controlled elicitation instruments that allow for manipulation of social dimensions. The assumption is that by controlling social context, all respondents will assess social relations very similarly, although little research has dealt with the validity of this…

This study investigated differences between communication norms in English and Japanese in a unique situation in which the speech acts of "asking for permission" and "requesting" merge. Focus was on the pair-verbs "borrow" and "lend." Subjects were 26 native speakers of English, mostly teachers, and 64…

A study exploring native English-speakers' and advanced Chinese English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners' beliefs about how a face-threatening speech act, refusal, should be expressed is reported. The two major research questions of the study were: how native speakers of English and Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) differ in their…

The learning activities contained in this booklet are designed to help students of Spanish learn to use Spanish personal names approximately in a variety of situations. The first section outlines common titles of address for men and women, lists popular feminine and masculine first names, discusses compound names, lists common Spanish family…

Discussion of one form of pragmatic competence, projecting a sense of stylistic voice into texts, explores how writing in a non-native language affects the ability to express stylistic voice and enter into social dialogue with readers. Using the published reflections of authors writing professionally in a non-native language, the analysis shows…

Analysis of 642 slang terms that college students use to characterize peers at Holy Cross College (Massachusetts) and University of California, Davis suggests that undergraduate slang usage is socially complex, the language is reflective of campus and academic life, and that it portrays undergraduate life from the perspective of dominant student…

A study investigated differences in the speech styles used in making requests among five native speakers of Japanese (JJ), five American learners of Japanese (AJ), and Americans speaking English (AE) and their implications for intercultural communication. All subjects were adults. Data were elicited in role-plays of a scenario including the…