A study examined pragmatic routine and indirection as regularly-used strategies for accomplishing linguistic action that, while conventional, can pose problems for non-native speakers. Two kinds of conventionalities are distinguished: conventionality of means (kinds of semantic structure that have acquired a standard illocutionary force, such as,…

The first contacts between linguistics and second language acquisition date from the period of contrastive analysis of languages, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When contrastive analysis failed as an explanatory model, linguists lost interest in second language research and descriptive/contrastive studies declined, resulting in a changed…

A study investigated patterns in phonological errors occurring in the speaker's second language in both formal and informal speaking situations. Subjects were three adult learners of English as a second language, including a native Spanish-speaker and two Asians. Their speech was recorded during diagnostic testing (formal speech) and in everyday…

Discussion of the role of pragmatics research in language teaching looks at the role such research should play in the language classroom, and the role of researcher, teacher, and teacher educator in making that connection. It is noted that pragmatics research has discovered a number of differences in the ways in which first- and second-language…

A study extended previous research on second language learners' use of interlanguage knowledge in making grammaticality judgments. The grammatical construction under consideration is the existential-presentational (E-P) sentence. This construction is described, and it is shown how, due to universal constraints of information structure, it is…

Papers in linguistics in this issue include: "Aspects logico-semantiques de la metaphore" ("Logico-Semantic Aspects of the Metaphor") (Michel le Guern); "Metaphore et travail lexicale" ("Metaphor and Lexical Work") (Georges Ludi); "Aspects linguistiques et pragmatiques de la metaphore: anomalie…

Issues concerning the language of instruction used in teaching English to native speakers of Chinese, particularly adolescents, are discussed. The discussion draws on research in two areas: the role of language medium in the acquisition of concepts, and psycholinguistic differences between Chinese and English. It is concluded that while the…

A series of partial studies aimed at understanding how much progress students can make in 1 year of second language study are described. The first concerns Swedish university students in their first year studying Spanish as a third language in higher education. Students were tested and interviewed for their perceptions of their language ability…

Articles on speech acts and intercultural communication include: "Investigating the Production of Speech Act Sets" (Andrew Cohen); "Non-Native Refusals: A Methodological Perspective" (Noel Houck, Susan M. Gass); "Natural Speech Act Data versus Written Questionnaire Data: How Data Collection Method Affects Speech Act…

A study comparing the request strategies of native and non-native speakers of English and Spanish is reported. Subjects were 29 American and 78 European students with varied first languages, enrolled in English and Spanish courses at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). Data were obtained using a general background questionnaire and a…

A collection of essays on bilingualism and its relationship to development of reading and writing skills includes: "Awareness of Text Structure: Effects on Recall" (Patricia L. Carrell); "Second-Language Readers' Memory for Narrative Texts: Evidence for Structure-Preserving Top-Down Processing" (Yukie Horiba, Paul W. van den…

The selection of papers from the 6th Annual International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning (Urbana, Illinois, April 1992) include: "Discourse Markers Across Language" (Bruce Fraser); "Conjunction and Causality: Pragmatics and the Lexicon" (Yael Ziv); "Situated Discourse: The Sociocultural Context of…