This article studies the cognitive dynamics of stancetaking in the discourse situations associated with risky behaviour and perilous decisions. The objective of this work is to find out what linguistic and cognitive mechanisms are used by speech participants to conceptualise a discourse situation as a situation of risk, and analyse the ways the…

Politics and politicking in Nigeria has assumed a considerably new dimension. Actors articulate their ideology and programmes, and construct their subjects and experiences in diverse linguistic processes with a view to achieving political victory. This paper examines clause structures of President Buhari's "My Covenant with Nigerians" to…

Reviews theories on discourse and sentential anaphora. Levinson's general, extralinguistic pragmatic theory contrasts with the author's specifically linguistic, cognitive theory. Levinson cannot account for many anaphoric patterns actually found in natural discourse, whereas the author's accessibility theory accounts for both types of problematic…

Examines the in-class essay as written by university freshmen to assess the extent to which students use formulaic expressions to minimize the cognitive burden of generating a coherent and adequate answer. Results show that students made extensive use of formulaic expressions and shaped their answers to reflect the way the information had been…

Argues that "information structure management" is an important and problematic part of the competence sought by nonnative speakers, particularly for goal-related discourse types where clarity and argumentative power play a role. Simulated negotiation material is used to demonstrate how certain nonnative structures hamper the…

Attempts to demonstrate how recipient design can structure an interaction. Choices of words and phrases, intonation, and the larger structure of the discourse itself are all made with a greater or lesser awareness of others' reactions. Evidence of how recipient design is at the service of altercasting is found in shared knowledge, agreement, and…

Hierarchies have been identified as determinants of constituent order. The set of such hierarchies is reviewed and ranked as determinants of NP sequencing in English. The effect of a hierarchy in other languages is compared to and contrasted with what is found in English. (Author/LMO)

Reports four experiments examining subject-verb agreement errors in Spanish and English. Discusses cross-linguistic differences within the framework of the computational model of grammatical encoding proposed by Kempen and Hoenkamp. Suggests that languages differ in the extent to which the selection of the verb is controlled by features on the…

A study was designed to assess the effect of text format on the decoding and comprehension proficiency of third and fifth grade students. Subjects were 36 students at each grade level who completed a battery of comprehension and decoding measures and then read a set of four stories that had been especially constructed for the study. Each story…