This paper explores how "English learners (ELs)" or who we prefer to call "multilingual learners" are labeled and positioned in policy documents and leading education research documents respectively. Attending to the urgent call for serving the growing number of linguistically and culturally diverse learners, this study delves…

This study examines service encounters in Saudi Arabia from a pragmatic perspective. Its aim is to investigate the possible impact of perceived cultural distance between customers and service providers on pragmatic choices. It specifically examines how Saudi customers construct their service encounters when talking to service providers of the same…

This study explored peer groups' mediation processes in the digital space. Building upon translingual research and multimodal discourse analysis, the researcher analysed video transcript excerpts of oral conversations and on-screen interactions among university students of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This article focuses on…

This study examines the linguistic resources by which foreign language (L2) learners express their ideological positions in online discussions taking place in a telecollaborative encounter during one semester. More specifically, the study attempts to decipher how L2 learners discuss and argue their points of view regarding their first culture,…

This article discusses and compares how Chinese and English postgraduate students manage a harmonious relationship with university instructors by managing rapport and doing relational work in their academic request emails. The rapport-management strategies were explored and then further evaluated in relation to the taxonomies of relational work…

Genre analysis of texts has always been significant. The current study aimed at investigating intertextuality considering cultural variations and differences in students' discourse communities. Social studies, philosophy, and biology were chosen as the representatives of social sciences, humanities and sciences. Tehran University, one of the most…

Parent-child "everyday" conversations have been suggested as a source of children's early science learning. If such conversations are important, then it would be pertinent to know whether children from different family backgrounds have different experiences talking about science in informal settings. We focus on the relation between…

Examines how students use gendered discourse practices in small peer group settings to accomplish their school tasks. The analysis contributes to the separate worlds hypothesis by showing how Latino children interactionally orient to their peer group as a gendered context. (Author/VWL)

Examines the socio-pragmatic construction and textualization of scholarly Acknowledgements in English and Italian journals from a genre-analytic perspective. Points of difference or similarity between corpora and academic cultures are explored with special attention to such issues as generic complexity and staging, personal involvement, and peer…

This paper presents a view of traditional American Indian public speaking styles to students studying modern Indian diplomatic talk. A transcription of a talk given by the Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz provides an example of careful political speaking in the traditional tribal style. A culture which is typically oral, rather than…

Every language has different systems for expressing third party information. While in some languages grammar rules stipulate how to do this, in both Japanese and English the degree of indirection or direction a speaker should use to express information obtained as hearsay is genuinely a pragmatic language issue. English speakers tend to express…

Examined the frequency and type of pragmatic devices used in oral New Zealand English, based on analysis of the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. It found "you know" and "eh" were both found more frequently in working-class than middle-class speech. Other age, gender, and class distinctions are discussed. (45…

Offers a commentary on the studies of Kyratzis and Guo, Goodwin, Nakamura and Cook-Gumperz and Szymanski comprising the special issue of this journal. The special issue is situated in the history of gender studies in developmental pragmatics. The inadequately recognized role of cultural factors is highlighted. (Author/VWL)

This study critically examines the discourses of Japan as employed by young people in the United States. In particular, it analyses the free writings of US middle school students that were collected at three schools with different community environments (rural, urban, and suburban). The study identifies the features and styles of the discourse(s)…

The current style-specific theories of human communication include the public speaking style, the relationship style, and the message communication style. It now appears that intercultural communication may emerge as the fourth style-specific theory as a result of scholars' concern over the ethnocentric bias found in the study of communication.…