A study compared the topical structure (TS) of Arabic and English in order to determine whether Arab learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) transfer potential differences between Arabic and English in their English writing, or whether they use an altogether different TS indicative of developmental factors. Four sets of data were compared…

A study of essays on a single topic (capital punishment) written by 22 American high school students and 30 second-year Japanese college students investigated: cultural differences in organizational patterns in argumentative essays; comparative use of rational and affective appeals; differences in content of rational and affective appeals;…

This study analyzed the English discourse organization of sixty academic book reviews in three disciplines (linguistics, chemistry, economics) published in 1990, to help define book reviews as an academic written genre. Analysis revealed that although book reviews show regularities in information form, function, and content, some variation occurs…

This paper considers four levels of analysis in the observation of the prosodic features of pause in speech: phonetic; syntactic; semantic; and informative. On the phonetic level, a pause is related to length and intonation, and intonation in turn, being a result of the speaker's meaning, constitutes an expression of his/her emotional state. On…

Papers from the linguistics colloquium address a variety of topics in linguistic theory and language research, most in French. Topics include: objectivity and subjectivity in understanding language; focalization in conversational language; the notion of "popular etymology"; serial construction in Malagasy; linguistic competence (in German);…

A study investigated metadiscoursal signalling devices used in discussions in a business administration course in a British university, focusing on the use and function of the devices in seminars and tutorials. Data were drawn from seminar and discussion classes recorded for distance education purposes. The corpus of about 30,000 words included 18…

A study to find patterns of cohesion and rhetorical structure that distinguish good from weak English essay writing is described. The corpus consisted of ten Swedish college essays written as part of the final exam in a first-year English course. Methodological problems encountered included the delimitation of units for the analysis of cohesive…

Two theoretical orientations-schema theory and cultural norms for the use of language unify this multidisciplinary collection of papers examining discourse. Chapters by Adams and Collins; Warren; Nicholas and Trabasso; Stein and Glenn; and Freedle and Hale highlight the application of schema theory to the study of story recall, reading, and the…

Part of a study is presented of native speakers of Hebrew who are acquiring English without formal instruction. A Hebrew-speaking child, aged 5 years 6 months, and her American playmate were audiotaped bi-weekly in natural settings for 11 months. The American child periodically used "foreigner talk," that is, the variety of language…

Research described oral texts produced by second- and third- generation bilingual Chicano Spanish speakers when required to carry out a set of functions in only one of their available codes. Analysis focuses on characteristics of planned, noninteractive spoken language produced in Spanish by university students in a classroom setting, compared…

A study examined global- and local-allocational preselection mechanisms for turn-taking in the language classroom, using two corpuses of classroom discourse illustrating both accuracy- and fluency-based modes of language teaching. It was found that teacher-directed accuracy work yielded Initiation-Response-Feedback patterns governed by…

This paper contends that many of the difficulties students of Chinese have in reading comprehension are directly related to their level of understanding of Chinese language and culture, and that these difficulties could be alleviated by providing students with knowledge about the value system, social customs, formation of Chinese characters and…

The working papers contained in this volume include the following: "Research on Language Learning; How Can It Respond to Classroom Concerns?" (Teresa Pica); "Building Rapport Through Indirect Complaints: Implications for Language Learning" (Diana Boxer); "(Bi)literacy and Empowerment: Education for Indigenous Groups in…

This paper draws from a number of sources, from Muhammad Ali to TV commercials, to demonstrate the quite different conceptions that black and white Americans have of the meaning of boasting and bragging. For blacks, boasting and bragging are two distinct ways of speaking and communication. Boasting is a joking, playful verbal bahavior, not to be…

Papers in these volumes were presented at a Mexican conference on linguistics. Most papers are in Spanish; the English translations of the titles include the following: "Directions in Contemporary Semantics" (L. Lara); "Regular Accentuation in Spanish" (C. Braithwaite); "Syntactic Order in Sonoran" (D. Brown); "Speech Datives or Interest/Not of…