Despite his considerable influence on the development of ESP and all our professional lives, almost nothing has been written about John Swales' distinctive prose style. Based on a 340,000 word corpus comprising 14 single-authored papers and most chapters from his three main books, this paper sets out to identify the main features of this style.…

This article offers a critical analysis of the language socialization of Spanish-speaking families in a Scout group in Metro Vancouver. Using tools of discourse analysis, the article examines the language use patterns of the participants, particularly focusing on the language ideologies to which they oriented themselves and the identities indexed…

Relying on the methodology of conversation analysis, this article examines a practice in ordinary conversation characterized by the resaying of a word, phrase, or sentence. The article shows that multiple sayings such as "No no no" or "Alright alright alright" are systematic in both their positioning relative to the interlocutor's talk and in…

The present study analyzes 22 authentic business reports in an attempt to identify textual features that are typical of business reports as a genre. The analysis shows that there are certain characteristics which distinguish business reports from other related genres such as scientific reports, of which RAs are a typical example. There are also…

Argues that particular patterns of language are associated with host-guest interaction, and that this language, corresponding to the different stages of he arrival-departure hospitality cycle, may be termed "hospitality language." Investigates hospitality practices and defines hospitality language in the context of Great Britain and…

This volume collects empirical studies applying Conversation Analysis to situations where second, third and other additional languages are used. A number of different aspects are considered, including how linguistic systems develop over time through social interaction, how participants 'do' language learning and teaching in classroom and everyday…

This case study investigates the bilingual and trilingual codeswitching patterns of two multilinguals who grew up in a Hungarian-Romanian two-language family in Transylvania, and whose bilingual codeswitching changed into trilingual codeswitching after they moved to North America. An analysis of the speakers' discourse reveals the amounts of…

Discusses the results of a study of utterance functions in preschool children to demonstrate that, within a certain conversation, whether social or intellectual, subjects may make both social and intellectual utterances, rendering distinction between the two types of utterances very dubious. (Author/CB)

Introduces the transitivity model of textual analysis, assesses its application to news reports, and discusses the critical linguistic background in which it has proved popular. (JK)

The paper reviews research on the pragmatic language skills of language impaired and learning disabled students. Discourse skills are analyzed in terms of communicative intentions, presupposition, social organization of discourse, and context. Narrative skills are examined according to narrative structure, scripts, text cohesion, and audience…

This paper first briefly reviews what Halliday and Hasan (1976) said about "(the) same." The paper then examines the understanding of this form by qualitatively analyzing 259 naturally occurring spoken tokens of "(the) same" in their discourse contexts. It focuses on the following questions with reference to the data: (1) What…

Demonstrates through statistical sampling that variability in the use of the so-called Spanish "personal a" can be explained by the importance of the role that marked nouns have in discourse and applies that notion to a case study from Hispanic literature. (CB)

Investigates creation and interpretation of nonlexicalized categories within discourse, as indicated by the use of general extenders. Shows that such categories are locally contingent, depend on contextually salient features for identifying similarity among members, can be created through contrast or contiguity, and clearly depend on assumptions…

Singapore's annual Speak Mandarin Campaign has been largely successful in shifting the language patterns of its Chinese citizens from Chinese dialects to Mandarin in all sectors. However, there has been a notable exception: the effort to have Chinese Singaporeans give their children Mandarin names, rather than dialect ones. In this paper, we…

Since mathematical English (ME) differs from ordinary English (OE) in the number of symbols used, this research investigated sequential constraint (constraints on symbol choice attributed to preceding textual material) of excerpts from 18 mathematics books, both traditional and modern, to determine its relationship to readability. Findings…