Tutors often fail to address learners' misconceptions. Although this may indicate a failure to grasp these misconceptions, it may simply be due to a wish to be polite and save the learner's face. In this study we examined whether instructing tutors about the pitfalls of politeness could increase the clarity and precision of their tutorial…

Overlaps with one's interlocutor in the choice of words are called lexical entrainment. This article looks at accounts for these overlaps in word use. The question addressed is the extent to which the word use of the addressee, as opposed to available words from other sources, has a special impact on experts' choice of words. A laboratory…

This article reports on key aspects of a theory generative study into social presence in text-based online learning environments. The focus of the article is the nature of social presence as experienced by online learners in those environments. Employing a collective case study design, the study accessed online learners' experience-based heuristic…

This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate the ways in which participants in an online asynchronous postgraduate reading group managed and negotiated their contributions within the discussion. Using the conversation analytic concerns with sequential organisation, adjacency pairs and topicality, this article shows the analytic insights…

Studies televised political advertising during the October 1993 Canadian federal election campaign to identify referential argumentation and provide a basis for ethical analysis. Identifies a number of "ad" arguments (ad hominem, ad verecumdiam, ad misericordiam, etc.) according to four types of reference. Discusses two criteria in the…

Traces the evolution of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and assesses the effectiveness of the rhetoric of terrorism as a strategy. Applies concepts derived from protest rhetoric of the 1960s to the Palestine movement, noting that current "terrorist" rhetoric is similar to the New Left's confrontational strategies. (MM)

Investigates the conventions that govern telephone communication through answering machines, both domestic and institutional. Finds that talk on answering machines is highly structured and highly routinized. Identifies the internal structures of both callers' contributions and machine contributions. (SR)

Analyzes a particular conversation which invokes Soviet and U.S. cultures, demonstrating how conversation is, at least in part, shaped by cultural systems, and how cultural systems differently employ a generic ritual communicative form. (SR)

Analyzes differences and conflicts in intercultural business communication between Israeli and Indian businesspeople, also analyzing their communication sources and strategies. Finds that communication problems between international managers are better explained by focusing on differences between their discourse systems rather than global…

Many recent studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) have addressed the question of orality and literacy. This article examines a relatively recent subgenre of CMC, that of written online sports commentary, that provides us with written CMC that is clearly based on firmly established oral genres, those of radio and television sports…

Some language features are described that could account for feelings of people from different cultures not being on the same "wave length" when they communicate with each other in business negotiations. Candlin's explanatory approach involving a "top-down, bottom-up" methodology is used. It views language as being indeterminate…

Proposes an alternative interpretation of imperial responsibility, founded upon Edmund Burke's rhetorical denunciation of the East India Company in 1783. Shows how Burke constructed a new understanding of imperial responsibility, in which the need to protect foreign peoples from unscrupulous Britons was stressed instead of any sense of racial…

Analyzes patterns of laughter in bookshop service encounters in England and Italy. Finds that in the English corpus, laughter is recurrently turn-initial, anticipating an account by the assistant in the same turn, whereas in the Italian corpus it is recurrently turn-final, leaving to the customer the possibility of eliciting an account and/or an…

Explores heritage museums as sites of cultural production in terms of the distinction drawn by historians between "memory" and "history," denoting fundamentally opposed orientations toward the past. Examines the discursive practices of museum guides in Israeli settlement museums, and suggests a more nuanced view of the…

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication by examining a powerful set of imperialist symbols that have a lingering impact on the British national psyche. Investigates the Queen's Diamond Jubilee speech and the performative rhetoric of the Jubilee celebration itself, to illustrate how rhetorical depiction may…