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…

Examines the language strategies used in everyday explanation by young heterosexual Australian college students to attribute blame for the transmission of HIV. Finds that speakers blamed outgroups more than ingroups; blamed outgroups at higher levels of responsibility than ingroups; but did not use more justifications for ingroups. Notes overt…

Finds important differences between Quebecois and French mothers: the Quebecois mothers spoke more than French mothers and produced a greater number of assertive and expressive speech acts than the French mothers. Shows that speech used in both of these cultural groups varies according to the mother's child-rearing style, with coercive mothers…

A language evaluation instrument was devised to assess the accuracy of program implementation by teachers of four Australian preschool programs. The Teacher Language Instrument (TLI) categorizes each verbal episode of a teaching interchange for both mode and function. Five general mode categories of teacher language behavior--statements,…

This research study explores how sex role identity is related to the learning of communication and socialization processes in a Taiwanese kindergarten. The study hypothesized that undifferentiated baby-style verbal and nonverbal communication patterns are superceded with styles that become increasingly gender-linked, and language is viewed as a…