The present study takes a variationist perspective to explore the varietal repertoires of adult learners of German as a second language (L2), that is, their variable use of standard German, Austro-Bavarian dialect, and mixture varieties. Forty L2 learners completed a virtual reality task involving interactions with dialect-speaking and…

Gender differences are manifested not only in the physiological characteristics of a person, but also in the speech communication. This article presents the research data obtained at the phonetic and lexical levels of the language. The purpose of this work is to determine the speech characteristics that distinguish men and women at the studied…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) has recently been researched as a dynamic variable, with some investigations viewing it as a complex dynamic system (CDS). One important property associated with CDS is the notion of attractor states, which are characterized by stable patterns of behavior. The present study employed an idiodynamic method to monitor…

This paper discusses a previously unidentified turn-allocation technique - third person reference. When such a reference is used, participants are orienting to the solution of a practical organizational problem: how to keep at least one of their number from talking, while preserving the right of all others to talk. (Author/CFM)

The research findings of profane language usage need to be extended so that more may be learned about human communication. In order to establish profane language usage norms, eighty-six university students were asked to estimate their profane language usage in each of three categories (excretory, religious, and sexual) in reference to three…

French native speakers' reactions to phone calls in the United States indicate a difference in the norms of interaction between the two countries. This difference, in turn, is understood when one realizes that the phone call, constituting a speech event, is open to different cultural interpretations. (CHK)

Empirical studies that demonstrate probable gender biased perceptions resulting from the use of man-linked words and third-person, singular masculine pronouns are reviewed in this paper. Among the findings revealed by the review are: (1) there is a tendency for people to perceive man-linked words as more likely to refer to men than to women; (2)…

The report contains a comparison of oral expression by the same experimental subjects under normal conditions and in a state of emotional stress. The study permits isolation of linguistic features of the formation of oral expression under emotional tension. This report is a translation of an article originally written in Russian. (NTIS/KM)

A study compared mothers' and fathers' speech patterns when speaking to preschool children, particularly utterance length, sentence types, and word frequencies. All of the children attended a nursery school with a student population of 136 in a large urban area in the Southwest. Volunteer subjects, 28 mothers and 28 fathers of 28 children who…

A study was conducted to examine speech interruption patterns as an index of communication dominance and gender differences in language behavior. Six graduate student groups involving a total of 35 subjects were videotaped. The data extracted for study were 255 transcribed interruption sequences. A category system was developed and used to code…

Studied one aspect of communication competency: how people express emotions through verbal behavior. Found, among other conclusions, that references to unpleasant emotions outnumber references to pleasant emotions almost two to one. (PD)

This final report gives the findings of a government research project, the broad objective of which was to determine the existence of heightened covert oral behavior in the performance of tasks in which the response class had not yet been empirically studied and to ascertain the function of the covert oral response. Areas covered by this report…

Based on the realization that professors' cultural and personal backgrounds affect the way they transmit information and the way they interact with men and women students in their classes, this booklet is designed to help faculty members assess how they are presenting subject matter to their students. The first section of the booklet,…

A sample of 48 middle and lower class kindergarten and second grade students participated in a study to determine what speech adjustments school-age children made for listeners of different ages. Half the second grade subjects learned about two performance tasks--a board game and constructing columns of colored blocks--from the researcher, after…

Evidence shows that there are differences in the ways in which men and women speak. It has also been well documented that females are generally ahead of males in language acquisition and are less often diagnosed as speech pathologic. A review of the research gives some indication of the reasons for the development of sex differences in spoken…