Academic discourse communities and learning circles are characterized by collaboration, sharing commonalities in terms of social interactions and language. The discourse of these communities is composed of jargon, common terminologies, and similarities in how they construe and communicate meaning. This study examines the extent to which discourse…

In recent years, despite the fact that many researchers have devoted much of their attention to second language attrition, not much focus has been given to first language attrition (FLA) specifically among Iranian immigrants. The present study attempts to describe FLA in the semantic domain of idiomatic expression and effect of length of residence…

Language in chemistry is highly specialized, and for students, transitions in language complexity from high school to university can be extremely challenging. With an increasingly diverse cohort of students enrolled in UK chemistry degree programs, better understanding the linguistic challenges students face is becoming a greater pedagogical…

South Africa is a country characterised by great linguistic diversity. Large indigenous languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, are spoken by many millions of people, as well as the languages with European roots, such as Afrikaans and English, which are spoken by several millions and used by many more in daily life. This situation provides a…

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this…

This study, entitled, "Texture and textuality in Political Discourse: A Study of Cohesive Devices in President Goodluck Jonathan's Inaugural Address-May, 2011" was an analysis of the lexical cohesive devices employed by Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan in crafting his May, 2011's Presidential Inaugural Address (PIA). Guided by the…

As the Greek verbal system has become the subject of various dissertations and monographs, the future tense-form has been generally overlooked in the discussion. This dissertation seeks to overcome this lacuna by suggesting that the future tense-form functions as a rhetorical feature that expresses the author's expectation of an alternative state…

This article considers a case of local language socialization and accommodation in a multilingual community of practice: the use of English as an additional academic language for specific purposes at a bilingual Swiss university and its implications for teaching. The acronym ELF(A) is used throughout as short for English as a Lingua Franca (in…

Language operates according to rules. Rules mean prediction. The application of these language rules to persuasive campaigns through linguistic technology can result in major gains in advertising, political and marketing outcomes. For qualitative researchers in communications, marketing and messaging, one area of persuasive language technology can…

This article discusses some apparently paradoxical behavior of the English demonstratives "this/these" and "that/those" as determiners of proper nouns and as metaphorical signals of epistemic and affective stance within the proximal-distal opposition. It is argued that the apparent paradoxes are actually cases of shifting perspectives or points of…

Levels of lexical specificity are discussed in terms of the way various terms are used to convey different feelings, meanings and semantic effects. (CHK)

This study was conducted in order to determine the extent to which the choice of pronoun and noun gender stereotyped sex-role in illustrative sentences of the most recent unabridged dictionary, "The Random House Dictionary of the English Language" (1966). The author systematically sampled 2,028 sentences, each containing at least one gender word,…

Discusses the important role that language has in our society and compares human communication to animal group communication. Gives specific examples of corruption in the Spanish language today. (NCR)

Developing academic, or school-based, literacy poses a significant challenge for many students, because the language through which academic subjects are presented is markedly different from the social language that students use in everyday ordinary life. This article focuses on one aspect of academic language, the functions of nouns and nominal…