The current study aims to verify the claims, in the literature, about the repetitive nature of the Arabic language, its oral origin, as well as its potential transfer into Arabs' EFL discourse. To this end, using a mixed-methods research design, the study investigated the use of lexical repetition (LR) in 40 EFL essays, 40 EFL speeches, 30 Arabic…

Pragmatics is included in one of four communicative competences (Canale, 1980). It is necessary and important to teach pragmatics at school in our globalized world in order to avoid as much as misunderstanding, which is likely to stem from cultural difference. As a result, greater importance should be attached to diverse customs and pragmatics.…

Examines the relationship between speaker and hearer in linguistic communication. (LG)

This study of 3 boys (ages 5-6) with autism found that adult high-constraint antecedent utterances elicited more verbal utterances in general, including subjects' echolalia; adult low-constraint utterances elicited more subject high-constraint utterances; and the degree of adult-utterance constraint did not influence the mean lengths of subjects'…

Results of an experiment to test predictions derived from balance theory about social influence and communication within a psychological treatment situation indicated that subjects changed their meanings of words when such changes were advocated by the counselors, and reported increased confidence when they apparently agreed with the counselors…

Criticizes psycholinguistic experiments where messages are presented in vacuo and where the linguist has no intention of conveying a message to the subject, who fills in his own contextual frame. When utterances were presented with pictures, they were remembered more accurately than when they were repeated ten times. (SCC)

Shared book reading in families is strongly linked with successful school literacy and thus with identity, belonging and participation in literate societies. From an "emergent" perspective, literacy is recognised as beginning from birth. However, despite exceptions such as research into the UK program, "Bookstart", most…

The teacher of black students needs to develop a sensitivity to their rich communicative language styles in order to use the varied styles in the classroom situation. (JH)

Argues for a more active role for the college English instructor in helping students write and speak standard English more effectively. (SW)

The role of the particle "o.k." in service encounter dialogue is discussed. A service encounter is defined as a situation of interaction between a "posted" server and a second party (a customer) who invokes the server's participation as an operator of a "serving post." It is suggested that approval or acceptance is often only part of what is being…

The use of interpersonal verbal routines such as greetings and thanks is examined as a universal phenomenon of human languages. Examples from Syrian Arabic, American English and other languages are used to show differing patterns of structure and use, susceptible of grammatical and sociolinguistic analysis. (Author/RM)

Expanded version of an address presented at a conference in Regensburg and at the Universities of Erlangen and Marburg. (WB)

Examines the conversation behavior of mothers toward their children with respect to two hypotheses: that the mothers' underlying interactional intent can be inferred from patterning in their conversation and that the utterances having a directive or controlling function will show a negative relationship to those designed to elicit conversation…

The influence of maternal language use patterns on the use patterns of the child was investigated in a black, low-income mother-child pair over a 20-month period, beginning at the child's 11th month of age. Video recordings were made of the pair's interaction in an unstructured playroom setting approximately every four weeks. Child multi-word…