Students' engagement and determination require the use of self-regulated learning strategies to facilitate adequate preparation. This article reports a research study that looks into how eight instructors, who were trained to promote self-regulation, interact with 18 students of a Bachelor of Arts program in English language teaching in Bogotá.…

This two and a half year study examines how non-native English-speaking Burmese refugee students from first to third grades made meaning of scientific informational texts. The study is framed by sociocultural theory and transactional theory. Primary data were drawn from 160 student retellings of scientific informational texts. Secondary data…

This study investigates students' work on analyzing a literary text, a cartoon strip, with focus on their use of instructional, analytical concepts. Excerpts from a group conversation and from individually written texts are analyzed from a sociocultural, dialogical perspective. The analysis of the conversation shows how such concepts help the…

Studies on the human language system have brought to the fore two key aspects. First, the prime function of language is communication. Second, language exists in the social world. The language learning process takes place within the sociocultural context and the relevant macrostructures that influence language use and development. According to the…

Hong Kong popular culture played an important role in the construction and consolidation of Hong Kong identity long before the handover to China. In the past few years leading up to the 10th anniversary of the handover, both Hong Kong and China have undergone numerous changes which seem to be changing their relations. Whilst Hong Kong people had…

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

This text on the sociology of language, hear defines as "...a focus upon the entire gamut of topics related to the social organization of language behavior," lays the groundwork for the theoretical development of this emerging branch of linguistics. The author proposes that sociolinguists investigate everything concerned with language from the…

A sociolinguistic study of Ocracoke, an island community in North Carolina's Outer Banks, investigated the social dynamics of language change and variation. Data were gathered in interviews with 43 island residents aged 12-82, most of whose families have been on the island for several generations. Several major sociolinguistic issues were…

Some answers to the question of why one cultural pattern is transmitted while another is not, and a consideration of the process of cultural transmission and acquisition, are provided in this examination of the cultural and linguistic situation of the Filipino American population of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area. The discussion is divided into…

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)

Discusses J. R. Searle's theories about language, based on three works dating from 1969-95. Looks at the distinction made between constitutive rules and regulative rules of language use, his approach to analyzing speech acts, the view of language as a means of stating facts, and the role that our conception of science plays in Searle's theorizing.…

Singles out sports as the area where the influence of Anglo-American culture on the French language has been most pronounced, illustrating the means by which these exchanges have taken place over the years. In particular, discusses the changes in meaning, form, and function that loan words have undergone in the process. (Author/MES)

A critic of Deborah Tannen's book "Gender and Discourse" responds to comments made about her critique, arguing that the book's analysis of the relationship of gender and discourse tends to seek, and perhaps force, explanations only in those terms. Another linguist's analysis of similar phenomena is found to be more rigorous. (MSE)

Sociopragmatic ambiguity (SPA) is claimed here to differ from other, better-known types of ambiguity, in terms of its locus, cause, and effect. SPA is characteristic of whole-discourse features rather than of lexical items or phrases. The ambiguity is one of social rather than ideational or semantic meaning. It is claimed that SPA arises through…