Background: The current literature suggests a link between dummy (or pacifier) use and a number of both positive and detrimental consequences. Positive consequences include soothing effect and protection from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), while negative ones include increased risk of otitis media and dental malformation. However, there is…

This paper investigates performative manifestations of sincerity across Anglo-Norman and Middle English. In particular, it locates adverbial sincerity markers used to qualify performative speech act verbs in late medieval letters (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), at a point when Middle English was rapidly replacing Anglo-Norman as the…

The aim of the study was to investigate whether telecollaboration is a suitable environment for the acquisition of the speech act of apologies. Participants were aerospace engineering students from the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) who performed six open role-plays to elicit apologies. The Control Group (CG, n=17) carried out the…

Refusing is a common speech act; nonetheless people from different cultural backgrounds employ different refusal strategies. The present study compares refusal strategies used between native speakers of Javanese in Indonesia and native speakers of British English in the United Kingdom. Empirical data were elicited by means of discourse completion…

Statements of the form if… then… can be used to communicate conditional speech acts such as tips and promises. Conditional promises require the speaker to have perceived control over the outcome event, whereas conditional tips do not. In an eye-tracking study, we examined whether readers are sensitive to information about perceived speaker control…

The study analyses teenagers' e-mail requests during academic cyber-consultation, exploring how the performance of request modifiers is influenced by participants' perceptions of the degree of imposition of the speech act and social distance with the recipient. A total of 295 e-mail requests, 145 produced by British English speakers (BES) and 150…

Applies three distinct analyses to recorded and transcribed student conversations (n=240) about brine shrimps. The complementary analytic methods provide information on the content of pupils' conversations in terms of the observations made, the ways in which pupils make sense of their observations, and the ways in which students use conversation…

These two studies, which were part of a cross-national project exploring the development of Italian and British children's understanding of sociolinguistic rules, investigated politeness in children's requests addressed to adults and children, and children's views on how requests addressed to persons differing in status and familiarity would be…

Analyzes assessment policy and practice from a critical/poststructuralist perspective, focusing on two main aspects of everyday classroom discourse--speech acts and metaphor. The analysis reveals the existence of diverse discourses (antagonistic, behaviorist, and psychometric) densely congregated in (British) infant classrooms and complex in their…