This article focuses on the ways in which a small group consisting mostly of Black queer youth makes sense of their use of language to assert agency in a world that is often heterosexist, homophobic, ageist, and racist. The author draws from the work of Gee and Anzalda to identify what youth call Gaybonics, as a Borderland Discourse that is…

A central question in metaphor research is how metaphors establish mappings between concepts from different domains. The authors propose an evolutionary path based on structure-mapping theory. This hypothesis--the career of metaphor--postulates a shift in mode of mapping from comparison to categorization as metaphors are conventionalized.…

I show how a conversational process that takes simple, intuitively meaningful steps may be understood as a sophisticated computation that derives the richly detailed, complex representations implicit in our knowledge of language. To develop the account, I argue that natural language is structured in a way that lets us formalize grammatical…

This paper presents three experiments which show syntactic priming effects in four- and five-year-old children. The experiments are modeled after priming studies with adults involving transitive and dative constructions. In Study 1 children were presented with a picture that was described by an experimenter. They repeated the experimenter's…

In this article I argue that, when researchers record fieldnotes, they also create worldviews based on a priori perceptions and interpretations. To be culturally respectful, researchers in the field need to be concerned with both the cultural artifacts they create and with their inability to "accurately" record everything they see. It may not be…

Studies of attitudes toward sexist language have consistently revealed a gender gap, with women considerably more supportive of inclusive language than men. The present study investigated this gender gap in the presence of "attitudes toward women," a potential mediator variable. Participants were a convenience sample of 18- to…

An examination of big-city newspaper coverage of violent crimes in small towns during a recent five-year period reveals a remarkable degree of uniformity in the language reporters use to characterize life in these places. The cliches signal an underlying set of stereotypes of small-town life: They are safe, close-knit communities where bad things…

Since the late 1970s, there has been widespread research interest in the strategies that learners use in learning and using second languages. This interest has generated a parallel research effort in language learner strategy instruction. The body of work to date suggests a possible relationship between strategy use and second language learning…

Although the significance of foreign languages is eagerly publicized within the European Union (EU), the implementation of supranational educational policies is frequently incompatible with the national "context of situation" (Kachru, 1992). A case in point is the German education system, in which the necessary reforms are caught between…

This paper investigates the Irish-language adscape through an analysis of the profile of two Irish-language newspapers, "Foinse," published in the Republic of Ireland, and "La," published in Northern Ireland. The advertising in both papers is analysed in terms of products and services advertised, advertisers represented and…

Previous studies have shown that a subset of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) and heterosexual adults produce distinctive patterns of phonetic variation that allow listeners to detect their sexual orientation from audio-only samples of read speech. The current investigation examined the extent to which judgments of sexual orientation from speech…

This study examined the effects of counselor language switching and counselor ethnicity on bilingual Mexican American participants' emotional self-disclosure. Counselor language (English only and Spanish with English) was crossed with counselor ethnicity (Mexican American and European American) to produce 4 treatment conditions. Judges'…

This article considers the current debate in Australia into the learning of literacy and foreign languages. It examines not only the literacy levels attained by Australian students in their national language (English) in comparison to these in other countries, as well as between Australian states, but also theories involved in school learning and…

Student development theory has been used to make sense of attitudes, behaviors, norms, and outcomes among college students since the late 1970s. In addition, educators, administrators, and researchers rely on theories of retention and student success, organizational development, learning, and campus environments in their efforts to understand…

Firth and Wagner (1997) questioned the dichotomies nonnative versus native speaker, learner versus user, and interlanguage versus target language, which reflect a bias toward innateness, cognition, and form in language acquisition. Research on lingua franca English (LFE) not only affirms this questioning, but reveals what multilingual communities…