Explores journalistic quoting practices as an interface between written and oral modes of communication, or between text and talk. Examines both prescriptive and performative dimensions of journalistic quoting across the media. States that when quoting, journalists creatively mix and meld text and talk. Suggests that the cogency of news…

Contrasts robotic editing with human editing (discussing descriptive grammar, periodic sentences, theme-rheme concept, right-branching, zeugma, and Irish bulls). Maintains that, for any editing that requires thinking, humans are always superior. (SR)

Discusses a theory that quotations are demonstrations that are component parts of language use. Demonstrations are described as unlike descriptions in two main ways: they are serious rather than nonserious, and they depict rather than describe their referents. (69 references) (JL)

Explores some of the confusion about singular and plural subject-verb agreement in English. (SR)

Describes the conditions affecting the translation and borrowing of acronyms (such as "VHS") among other languages, concluding that the major difficulty in translating acronyms is in balancing intended expressed meaning, represented technicality or potential for common usage, articulation, and perceived acceptability of "foreign" terms. (20…

Describes and analyzes the language of young people in Italy today. Particular focus is on the expressions using "para" (e.g., "in para totale" = to be very bored or worried) and the phrase "una cosa da panico" (something terrible or its opposite something wonderful). (CFM)

Contributes to scholarship of language, stereotypes, and oppression by examining Audre Lorde's speech entitled "Age, Race, Class, Sex: Women Redefining Difference," which focuses on distortions around the naming and the misnaming of human differences. Contends a focus upon relational practices across human differences is more fundamental…

Describes an empirical study based on a phenomenographic perspective that examined college students' understanding in relation to their thinking about concepts. Examines the relation between words used and their meaning in the process of understanding and learning. Results of qualitative interviews and contextual analysis are discussed.…

Describes the conduit metaphor for communication, which is encoded into everyday English, and which models communication as putting ideas into messages, sending messages across pipelines, then taking the ideas out of messages. Notes that this metaphor for education means more technology and fewer teachers. Proposes another metaphor for…

Focuses on technical sub-languages to reveal sociological functions of language that transcend mere transfer of substantive information. Finds one sociological feature, the shibboleth, acting widely throughout technical fields. (PA)

Suggests that public doublespeak is an abuse of language, power, and people and that it is an excellent site for investigating and understanding the power of discourse. Discusses motivation for doublespeak, skillful use of language, and deconstructing doublespeak. (RS)

Examines the relationship of information technology to communities of color. Argues that attempts to "stake a claim in cyberspace" happen on two levels: the "virtual" and the "real." Explores questions of how community is imagined by people of color using icons and language, and how images and language mark insiders and outsiders. Notes…

Investigates the contexts in which "okay" is used in Nigerian English. Discusses how differences in usage of the term should be recognized, respected, and accepted and raises the question of whether or not current theories of learning are powerful enough to accommodate new norms of meanings that inevitably develop in language contact…

Describes the use in a semantics/linguistics class of rural Midwestern idioms of the past to demonstrate the relationship of the language and the experience it represents. States that, although students do not always appreciate the figures of speech, when they relate the symbols to the referents, they get involved in the message. (PA)

Examines linguistic recycling in the context of domestic Esperanto use. Argues that word-meaning recycling reflects the same fundamental principles as sentential recursion, and that a linguistics theoretically sensitive to these principles strengthens practical efforts towards the social goal of an open speech community. (Author/VWL)