This selective review of literature presents research and theory in support of the proposition that language is an essential component of early artistic development, and is crucial to the nature and nurture of visual expression. Young children frequently accompany drawing activities with descriptive, reflective, and social conversation, verbally…

Arguing that state and local political issue campaigns warrant increased attention from communication scholars, this paper presents a rationale for analysis of issue campaigns, develops a framework for organizing and analyzing such campaigns, and applies the framework to an analysis of the 1986 campaign for the sale of liquor "by the…

Intended as a resource for teachers, this booklet contains suggestions and exercises to use in teaching creative writing. The booklet begins with a message to teachers about the writers-in-the-school program and tips on the teaching of creative writing. Following that are detailed exercises in four categories: memory, imagery, metaphor, and music.…

Foreigner talk (FT) has been characterized as speech "used by speakers of a language to outsiders who are felt to have limited command of a language or no knowledge of it," or "the variety of language that is regarded by a speech community as primarily appropriate for addressing foreigners." A study was carried out in Germany…

The rhetoric of black writers and speakers asserts that (1) attitudes and practices toward black language are politically based to keep blacks subordinate to the dominant culture, and (2) African American scholars have a right to determine the meaning and implications of black language. Black rhetors contend that even those blacks who speak…

Information on the ancestry, languages, and literacy of the U.S. population based on data collected by the Bureau of the Census in 1979 is reported. Items surveyed include ancestry, country of birth of the individual and parents, citizenship, year of immigration, native language, language spoken in the home, ability to speak English, and ability…

Based on research indicating that restrictive judicial language directed at jurors encourages reactance, or decisions contrary to the judge's instructions, two experiments were conducted to determine whether courtroom jurors merely admonished to ignore inadmissible evidence would be more inclined to comply with judicial instructions than would…

Two experiments were conducted to determine what readers are likely to understand about the information contained in a medical insurance brochure intended for employees. Twenty-seven subjects were recruited through newspaper advertisements for a "reading experiment." The studies addressed questions concerning (1) how likely readers are…

Intended for writing teachers, this paper shows how "pithy prescriptions" for writing, such as "use definite, specific, concrete language," can be misleading or wrong. To support this thesis, the paper examines a technical writing book advocating short sentences and finds that it has sentences averaging 27.8 words in one section and 30.18 in…

Observations of children's responses to picture books in three first-to-fourth-grade classrooms over a two-year period helped to form a descriptive framework for children's responses to picture books. Field notes, transcripts, and other data revealed that when children talked about picture books, they used the lexicon of the expert. They seemed…

Curriculum developers and planners must realize that speaking, reading, writing, and related linguistic processes are instrumental in all areas of learning. In university departments, teachers of content subjects and language specialists should look at the curriculum as a whole. English specialists must institute a policy of language across the…

Developmental trends in the effects of expectations regarding agent/action matches on judgments of sentence acceptability were investigated. Five sentences reflected expected relations ("harmonious") and five contradicted them ("contrary"). Twelve subjects each were in grades 4 through 8 during year 1; the same 60 subjects…

A number of claims made by Bereiter and Engelmann, two of the strongest proponents of the verbal-deprivation hypothesis, are examined in light of data gathered during a longitudinal study of two children acquiring Black English Vernacular. The "giant-word syndrome" and its proposed concomitants of absence of developmental stages, deviant…

Despite the fact that the twentieth-century ecumenical movement was coeval with the beginning of a "language revolution" and the "theology of crisis," it was only at the beginning of the present decade that the problem of unity in verbal formulations reached the agenda of the World Council of Churches (WCC). At that time the…

Explains socially reflected linguistic patterns resulting from the three most popular television genres. (MH)