Constructing a family history can be significant in helping persons understand and appreciate the root system that supports and sustains them. Oral history can be a valuable resource in family research as Alex Haley demonstrated in writing "Roots." The major difficulty of using oral tradition in tracing a family history is that family…

This paper argues that people can be trained to use language to respond to varieties of literature with more discrimination and with more confidence than in the past. This is true first, because there are now studies which detail categories of response to literature; and second, because clinical psychiatrists and psychological counselors have…

This paper argues that doublespeak statements are often criticized not because they are dishonest, but because as individuals we do not personally agree with the underlying philosophy of the statements. Several sets of words and phrases are discussed and their meanings, as perceived by various types of people, are examined. To fit deceptive…

This paper attempts to define the terms "vague" and "ambiguous" and then argues that the problem of doublespeak revolves around the deliberate use of ambiguity, not vagueness. Through several situational examples, doublespeak is defended as a sometimes useful tactic in order to stimulate and encourage open inquiry and…

The increasingly wide-spread controversy surrounding the subject of Black English is the subject of this document. This presentation consists of two parts. The first part reports an experimental study undertaken to determine attitudes of some educators toward Black English. Caucasian and Negro teachers were administered a Language Attitude Scale…

GRADES OR AGES: Elementary. SUBJECT MATTER: English Language, Oral Usage. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide contains seven sections; 1) introduction; 2) position statement; 3) objectives; 4) implementation; 5) use of scope and sequence; 6) suggested activities for oral usage drill; and 7) bibliography. The guide is lithographed and…

Some Spanish nouns designating non-animate things may have either feminine or masculine gender. The reasons given for the choice of gender are many and varied. It is put forward that in some cases the masculine acts as a diminutive and the feminine as an augmentative. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Argues that metaphorical uses of language are valid in technical writing. (RB)

A structural-functional basis for the construction of an English tense system is proposed. It is asserted that such a system will facilitate the teaching of English tense usage. (Author/RM)

Teams of two college freshmen and two college seniors, or one freshman and one senior, solved factually oriented problems cooperatively. Subjects on a team worked in adjoining rooms and exchanged information by means of handwritten notes. Performance was assessed on the time required to solve problems and on behavioral measures of activity.…

Subjects who read transcripts of White sports announcers' comments about professional football players, with all explicit cues to players' personal and racial identities removed, correctly identified the race of players more often than expected by chance, suggesting that sportscasters' speech is prejudicial to Blacks. (GW)

This paper reports, analyzes, and interprets successive stages in the evolution of one two-year old boy's conception of death through a series of puns, metaphors, and misunderstandings about the nature of language, and of its relationship to the world to which it refers. (Author)

Discusses the syntactic differences in expressing wishes or desires in Italian and Russian. (CFM)

A critical evaluation of three recent books dealing with poetry from a linguistic point of view. Maintains that poetic quality is not a characteristic of the language of composition, but is determined by the way in which it is received. There is no "correct" interpretation. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Part (1) appeared in "Russisch" 1974/4. Discusses the uses of the prepositions "na" and "v," using many examples taken from current texts for teaching Russian. (Text is in German.) (WGA)