Supports research indicating that disclaimers have no effect on perceptions of source credibility. Reveals that frequency of disclaimer use was unrelated to subject-juror evaluations of witness credibility and testimony believability; females did not use more disclaimers than males during examination; and when females used disclaimers, they were…

The different functions of the brain hemispheres as they relate to discourse analysis of narratives are examined through review of studies of the narratives of hemidecorticate (a disconnection of the two brain hemispheres) adolescents. Focus is on the role of pragmatics, discourse processing, and the use of pronouns. (Author/DB)

Strategies for gathering narratives from children are described. Two analysis approaches (narrative level and story grammar) are recommended for discriminating between the narratives of normal and handicapped students at various ages. (Author/DB)

Discusses the relationship of Michel Foucault's work to the human perspective. Argues that Fisher is inaccurate in characterizing Foucault as an "anti-humanist." Claims that Foucault's concept of the "statement" and his method of critique turn the humanist perspective toward a liberating, activist form that allows for change…

Indicates that the main determinant of implicitness, when defined in terms of "inferrable" vs. "evoked" information, was the variable of content, not that of modality: Abstract texts contained more inferrable information than did narrative texts, regardless of modality. (NKA)

Reports findings of three experiments indicating that story plot unit structure is a good predictor of subjects' thematic judgments about the story, and that subjects are sensitive to a more abstract level of conceptualization than the thematic patterns tested, based on evaluations of the protagonist's plans in the story. (HTH)

Reviews concepts from discourse analysis and translates them into instructional techniques that can be used in the classroom to improve reading comprehension. (FL)

Semiotics, the theory of signs and symbols and their function in languages, is described with reference to its history, theoretical branches of study, scope, and uses. (MSE)

Refutes the assumption on which most second language research is based--that language is intended by its speakers to transfer information to some interlocutor--by responding to Tomlin's paper in the same journal, "The Treatment of Foreground-Background Information in the On-Line Descriptive Discourse of Second Language Learners."

Presents a rhetorical criticism of Watson and Crick's "The Double Helix." (FL)

Suggests how rhetorical criticism might be most productively focused by concentrating on the message, value premises, and strategies. (PD)

Questions the current distinction between semantics and pragmatics, and develops a theory of "argumentative scales" (Ducrot 1973), as well as a semantic model with three components and a revision of the notion of "illocutionary." (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

In many cultures, the "troubles-talk narrative" is a speech event which builds solidarity between interlocutors through the indirect speech act of complaining and through face-saving strategies such as speaker "hedges" and listener "commiserative responses" as backchannels. The manner in which speakers perform such…

Religious narratives can and do cross borders through communicative practices and arenas that span cultures. The ideas and conceptual tools enshrined in another culture's stories can be appropriated in one of two ways by another culture--either through using such a text to denigrate the originator culture or to adapt the ideas within to the new…

This article describes the French unilingual, also seen as a sociolinguistic ideology, in its varieties, especially since the French Revolution: an ideology based on few representations that are both inner and outer linguistic. The article also discusses the attitude of the unilingual in the collective epilinguistic field of experiment. One…