Examines quantitative data concerning hesitation phenomena in relation to the subjective perceptions of listeners of nonnative English. Findings reveal that subjective judgments of the number of hesitations or pauses in nonnative speech derive from total pausing time, percentage of pause time, and the length of the longest pause in discourse. (30…

Rhetorical strategies employed in three intercultural negotiations between British and Singaporean businessmen are examined. Communication breakdowns are attributed more to a lack of the will to adapt and understand, rather than intercultural differences, pointing out the importance of sensitivity and flexibility in adapting to different…

Identifies the features of effective educational talk, using contextual differences between educational and social settings as starting points for the examination of students' seminar discourse, videotaped during a study of small-group classroom discussions in the United Kingdom. Findings reveal that these features include an appreciation of the…

Argues that an examination of expert-novice relationships in unfolding interaction should not proceed from the static and unidirectional view that knowledge and status are distributed as functions of "a priori" categories such as age, gender, and hierarchical rank. Demonstrates that the constitution of expert-novice in dynamic interaction is a…

Explores ways in which expert and novice roles are constituted and maintained in an academic counseling encounter. Characterizes the meeting as a socializing, problem-solving event and uses functional linguistics and discourse analysis to describe how the counselor and student mark stance through linguistic choices such as polarity, modality,…

Children ages 3 to 5 years old are observed in a series of 3 experiments assessing their use of counterfactual thinking in causal reasoning. Results suggest that young children readily interpret the cause of an outcome in terms of a contrast between the observed sequence of events, and a counterfactual alternative in which the outcome did not…

Suggests an approach to the analysis of mathematical texts that makes use of linguistic theory to provide insights into how the language of a text may influence the ways in which readers make sense of it. Focuses on the ways in which teacher-readers may make sense of texts produced by students. Contains 33 references. (DDR)

Discusses some conditions for understanding teaching as an act of responsibility towards others, rather than as an instrumental act identified through epistemology. Argues that in order to make teaching an ethical relationship between individuals, teachers must give up their position on the safe side of knowledge and participate in the risk…

Examines the construction of children's identities as writers through their positioning in the multiplicity of official and unofficial discourses available to them in the primary classroom. Uses ethnographic observation to focus on how identities are constructed in the process of text construction, and the intersections of ethnicity, gender, and…

Discusses the role and nature of pedagogic discourse. Suggests that teacher talk plays an important role in the learning of radically, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students. Examines the way a teacher uses her talk in teaching and how her 5th grade Latino students develop control over the mathematics discourse. (Author/KHR)

An ethnomethodological approach was used to analyze the organization of talk, the leader-student interaction, and resultant social order during group discussion among 2 male leaders and 15 ninth-grade Australian boys participating in a school-sponsored outdoor experience. Results focus on how the leaders structured the interaction and regulated…

Compares strategies for conjunction in spoken English and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing. The article illustrates how ESL writers use "because" clauses to indicate the knowledge base for their assertions, to introduce independent segments, and to display links between sections of discourse. (44 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the recent development of educational policy analysis as a research field within Scottish education. Discusses "inside" and "outside" approaches to policy analysis; the value of theoretical models for making sense of source material; the potential of discourse analysis, illustrated by reference to Foucault and Lyotard;…

Discusses an interview in which Marcyliena Morgan elaborates on the necessity to analyze both microlinguistic issues of grammar and phonology as well as larger issues of discourse pragmatics and language ideology. The interview touches on African American poetry, the convergence of African American and standard English, and oases and indirectness.…

Analyzes listener back-channel responses observed in conversations--in English--between American and Japanese university students. Emphasizes the importance of careful attention given to the interactional management observed in intercultural conversation as well as the significance of realizing "otherness" in communication and social…