Discussion of discourse created by computers defines discourse as a pattern of cognitive functioning and identifies two such modes of thought: narrative and expository. Discussion covers the computer as discourse; schemas as a way to understand how knowledge is organized; simulations, hypermedia, and databases as discourse; and interactive…

Investigates children's peer group discussions of a storybook, an information book, and an informational storybook. Finds older students collaborating more, drawing more on peer information, participating in longer discussions, and making more confirming and challenging responses than younger children. Finds that children stayed on topic longer…

Proposes a method for examining how disciplinary differences in knowledge making are created or reflected at the sentence level. Focuses on grammatical subjects of all sentences as key indicators of disciplinary knowledge making in sample journal articles in the subfields of psychology, history, and literature. (PRA)

Selected discourse behaviors of 10 elementary school children with specific language impairment (SLI) presenting expressive or combined expressive-receptive deficits were compared to each other and to two groups of controls. The two SLI subgroups varied from each other on specific measures of turn taking and cohesion. Research implications are…

Proposes six related cognitive statuses relevant for explicating the use of referring expressions in natural language discourse. A study of the distribution of referring expressions in naturally occurring discourse in English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Spanish is offered as support for the proposal. (Contains 91 references.) (Author)

Coded discourse of three preschool girls during an entire play session. Analyzed discourse as an instance of Goffman's concept of social frames specifying 13 reality modes, from deeply engrossed play action to nonplay interaction. Proposes a theoretical view regarding the society-instituting function of pretend play from a constructivist…

Argues the major problem with report writing is poorly developed or lack of audience awareness, not grammar and mechanics. Discusses reliability of such reports and how lack of audience awareness may be remedied. Suggests that teachers have students follow a 10-step outlining process. (PA)

Thirty-two subjects (5 Broca's, 7 conduction, and 10 anomic aphasics and 10 normal controls) performed story retell and procedural discourse tasks containing familiar and unfamiliar topics, with familiar and unfamiliar listeners. Results indicated that topic familiarity significantly influenced verbal output in both normal and aphasic subjects.…

Presents an interpretive study of 1 family's discourse concerning aggression between 2 brothers (9-years, 9-months and 11-years, 11-months old). Analyzes 10 parental strategies, representing all the turns within a long conversation in which parents took the lead in promoting their younger son's narrative and logical understanding of his offensive…

This review of the literature on narrative discourse in children with language disorders describes theoretical perspectives on narrative use; surveys researchers' rationales for the investigation of narrative ability, including the pragmatic nature of narrative use and narrative ability as an index of language development; discusses methodological…

Topics addressed in this review include ethnology and traditional dialect study, philology, linguistic conversion analysis, and interaction within the social sciences. Finland's size affects these research activities and research on spoken interaction is shifting to group projects with a common focus. (Contains 68 references.) (JP)

Outlines the function of the "signifying monkey" in African American oral traditions. Focuses on vernacular discourse and African American personal narratives to discover linguistic and cultural features of African American students. Argues that these identity features be placed at the center of writing instruction for African Americans.…

Word learning by young children is viewed as a problem deriving from the use of forms of discourse texts. Uses of causal and temporal terms in private speech by a child studied longitudinally from 1;9 to 3;0 are analyzed from this perspective. (Contains 38 references.) (JL)

Finds that differences in the amount that mothers talk to their children are a function of both characteristics of mothers' language use and of their children's conversational participation. Shows that mothers who talked more to their children more frequently produced multiple utterances on a single topic and had children who talked more. (SR)

Describes the essential factors of developmental changes in argumentative writing behavior of children between the ages of 10 and 16, in particular on 4 tasks: an argumentative writing task, a textuality task, an argumentative script inference task, and an argumentativity judgment task. (SR)