This article considers arguments for and against the use of coding systems in classroom-based language research and touches on some relevant considerations from ethnographic and conversational analysis approaches. The four authors each explain and elaborate on their practical decision to code or not to code events or utterances at a specific point…

This document describes how to construct tools for language analysis in research and teaching using the Bourne-shell, sed, and awk, three search tools, in the UNIX operating system. Applications include: searches for words, phrases, grammatical patterns, and phonemic patterns in text; statistical analysis of text in regard to such searches,…

The study presents a grammar of Eastern Bontoc, an Austronesian language of the northern Philippines that includes five village dialects and has about 8,000 speakers. Data are from transcribed recordings of primarily one dialect, gathered in 1977-80. The discourse-oriented grammar is outlined in six chapters: an introduction to the language, its…

One of the greatest myths or fictions of nonfiction is that it contains no fiction. Ben Franklin's flight from Boston to Philadelphia illustrates how changes occur in the retelling of the "facts" of a life. In his "Autobiography," Franklin writes that his friend, Collins, arranged for a ship's passage for Franklin by telling…

Findings of a study that used discourse analysis to explore the relationship of power and involvement to experience in supervisory conferences are presented in this paper. Based on Penman's (1980) content analysis scheme, conference talk between supervisors and teachers was analyzed according to manifest and latent levels of communication that…

The purpose of this article is to investigate ways that the grammatical and semantic structures of the Finnish clause limit its possibilities for expressing information structure. The study aims to discover whether there is a correlation between the semantic structure of the sentence and the possibility of using the inverted word order for…

A study examined the influence of two different writing tasks on the ways in which students evaluate arguments on one controversial issue. Subjects, 20 first-year college students, evaluated 2 argumentative articles on the issue of drug legalization. Subjects rated the strength of the argument of each paragraph as they read. Ten of the subjects…

The first phase of a study into language learning examined six undergraduate students' building of disciplinary discourse knowledge as they became immersed in the disciplinary community of psychology. Students were followed over the entire 4-year course of their undergraduate careers. Data included interviews, questionnaires, papers the students…

It is proposed that genre/discourse community interaction is a critical element in the teaching of English for Special Purposes (ESP). All text is intended to promote interaction between writer and audience. Authentic texts generally have a central purpose: to change opinion, introduce a new idea, or encourage a specific action. The principle…

A study investigated the reading behaviors of proficient second language (L2) readers through their oral retellings. Subjects, 12 advanced English-as-a-Second-Language students who were native speakers of Spanish (10 from Spain, 2 from Central America), read two passages from a college-level expository text and gave two oral retellings which were…

Satirical writing offers a means of encouraging students to criticize those forms of victimization and inequality that trouble them most without that overt, dogmatic indoctrination of a political agenda that many would consider an anathema to democratic teaching. The indirect, satirical jab provides students with an intellectually challenging and…

A study examined sex differences among peer writing tutors concerning the use of discipline-specific terms and the suggestion of revision strategies. Subjects, four male tutors, four female tutors, four male students, and four female students, were tape recorded for 11 minutes during one-on-one same-sex and opposite-sex peer conferences.…

In the fall of 1990, the community of Gainesville, Florida, needed information concerning the brutal murders of five local college students. These serial slayings disrupted numerous "scripts" of life in the typical college town and produced a blanket of uncertainty, fear, and hysteria which enveloped Gainesville. College towns are…

This essay examines some Republican communication behaviors which account in part for accusations that the use of negative strategies was unprecedented during the 1988 presidential campaign. It also explores some of the effects of those strategies on political communication behavior during the first year of the Bush Administration. It is suggested…

The hypothesis is examined that informal conversation with native language speakers might not be helpful for adult second language learners, because untrained native speakers have trouble modifying their speech. Conversations between pairings of native English speakers of diverse backgrounds were recorded and analyzed. The analysis indicated that…