This is a qualitative study of nonnative English speakers who speak English as a lingua franca (ELF) in their graduate student dormitory in the United States, a community of practice (Wegner, 2004) comprised almost entirely of second language users. Using a sequential analysis (Koshik, 2002; Markee, 2000; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974;…

Research article introductions (RAIs) play a significant role in gaining publication, and therefore have been studied by many applied linguists. Research into RAIs published in Indonesia has begun to be developed (Adnan, 2009; Mirahayuni, 2001; Safnil, 2000), and generally conclude that Indonesian Humanities RAIs were structured differently from…

This paper seeks to analyse discourse patterns of legal opinions in two languages and cultures--namely, Legal Problem Question Answers (LPQs) in the UK academic writing context and Pareri (Ps) in the Italian professional writing context. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of discourse in this paper, based on the tenets of genre analysis,…

As English is the leading medium of communication in academia, publication in international journals presents a goal and a challenge for some non-Anglophone researchers. Research articles (RAs) written in English and Spanish have been examined in order to discover whether the textual organization in each language is similar or different. However,…

The article investigates the interplay between the meaning given to certain key expressions and pupils' understanding of science subject matter, in a qualitative study of learning.The intentional-expressive approach to the epistemological role of language use served as a theoretical frame, within the wider context of phenomenographic research on…

Having previously been employed to investigate science and English classrooms and listening in the music classroom, theories of multimodality would appear to have much to contribute to an examination of group composing using Information and Communications Technology (ICT), owing to the multimodal nature of music software and group discourse. This…

Understandings of young children as active and capable citizens, while evident in discourses of early childhood education and research, are not widely reflected in the policy for the early years of schooling in Australia. This paper makes an analysis of the gaps and tensions between discourses of young children as active citizens and policy for…

We consider what it means to be a dialogic teacher as characterized by Paulo Freire and Robin Alexander, and utilizing discourse analysis, we explicate how one elementary teacher's talk reflects these characteristics. We provide context for and analysis of a seven-minute discussion selected as a cumulative achievement the focal nine-year-olds are…

This paper explores the professional development of 11 newly qualified foreign language teachers. It draws on a qualitative longitudinal study conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland between 2002 and 2009. The paper concentrates on the personal side of teacher development by analysing participants' discourses concerning language…

Speaking about "the student experience" has become common-place in higher education and the phrase has acquired the aura of a sacred utterance in UK higher education policy over the last decade. A critical discourse analysis of selected higher education policy texts reveals what "the student experience" has come to signify, and…

This paper draws on data from a research project investigating gendered identities and interactions of high-achieving students in Year Eight in England (12-13 years old), particularly in relation to students' "popularity" amongst their peers. As part of this study 71 students were interviewed from nine different schools in urban, rural…

This critical instrumental case study examines a transformative world language learning approach to a unit on culture in an introductory Japanese class in a public high school. Couched in recent post-9/11 language "policy" debates, which strikingly lack mention of religion, spirituality, or environmental issues of climate change and…

Expanding on the studies of Hernandez (2008) and de la Fuente (2009), this investigation examines the combined effect of explicit instruction (EI) and input flood (IF) vs. IF alone on students' use of discourse markers to narrate a past event. Participants included 91 English-speaking adults enrolled in fourth-semester college Spanish courses,…

Participation is a complex process, engaging the whole person, implying cognitive, emotional and relational aspects. In online open and distant learning, group work is a commonly used strategy, given its collaborative nature and constructivist framework ([Bates and Poole, 2003], [Garrison and Anderson, 2003] and [Jonassen, 2005]). In this context,…

Brown and Levinson's ([1978] Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge University Press, 1987) politeness theory has been criticized as being ethnocentric by displaying a Western preoccupation with autonomy and individualism. Many non-western societies, it is argued, are better understood by appealing to cultural discernment or group…