By getting hold of the dominating verbal structures, political correctness has tried (according to Paul Berman) to "get everyone to abandon certain previously unanalyzed phrases that contain the entire structure of oppressive social domination." Unfortunately, "political correctness" has become a pejorative term used to…

Modern writing textbooks tend to offer no heuristics, treat heuristics as if they do not have different impacts on inquiry, or take the view that heuristics are ideologically neutral pedagogies. Yet theory about language demonstrates that ideological neutrality is impossible. Any use of language in attempting to represent reality will inevitably…

Kenneth Burke, in his book "Permanence and Change" (1935) predicted that, as a result of the dehumanizing and alienation of people by technology, the 300-year reign of science that supplanted the age of religion and still prevails today would be replaced by poetic humanism as the new orientation. Current changes within rhetorical theory…

Style is a crucial component of success in competitive forensics, whether debate or individual events, and one of the greatest benefits students get from participating in such events is the opportunity to develop a sense of style. In keeping with the classical canons of rhetoric, style (as it relates to forensics) can be limited to a consideration…

A discussion of the relationship between public policy on languages and national economic development focuses on formulation of policy, especially in the case of Australia. It begins with a brief history of language policy-making in that country since the 1960s, including early proposals and a 1990 report that has been adopted as a basis for…

Paul Zimmer's latest poetry collection, "The Great Bird of Love," is serious and somber, fraught with the burden of evil, the indifference of God, and the certainty of death. The book is not humorless, however, as humor is central to both the chaotic evil and the ordered goodness of human life. It is in this collection that it is…

The role of context in language is so obvious that, paradoxically, it often goes unnoticed by students who are studying it. Newspaper headlines (real and contrived) can be used to demonstrate to students the context dependency of language. The simplest version of such a demonstration takes 5 minutes; the longest version takes about 20 minutes.…

One way to "reinitiate" possible productive responses to the question of the subject for composition theory and pedagogy is to defuse the terror of the "impossible," to "negotiate" with the impossible, and to ask impossible questions. Although there are dangers associated with any critical theorizing about the subject…

Most of the ordinary words in a language do not mean; rather, they act as rigid designators, referring to the same object in all possible words in which the object exists. Most words are names that are used as rigid designators of kinds--natural kinds (species, genre, and so forth), artifacts, physical and social magnitudes, and sorts of…

Article investigated the influence upon our lives played by verbal language and its role in art education. (Author/RK)

A knowledge of words that impede reading and understanding in social studies can aid the teacher in overcoming second language barriers to social studies concepts. (Author/KM)

The structure of speaker-auditor interaction was explored, using detailed language transcriptions and body-motion behavior. Three signals were hypothesized: a speaker within-turn signal, an auditor back-channel signal, and a speaker continuation signal. Signal sequences marked speaking turn units of interaction. (CK)

This paper proposes to give an evolutionary background to a method developed for the analysis of language seen as expression of intention and morality--the method is named "Perspective Text Analysis." The paper argues that this name indicates that beyond the physical dimension of a text there is a metaphysical one, which can be…

A discussion of the teaching of nonsexist language to learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) reviews the history of the awareness of gender bias in language, outlines the arguments for and against nonsexist language teaching, and concludes in favor of nonsexist language use in the second language classroom. It is proposed that those…

This document focuses on specific linguistic features that serve ideological functions in texts written in South Africa from 1985 to 1988. The features examined include: naming; metaphors; old words with new meanings; words becoming tainted; renaming or lexicalization; overlexicalization; strategies for resisting classification; tense and aspect;…