Multiculturalism (like crossculturalism and transculturalism) is an emergent, interdisciplinary concept--one that is rife with images. The metaphoric language of "why" (embrace multiculturalism) is filled with arguments for or against multiculturalism paired with problems and burdens, coupled with disease, and most frequently, troped as…

Rhetorical norms of early McCarthyist discourse reveal a reliance upon images of chaos and the body. Through such metaphors, rhetors crafted a model of discussion that feminized "democracy" and "tolerance" to support anti-Communist measures and de-legitimize their opponents. Political variety was coded as deviant to national…

Based on a collaboration between an instructor and an undergraduate student for two different documentation projects, this paper discusses the difference between the language systems of writers and supervisors designing or choosing training materials and documentation and what the research says about the real needs for the documentation. The paper…

The Project on Academic Language Socialization (PALS) investigated, in a longitudinal study, the process by which urban high school students are socialized into subject matter discourse. Specifically, the PALS project examined language forms and discourse patterns that both occur in and constitute the process of teaching and learning in high…

Labeling Peter Elbow an "expressivist" is an ironic reduction of his multifaceted thought to a one-dimensional term at a time when postmodernism stresses heteroglossia. This paper outlines the recent history of "expressivism" to demonstrate its curious social construction. The paper then calls for an "end of…

This brochure discusses, in lay terms, how computers process language and why they may have difficulty in processing English. The brochure points out that English is a more difficult language to process than most people think, and that the brain is far more complex than the computer in its ability to decipher meaning. The examples of the word…

Drawing on the work of Virginia Woolf, feminist instructors of college composition can help their students to develop their own voices by encouraging innovation and revision of mainstream discourses and ways of expression. If Woolf believed that women cannot escape the language of men, which not only constitutes the symbolic realm of phallocentric…

A study explored the affective impact of interpersonal influence messages. Thirty-nine students enrolled in an undergraduate communication course listened to a tape-recording of 15 directives and rated each directive on explicitness or dominance. Results indicated that the set of stimuli tapped nearly the full range of both continua, and that the…

Each discourse community teaches and uses a particular version of reality. In the field of accounting, the interpretation of reality is an objective one. Such an interpretation is a constraint on writing, as are accounting's reliance on exclusionary language, its need to meet legal and professional requirements, its adherence to stylistic and…

Exploring the use of the prefix "meta" and the use of "meta" terms in the context of Lev S. Vygotsky's theories demonstrates that students need to use language to learn about language. "Writing about writing" is already part of many classrooms, but by establishing a connection between metadiscourse written informally…

The role of English and English instruction in Portugal is outlined. Although English is growing in importance, French is still more commonly studied as a second language in Portugal. English instruction within the education system, English teacher supply and training, the role of the British Council in teacher training, availability of English…

The educator should always strive to use only "emancipative" language: not authoritarian, but rather aimed at developing maturity and cooperation on the matter in hand. It should be pertinent, consistent, comprehensible, reversible, and practice-oriented. It is consciously undertaken, normative behavior, oriented toward political and social…

Language is not fixed and uniform, but occurs in many variants, social, occupational, etc. These correspond to various roles in society. The learner must be prepared to assume such roles, and must try to achieve practical mastery of the corresponding language variant. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

A test of the linguistic attitudes of teachers toward Black, Anglo, and Mexican-American children. (CH)

A corporate employee newsletter offers an ideal opportunity to discover how literacy functions as a means of assimilating individuals into a social structure. Underlying the corporate newsletter's assimilative function are the assumptions: (1) that in reading, employees rely on attitudes toward types of texts evolved within society as a whole; and…