Suggests that there are various methods that can be, and are used to study language and social interaction in its different guises; asserts that this is a good thing. Discusses some of the different meanings that "language" and "social interaction" have in research and concludes that the language-social interaction intersection is not unitary.…

Suggests that language and social-interaction research should pay more attention to practical metadiscourse in general, and in particular to what happens when theorized concepts of language and social interaction are used for practical purposes. An abbreviated empirical example is provided that illustrates one way in which theorized concepts in…

Suggests that the future of social interactionist work may display a great divide between a new sociocognitivist theory linked to sociotechnical engineering, on the one hand, and a sociocultural critical theory of such engineering. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the concept of identity and its relation to language and social interaction. Suggests the need to accept both quantitative and qualitative methods, in which the richness and variability of language in use is emphasized. (Author/VWL)

Calls for increased emphasis on certain lines of research on language and social interaction, basically arguing for greater attention to "horizontal" (cross-cultural, cross-language) and "vertical" (developmental) comparative research. Considers the balance between research on ordinary conversation and talk in institutional settings. (Author/VWL)

The recent writing of Muhlhausler argues that lexicography and other acts of linguistic description constitute a serious trespass on the linguistic ecology of an area, which can ultimately lead to a language's demise. This article critically examines views such as this in the context of community expectations of lexicographical researchers in the…

Considers specific aspects of phonological and orthographic processing in Chinese that may differ from those in English. Emphasizes that early phonological processes and phonological mediation are two different questions in the identification-with-phonology hypothesis. Shows that "mediation" and "prelexical phonology," two very…

Finds phonological priming effects on compound targets (characters containing separate radical components); no evidence of phonological priming on integrated targets (those not containing separate radicals); semantic priming effects on both compound and integrated target recognition, suggesting that phonological and semantic activation are…

Investigates how a person comprehends a subject-verb-object sentence. Obtains effects of both reference scope and location of superordinates. Supports a slot-filling model of sentence comprehension (which should apply to English as well as Chinese sentences) in which subjects successively create a slot for filling the previously integrated unit in…

Finds that, because kanji morphemes of opposite and similar concepts are semantically activated both as morpheme units and compound-word units, semantic representations of the two morphemes and the compound word which they create compete with each other at the concept level, which slows down lexical decision and naming of the compound word. (SR)

Focuses on the role of cognitive structures in the reader's knowledge. Argues that causality is an important category in structuring human knowledge and that this property has consequences for text processing. Discusses research illustrating that the more the information in the text reflects causal categories, the more easily the information is…

Discusses applications of second language acquisition (SLA) research to the preparation of language coursebooks. Suggests a number of ways that SLA research findings can help improve coursebooks and enhance the learning of large numbers of students. (Author/VWL)

Describes a project whose purpose is to set up a computerized database of bilingual texts to be used by researchers in the field of language interaction (i.e., codeswitching, borrowing, and other outcomes of contact between varieties). Current work includes adaptation of the CHILDES system to take account of the different needs of researchers in…

Discussion of the Spanish indeterminate reflexive construction, the impersonal reflexive, finds that prototype theory allows this subjectless Spanish construction to be included within the category of generally subject-bearing indeterminates in Romance languages. (MSE)

Reports three studies of comprehension of French subject relative clauses and two forms of object relative clauses. The first tested the hypothesis that competition between noun phrases, memory load, and perspective maintenance determine difficulty of role assignment in reversible relative clauses; others compared subject relatives and inverted…