Argues that text construction and the construction of subjectivity are coimplicated, historical, intertextual, social, and political. Interpretative analyses of the essays of two fourth-grade children demonstrate how these intertextual links implicate and are implicated in particular social formations and political ideologies. (Contains 39…

Offers an application of Mikhail Bakhtin's heteroglossia model, describing literature from a diversified point of view. Analyzes two examples to show nevertheless that Bakhtin unilaterally celebrates "stereo" qualities of language blending, and leaves no room for "mono" texts, which use polyglot devices as borders much more…

A study examined the effects of valency (associative value representing the number of two-kanji words containing the first-positional kanji of the word) on recognition of two-kanji words in Japanese. Frequency and valency of the first constituent kanji were significant factors for word recognition, and frequency of the first constituent kanji was…

Discusses language embodied by practice, or the interrelations among traditional areas of linguistics, such as grammar and semantics and conversational organization, on the one hand, and gesture and prosody on the other. Specific focus is on the role of prosody and gesture in turn-taking. (Author/VWL)

For analytic purposes, contends that, in principle, culture is an unapparent and functionally unimportant element of routine everyday interactions. It is when persons, relationships, and episodes are evaluated by the participants or others in the community, and what the participants opt to say, or not say, that we come face-to-face with culture.…

Suggests that future research in language and social interaction should (1) focus on studies of media or mediated discourse as forms of social interaction as one broad group; and (2) engage in the flow of postmodernist discourse. (Author/VWL)

Offers an introduction to this themed journal issue dealing with the cognitive processing of the Chinese and the Japanese languages. Discusses processing Chinese, processing Japanese, and research needs. (SR)

Finds that, when only one reading is possible, subjects make a judgment directly, but when multiple readings exist for a given character the subjects first compare the possible readings and make inferences; only when this process is complete do they apply a strategy to identify a reading as On (borrowed from Chinese) or Kun (native Japanese). (SR)

Observes in a lexical decision task that polysemy effects were identical for high- and low-frequency katakana words; and that in a naming task, although no word frequency effect was observed, there was a significant polysemy effect which was identical for high- and low-frequency words. Discusses implications about the loci of such polysemy and…

Finds that words were named faster in kana than in kanji but were translated faster in kanji than in kana. Shows that semantic access takes places 10 to 19 msec earlier in kanji words than in kana words, whereas phonological access takes places 27 to 31 msec earlier in kana words than in kanji words. (SR)

Investigates the acquisition of a non-null-subject language (English) by speakers of two different null-subject languages (Spanish and Chinese) in light of recent research in theoretical syntax that shows that different syntactic mechanisms are at work in the expression of null subjects in the two languages.(Author/VWL)

Reviews corpus-based research that draws on theoretical insights from systemics, genre, and discourse analysis for exploration of small-scale specialized corpora of academic writing. (Author/VWL)

Reports results of four experiments in which undergraduate students rated the degree of condemnation in critical remarks. Shows that ironic criticism in many cases is used to enhance rather than to dilute condemnation. Notes significant implications for both pragmatic and processing theories of verbal irony. (SR)

Defines quantitative-discourse psychology. Illustrates its practice in five research projects, all of which examined naturalistic discourse, investigating: reading time; inference generation; construction of multiple agents (narrators, characters) in literary short stories; tutorial dialog; and dialog patterns in two-party conversations. Notes a…

Introduces the articles in this special issue. Reviews research on linguistic processes in reading across orthographies. Concludes that these articles contribute to the understanding of factors affecting development of efficient reading in first and second languages; they also help to ameliorate the relative silence in the reading literature about…