Drawing on socio-cultural theory, this paper focuses on children's classroom-based collaborative creative writing. The central aim of the reported research was to contribute to our understanding of young children's creativity, and describe ways in which peer collaboration can resource, stimulate and enhance classroom-based creative writing…

Since the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, public education has been high on the national agenda. The nation's need for human capital and the need to provide equality of educational opportunity to all children and youth without regard to their race, ethnicity, or social status are the two needs that then framed education…

A case study of an adolescent girl provides a framework to understand what factors contribute to the development of a strong writer within an instant messaging world. The study shows instant messaging is one of a larger repertoire of practices. Facility in school-based writing was developed through a school culture that supported writing in the…

This paper draws on recent work by John Clarke and Janet Newman and their colleagues to analyse a relatively coherent governmental project, spanning the decades of Conservative and New Labour government in England since 1979, that has sought to render teachers increasingly subservient to the state and agencies of the state. Under New Labour this…

This paper uses a conversation analysis (CA) approach to explore parent-child interaction (PCI) within Nigerian families. We illustrate how speech and language therapists (SLTs), by using CA, can tailor recommendations according to the interactional style of each individual family that are consonant with the family's cultural beliefs. Three…

The essence of my argument is that Practitioner Research can be pursued not only by observing whole classes, but also by observing what happens when a teacher talks to a student outside of the classroom setting. What this setting offers to practitioner-researchers is a unique opportunity to understand what both the teacher and the student do to…

This article discusses phonological meanings and their realization in fiction texts and the problematics of their translations. The various views linguists appear to have about what phonological meanings are and how they are expressed linguistically are examined. Furthermore two linguistically oriented approaches on translation theory, Nida's and…

The particular way in which songs (and especially the songs of social movements) accumulate persuasive force has been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. This paper investigates the rhetorical power of the popular musical text, "We Shall Overcome," arguing that the song endures as an almost expected rhetorical feature of any social…

This paper attempts to identify certain regularities and tendencies of metafictional discourse. The focus is on the aspects of its metacommunicative component, which refers to interpersonal relations between the interactants of the narrative. What is interesting is the incorporation of typically oral modes of involvement in the self-conscious…

The concept of the "implied author" often used in literary studies suggests that the requirements of the text demand a being different in significant ways from the actual author. A number of frequently occurring situations indicate that the same concept may be relevant in technical writing: multiple authorship, single-authored texts…

A guide to the use of a computer program for discourse analysis is presented. The program, which derives root-words from other word forms, performs an automated, interactive analysis of words in their immediate context, using a previously developed dictionary program. The program is hierarchically menu-driven. The guide outlines the program's…

This essay analyzes Kenneth Burke's speech ("Revolutionary Symbolism") to the 1935 Writers Congress, a congress intended to explore the relationship between politics and art, and controlled closely by the American Communist Party. The essay maintains that Burke was prepared to offer to the Communist Party and to all…

The relationship of the word "only," one of a class of words known as scalar particles, focus adverbs, focus inducers, or focus-sensitive particles, with the "focus" of the sentence is examined. It is suggested, based on analysis of discourse structure, that this "association with focus" is not an inherent property of…

Conventionality can be defined as discourse used in its dominant or most familiar sense. In nonliteral language, the intended message is different from the overt message. It has been demonstrated that nonliteral language can be comprehended as rapidly as literal language if both are placed in linguistic context. A study examined whether this held…

In an attempt to define rhetorical discourse, the paper examines the speeches of Ahab, the main character from Herman Melville's book, "Moby-Dick." The paper first determines if Ahab's speeches actually fall into the category of rhetorical discourse by examining his major speeches, and then ascertains whether his speeches are bombs…