The nature and development of discourse topic skills in preschool children are examined and illustrated by observations of very young children. Possible social and cognitive components are explored with implications for language-disordered populations. (CL)

Presents results of a study indicating that, over many propositions appearing in passages that vary widely in content and vocabulary difficulty, early and later propositions are better recalled, and that the rated importance of a proposition predicts probability of recall independent of serial position. (HTH)

Reports on the applications of psycholinguistic principles to the formulations of jury charges in criminal trials in British Columbia. These principles were applied to standardize jury instructions both from the point of view of the legal information conveyed as well as from the sentence and discourse processing done by the jury. (SED)

The way in which children organize their discourse is examined, and the steps involved in topic initiation, maintenance, and development are traced with examples highlighting the interaction of text, topics, an goals/functions. Implications for cross-cultural language development are briefly considered. (CL)

Follows the slow growth of a body of knowledge about how information could best be communicated without necessary references to overt persuasion from Aristotle's "Rhetoric" through the beginnings of a theory of written discourse in the American nineteenth century. (FL)

Discusses the metalinguistic elements of argumentation in the legal definition. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

This paper presents five snapshots of data collected by adult basic math students taking part as co-researchers in a project to investigate the discourse of an adult basic math classroom. The work is presented against a background of the Freirean influence on adult literacy and numeracy. The notions of empowerment and dialogue in the Freirean…

In interactive media, it is the spaces between the text that are as important to read as the text itself. Visual literacy is a vital form of reading in an increasingly pictorial world. This paper examines the grammar of visual literacy by analyzing the discourse of a group of adolescents and the way they interpret multi-layered, seriated, and…

This study investigated the dynamics of intersubjectivity within the zone of proximal development. Its theoretical framework is based on three principal approaches to intersubjectivity, those of J. Wertsch (1984; 1985), B. Rogoff (1990), and R. Rommertveit (1979), with reference also to self-regulatory speech (L. Vygotsky, 1986). Data were…

With 1984 a decade away, U.S. teachers launch a counteroffensive against galloping Doublespeak. (Author)

Pleads that authors distinguish between process" as an end of science instruction (knowledge about how scientists work), and process" as a means of instruction (students investigating, measuring, observing, reading, etc., in the manner of scientists). (AL)

The author reports results of an experiment designed to determine the types" of encoding behavior in the selection of evidence speakers make for persuasive messages. (Author/MS)