Notes this special issue focuses primarily on embodied personal writing. Identifies and argues for a powerful alternative to masculinist discourse by incorporating an "embodied rhetoric" into professional discursive practices. Considers how embodied rhetoric requires gestures to the material practices of the professional group and to the quotidian…

Foregrounds teaching and writing as embodied (that is, gendered, sexualized) practices that contain within them markers of identity that require us to revisit our past or which can subject us to shame. Highlights the transformative potential such teaching and writing have, both for us and for various audiences. (SG)

Provides an interactional account of conflict negotiation strategies in Korean American discourse. With specific attention to the sociolinguistic phenomenon of codeswitching among Korean Americans, argues that speaking Korean at particular moments evokes ideologies of social hierarchy that serve to mitigate potential conflicts. (Author/VWL)

Discusses Eric Lomax's autobiographical book "The Railway Man." Notes how it chronicles his boyhood obsession with train-spotting and the subsequent ways in which his life has been freaked by railway co-incidences. Describes how the author invited Eric Lomax to come and discuss this work with his students. (SG)

Considers how social constructions of violence are reproduced within a court-ordered program fostering nonviolence for teens. Explores how awareness of spaces that define one's movements through them is inhibited as well as fostered by particular forms of discursive exchange. Considers what new spaces might be negotiated through an exchange of…

Addresses how applied linguists and those concerned with discourse analysis in particular have recently approached the study of health care communication, especially in intercultural contexts, and relates these approaches to studies undertaken by researchers in other academic disciplines, such as the sociology of medicine and by health care…

Explores how two students participated in classroom talk about written text. Finds students participated in talk in complicated, devolving ways over a school year--one participated in class talk about text with an assumption of expertise, only to lose credibility when his teacher expected richer insights; the other participated with such talk with…

Elaborates on some elements of special relevance for critical analysis. Considers how an understanding of interpretation and beliefs as inherently holistic suggests that interpretation involves the recognition of alternatives, and that therefore assessment involves their comparison. Suggests that the consideration of alternatives is inevitable in…

Focuses on the kind of assessment that takes place within a classroom context, and therefore looks at assessing, grading, or testing writing, since when educators talk about classroom assessment they talk of grades and tests, at times using all three terms interchangeably. Hopes to draw educators into new conversations about assessment and the…

Advances practices for designing, analyzing, and reporting communication research. Focuses on improving researchers' abilities to cumulate results across studies and improving the utility of the individual study. Concludes by summarizing the set of propositions advocated. (SG)

Analysis of 11 further education staff development officers' conceptions of learners, learning, and teaching practice suggests a gap between a professed focus on learners and an actual emphasis on performance management and continuous improvement. Emphasis on individualizing learners and learning marginalizes the social context of teaching and…

Focuses on the relevance of principles of information organization in adult second language acquisition. Looks at typological features of information structure that allow speakers to organize and shape the flow of information when carrying out complex tasks and pinpoints factors that lead to the selection of linguistic form. The nature of the…

A study of child protection agencies in New South Wales shows how reforms involving a neoliberal interpretation of the learning organization, rather than encouraging teamwork and employee participation, are used to govern and control. Such new "technologies of training" demand changes in the character and identity of workers. (SK)

Drew on extensive archives from 10 graduate employee unions' Web sites to examine their publicly presented identities (marginalized workers and future professionals), ideologies (traditional and professional unionism with little focus on social justice), and strategies (disruptive protest and professional politics locally). (EV)

Discussion of automatic abstracting of technical papers focuses on a knowledge-based method that uses two sets of rules. Topics discussed include anaphora; text structure and discourse; abstracting techniques, including the keyword method and the indicator phrase method; and tools for text skimming. (27 references) (LRW)