The memory of the student uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989 invites one professor to examine more closely what she does: rhetoric and composition, especially rhetorical invention. To examine the kind of power exercised by official Chinese public discourse and whether language could help to avoid reoccurrences such as the loss of innocent…

An interactional model of communication can be based on Erving Goffman's concept of the "interaction order" and the conversation analytic focus on meaning. Three sets of related ideas provide the intellectual foundations for this approach: actions are designed for recipients; talk is multi-functional; and self presentation is semiotic.…

The paper discusses the Spanish expression "bueno," which marks the beginning or the end of background and assertion self-repairs in conversation, and often co-occurs with other expressions, such as "viste" and "no?" which mark the other end of the repair. Background repairs provide information the speaker considers necessary for the hearer to…

In Sundanese, a western Austronesian language, speech levels allow the speaker to establish social identity through talk alone, using multiple linguistic forms with very different pragmatic meanings. These words are deference and demeanor indexicals, as in the French formal versus informal second person. It is argued that although they do exist,…

This study investigates if negotiation can affect syntacticization in the learning of second language (L2) syntax. Evidence from a number of studies has suggested that linguistic modification occurs during negotiation, but no research has examined if such modifications assist the learning of syntax in a second language. This study examined to what…

This paper aims to account for what at first appears to be a unique constraint in the formation of A-not-A questions. Most previous analyses employ the pragmatic notion of focus. This paper argues in favor of a presuppositional account, which has wide empirical coverage and is independently motivated and more theoretically coherent than the notion…

This research study analyzed an electronic conversation that occurred on the LabNet network, an electronic network for science teachers. A conversation about the nature of science that occurred for eight weeks among ten science teachers was analyzed in order to identify the characteristics of messages that start and sustain a conversation and to…

This research employs a mixed theoretical perspective drawing on elements from interactionism and social constructivism. In this study, a discourse analysis is performed on conversations among intra- and inter-institutional mathematics and science teaching faculty participating in reforming content classes for teacher candidates in the Maryland…

A pilot study examined whether a relational control model can be used to evaluate cross examination in academic debate. Four cross examination periods in the 1994 Cross Examination Debate Association Nationals final round were videotaped, transcribed, and coded (using the Relational Communication Control Coding Scheme). Results indicated that the…

In 1977, John C. Merrill, a mass communication scholar, found that many scholars believed that the sixties movement of new journalism is in some way related to existentialism. To find this out, a study identified six main themes of the philosophy of existentialism (as espoused by Jean-Paul Sartre) and looked for the presence of these themes in the…

This bibliography lists books, articles, and other related sources dealing with the area of the history of communications and rhetoric. The 50 citations cover both the history of western communications as well as studies focusing on American communications and rhetoric. (HB)

In contrast to overly cognitive and excessively reductive information models of communication, Hans Georg Gadamer provides a viable alternative for discussing conversation. There seems to be a competition in Gadamer's writings between conversation and text, so that his project of textual interpretation has an important impact on his treatment of…

"Verbal atom cracking," according to Kenneth Burke, entails a process where the reader reconstructs what the writer has constructed--a necessary process before the reader can begin deconstructing. Foregrounding opposites, rather than looking for apposites, may not be the best way to approach discourse that covers especially esoteric…

This article presents the difficulties literary pragmaticists have with literary genre, and asks to what extent linguists belonging to the Halliday tradition might be able to help. Literary pragmatists need a taxonomical apparatus that will apply to genres of all kinds, literary or otherwise. They also need to describe how different genres help…

The focus of this paper is the variation within the narrative type of text. Specific attention is on the variation between two rather extreme forms of narrative: simple stories written for children that may be described as stereotypical in structure, and an artistic story, "The Steppe," by A. Cexov. The view is taken that stories are…