Second language curricula vary in their relative emphases on process and product and on the control exerted by the teacher and learner. Discourse analysis can be used to gain insight into classroom interaction. One model for this kind of analysis classifies utterances according to the structural predictions created by the preceding utterance,…

Computer concordancing, a form of lexical analysis that locates and gives information about all occurrences of a particular lexical item within a text, is useful in literary analysis. Concordancing programs are available for small computers in all price ranges. Applied to literary text, the programs make it possible to specify each item's…

Three linguistic features used in spontaneous conversation to express emotional involvement (this, never, and all) are analyzed. "All" and "never" have referential functions; "this" has both referential and deictic functions. The focus of this analysis is on the way that speakers use these features to express emotional involvement and to orient…

This paper discusses a cybernetic model of politeness strategies used in the process of making a request. The concept of systems, cybernetic models, and politeness strategies are reviewed, and the way they work together in the proposed model is examined. Politeness strategies are communication strategies used to change behavior enough to achieve…

A linguistic model of communication is preeminent in Western culture, and part of its power arises from the Western preoccupation with word, particularly the Christian meditation on the Word, the second person of the Trinity. Augustine's philosophy and theology of the word made him a proponent of a linguistic epistemology: all knowledge is…

Using Kenneth Burke's conceptualization of the "representative anecdote," this paper explicates Burke's own theoretical frame. By examining Burke's system through the two anecdotes of "drama" and "nuclear war," the paper demonstrates that Burke weaves together two distinct theoretical threads, one a theory of Being,…

To show how Hugh Blair's treatise on rhetoric helped shape the patriarchal context in which women write and to suggest some considerations for modern teachers of writing, it will be useful to look at the ways 18th-century belletristic rhetoric responded to the disruption occasioned by women's entry into public discourse. Blair's work, the most…

Using experimental narratives in which discourse order and event order were not confounded, a study investigated the role of global discourse organization on the comprehension of narrative texts. Subjects, 100 college students, listened to tape recorded passages representing five types of discourse organization: canonical, backward, flashback,…

Excerpts from a transcript of computer "conversations" provide the basis for a study of how people manage ongoing interaction, given the constraints of computer-mediated discourse, and whether any unusual conventions are used in doing so. The discourse was analyzed using address, topical references, and adjacency pairs to link the…

The fall of Gary Hart, brought about because of his indiscretions during the 1988 presidential campaign, should not be treated exclusively as a consequence of Hart's moral failings. Rather, the fall of Hart can be traced to a complex of factors including bad judgment, the near total control that the press exercises over the political agenda, and…

A collection of seven papers developed for the 1982 Summer Institute of Linguistics of the Linguistic Society of the Philippines address aspects of the institute's research topic, the interface of the morphosyntax and discourse structure in languages of the Philippines and Sabah. They include three papers on general concerns of discourse types in…

Yupik language has two devices to indicate switch reference. The rules generally given for them are not entirely correct, and counterexamples to the ideal have been found previously. A subset of those counterexamples in Central Yupik Eskimo support the claim that there are two systems, partially overlapping and partially unique, that organize…

An investigation was undertaken into the possibility of automatically detecting how concepts exist in relation to each other in abstracts, a text-type commonly used in free-text retrieval. The end goal of this research is to capture these relationships in structured representations of abstracts' contents so that users can require not only that the…

The 1988 Vice-Presidential debate between candidates Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen served as a rhetorical forum for airing the policies and behaviors of each candidate. Elements of compliance-gaining and apologia were interrelated and overlapped throughout the debate. Both candidates effectively maneuvered these strategies and avoided direct…

A study developed an analytical tool for the critiquing of FCC legal arguments in the dimensions of purpose and quality. The supposition of the study was that law is an inherently rhetorical activity. The model elaborated was a situational matrix created out of the classical typologies of rhetorical occasions and oratory: the forensic,…