It is proposed that the functions of the Mandarin verbal suffix "-le" are three: (1) for marking non-continual factual actions or events; (2) for indicating the "peak" in an event line; and (3) for explicitly marking anteriority of an action or event. Observations of written language drawn from newspaper articles and…

Historians of rhetoric have generally accepted the view that Adam Smith rejected the principles of classical rhetoric. However, while there can be no doubt that Smith greatly truncated the five classical arts of rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery) by reducing his concerns largely to style and arrangement, he did not…

In order to examine how the manipulation of the stylistic and semantic attributes of a counselor's language affects client perceptions of counselor expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness, 132 college students (88 females, 44 males) were randomly assigned to listen to one of four counseling audiotapes; the tapes were identical as to topic…

An examination of the social psychological basis of style shifting suggests that, contrary to Labovian theory, many style shifts are not a function of shifts in attention to speech and that there are other more explanatory ways of analyzing style shifts. Some reasons for this view are: (1) attention to speech is sometimes negatively correlated…

In the context of linguistic theories of politeness, it is possible to consider the concept of a continuum of politeness that includes degrees of speaker egocentricity. It is proposed that directives in Brazilian Portuguese follow a hierarchy of politeness forms based on a theory of pragmatic markedness: that the more marked for politeness a…

"Writeability" is concerned with helping writers and editors produce materials on easier readability levels. A major input of most readability formulas is vocabulary difficulty. One way to increase readability is to use simple vocabulary or shorter words since word frequency studies show that more common words are shorter. The other…

A study of the development of children's production of two kinds of narratives, script and episodic, had as subjects 60 children aged 3, 5, and 7, with 20 children in each age group. In the experiment, 10 children in each group were asked to produce script narratives ("What happens when you do X?") for 3 events and the other 10 were asked to…

It is suggested that the literature on communicative competence, replete with various formulations, mirrors the diversity of language outlined by Martin Joos in his essay "The Five Clocks." Three concepts of communicative competence are reviewed, in historical perspective. The first, promoted by Norm Chomsky, distinguished linguistic…

Refers to "fine points" of Spanish usage. (SK)

This article discusses developments within the past twenty years in translation in North America and Europe, according to several approaches: theoretical stylistic, artistic, pedagogical, and computational. (Text is in French.) (AM)

A theory of style called the doctrine of synonymity argues that the separation of form from content allows the possibility of alternative phrasing. This theory led to the conception that during the writing process, writers consider different ways of phrasing and settle on the formulation that best expresses the meaning intended. However, the…

The standard view of language attitudes in a creole continuum is that the creole is considered bad and the standard language is considered good. This standard view fits with the theory of decreolization by which such continua are thought to have come about. A study was carried out in Guyana in an effort to overcome the perceived limitations of the…