Argues that organizations routinely engage in values advocacy (the appeal to shared cultural values) to perform three distinct functions: (1) to enhance the organization's image; (2) to deflect criticism of the organization and/or its policies, products, and services; and (3) to establish value premises that can be used in later discourse. (SR)

Describes research on the rhetoric of mine disasters, analyzing discourse among government agencies, Congress, unions, operators, and lobbyists. Offers rhetorical, technical, and ethical analyses of the technical documents resulting from mine disasters. (SR)

Addresses the argument that access to Universal Grammar in second-language acquisition implies an asymmetrical knowledge of ungrammaticality. The author attempts to prove that the asymmetry position is conceptually defective and that the evidence for it is inconclusive, inappropriate, and contradicted by other data. (12 references) (Author/CK)

Reviews studies and tests that show how discourse analysis has contributed to the theory, research, and development of language testing, covering the relations among discourse analysis and competence and testing theory; research on language tests and tasks; and task development. A 60-citation unannotated bibliography is included. (CB)

How young children portray themselves in relation to others was examined in naturally occurring stories of personal experience told jointly with family members. The study of 2.5- to 5-year-old culturally diverse children supported developmental theorists' claims about the relational nature of self-development when connected discourse is taken as…

Asserts that the act of writing can create surprising, experimental, supple forms of written discourse. Argues for exploring more mobile, heteroglot, polyphonic forms of writing. Suggests that attempting roles that produce fragmentary texts might lead toward approaching the challenges of composing unified texts from a more enlivening perspective.…

Describes several distinctive discourse features of typical information books written for young children by comparing them to book language in typical storybooks. Analyzes four kindergartners' repeated "pretend readings" of three typical information books to reveal the strategies by which these children learn the characteristic…

Two series of experiments investigate two hypotheses that may explain a conflict regarding pronomial reference. The hypothesis accepted is that the use of the gender cue is under the reader's strategic control; the hypothesis rejected is that implicit causality and gender cue interact differently with the complexity of the inference needed to link…

Three experiments are reported on the interpretation of conceptual anaphors, defined as those that do not have an explicit linguistic antecedent but one constructed from text. Two experiments showed that conceptual anaphors are quite easily understood but are processed with difficulty; the third one showed mixed results. (three references)…

The mechanisms involved in the assignment of an antecedent to an anaphoric element are examined. Taken together, four experiments suggest that conceptual, although grammatically illegal, anaphors do not cause comprehensive difficulties. (Author/LB)

Two levels of representation in text comprehension were postulated: a propositional representation and a mental (or situation) model of the content of the text. Experimental results suggest that performance differences attributable to domain-specific knowledge reflect differences in the construction of the mental model. (26 references) (Author/LB)

Considers whether causal antecedent and causal consequence inferences are generated on-line during comprehension and also determined the time course of their activation. Supports a bridging model of inference generation, since causal antecedents were generated online, whereas causal consequences were not. (HB)

Investigates whether spatial situation models are constructed in naturalistic story comprehension. Claims that, during normal reading, readers are not very much engaged in constructing, maintaining, and updating a spatial situation model. (HB)

Drummond and Hopper's article in this issue, "Back Channels Revisited," is discussed in terms of its ability to elicit contrary responses from different scholars because it incorporates elements of two incommensurate approaches to the study of conversation. Weider sets the stage for subsequent articles in this issue. (11 references) (LB)

Free-standing acknowledgement tokens are contrasted with tokens that begin full turns. Jefferson's theory is tested and supported that "yeah" displays greater speakership incipiency than "mm hm." Two research traditions that guide the present inquiry are reviewed. (17 references) (LB)