Assesses three papers in this volume, those by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy, for their treatment of the following: (1) definition of semantic space, (2) defining children's processes of understanding that space, and (3) describing the contexts in which cognitive language is used. (AEW)

Suggests activities for teaching proverbs, an important part of the cultural education of second language learners. Activities include identifying proverbs in common discourse, creating skits and cartoons or pictures based on them, creating puzzles, inventing original proverbs, and analyzing their practical value. (MSE)

Describes a study that examines the effect of an adult-child discourse structure on the word combination produced by 17 children at the single-word utterance level. There was a significant difference between pretest and posttest multiword production for the experimental group of six children, but no difference for the control group. (SED)

Abstracts the International Reading Association's outstanding dissertation, a study examining narrative accounts in the day-to-day conversations of five- to seven-year olds with their friends, the range of narrative forms they produce, and the social and interactional functions served by such narratives. (SR)

Discusses the occurrence or nonoccurrence of the contraction of prepositions and determiners in German to emphasize that the communicative function of certain syntactic forms can only be understood, and should therefore only be taught, within the framework of contextual analysis. (CB)

Discusses the theoretical foundations of discourse analysis and intonation and emphasizes that intonation has received little attention in the communicative competence or proficiency movements, despite the fact that intonation is a powerful tool for negotiating meaning, managing interaction, and achieving discourse coherence. (CB)

Examines two passages from Thucydides'"History of the Peloponnesian War" to illustrate the origins of scientific writing and to explore the relationship between scientific writing and epideictic rhetoric. Concludes that Thucydides' work merits an important position in the history of scientific and technical writing. (JAD)

The dialectical approach to teaching literary analysis, using William Perry's model of cognitive development, engages students intellectually and actively in literary issues, takes a holistic approach to education, and confronts students with an alternative to their well-entrenched philosophy that an education is to be gotten and stored away. (MSE)

This paper presents linguistic evidence for communication problems in everyday classroom interactions where children are dialect speakers. It also examines the problem of coding language functions for use in experiments. (RB)

Presents an informal history and criticism of a rhetorical style that proposed a set of rules designed to pin words and syntax down so that a writer's meaning could not be misconstrued. Describes how the style was appropriated for textbook use by an innovative group of American writers during the mid-nineteenth century. (AEW)

Explores the relationship between interaction involvement as a traitlike dimension of communicative competence and the use of grammatical cohesive devices to create explicit ties within conversation. Presents three dyad types and argues that the patterned use of cohesive devices is sensitive to the nature of the dyad type. (MM)

Presents the computer program SEPARATE.BAS. and discusses how the use of microcomputer technology for processing textual data offers increased capabilities for the qualitative researcher in speech communication. Discusses how SEPARATE.BAS. assists in the research task of dividing transcripts of interviews or discussions into separate text files…

Educable mentally retarded students (N=6) made daily dialogue journal entries for 40 days. Analysis of topics, language functions, and syntax revealed that: students produced functionally relevant, interactive communication; topics were more appropriate to chronological (18 years) than mental age (10 years); and written linguistic production was…

Uses an analysis of children's interpretations of a complex episode of social interaction to illustrate three features that distinguish them from robot plans and that form a basis for a theory of the development of social action: human plans (1) are social, (2) operate on interpretations, and (3) are used, not just executed. (FL)

Investigates the effects of breakdowns in referential and factual coherence on text comprehension and reveals that the processing of factually inconsistent information hindered other information in passages. (FL)