Presents a technique called the rhetorical precis, a highly structured four sentence paragraph that records the essential rhetorical elements of a unit of spoken or written discourse. Argues that this form reinforces learning, reading, questioning, and evaluating course material. (RS)

An assessment of the substantive progress made regarding the study of language contact and bilingualism in the Hispanic world explores research concerning language contact and grammars, the bilingual speech community and linguistic structure, and bilingual discourse. (45 references) (CB)

Examines the organization and function of information-withholding sequences, a conversational strategy used by participants in gossip interaction on Nukulaelae, a Polynesian Central Pacific atoll. Withholding sequences illustrate how ambiguity and repairs can be exploited to meet the communicative demands of particular interactional contexts. (62…

Explores the negative popular reaction to the 1988 Presidential Debates. Examines how these events function as ritualistic enactments of the <public trust>, thus providing a rhetorical legitimacy for the electoral process in a system dedicated to <popular sovereignty>. Suggests how the 1988 debates failed to satisfy that function. (MM)

Examines the accuracy of quoted speech in newspapers, focusing on what people can remember verbatim and how that information relates to language processing, comprehension, and the mental representation of prose. Finds that memory for meaning was better than memory for verbatim prose, though memory for both was high. (MM)

Focuses on three widely publicized sermons given by the Reverend Jedidiah Morse to examine the role of the jeremiad (or political sermon) in shaping public attitudes toward political dissent during the Franco-American Crisis of 1798-1799. (MM)

Explored the relationship between the status of Javanese women and the politeness or formality of their speech. While women typically spoke more politely than men as an expression of their secondary status at home, men cultivated politeness to express their superior status and authority in the wider cultural context. (Author/CB)

The language of argumentation, taught increasingly often at the advanced level of French second-language learning, is discussed. Rationale for its teaching, basic concepts within the emerging discipline, and its relationship to traditional language teaching are examined. (MSE)

Identifies and describes two argumentative strategies AIDS activists use to claim the authority and ability to speak issues surrounding AIDS research: "redefinition" and "translation." Notes that both strategies revitalize the public sphere as a site of decision making about controversial issues. (SR)

Argues that, in poetry where phonological patterning is dominant, some deviation from standard uses in the other linguistic systems (grammar, lexis) is inevitable. (Author/CK)

Provides an examination of management and employee values as influential for organizational rule formation. Demonstrates that management values are directly related to employee values but indirectly influence the evolution of organization rules. Supports a view of rule emergence based on management and employee values. (HB)

Finds that the explicit definition of writing in history is "argumentation" but that the implicit expectation is for narrative. Argues that this apparent contradiction highlights the central function of academic historical discourse: the establishment of an autonomous subject of meaning that speaks from outside history about a distant and…

Argues that debate is not antithetical to Japanese culture and that Japan has indigenous traditions of argument and debate. Outlines the Japanese tradition of argumentation prior to the "opening to the West" in 1853. Suggests a more expansive model of debate as appropriate to cross-cultural analysis. (HB)

Individuals with autism without mental retardation (ages 8-18), Asperger syndrome, and nonspecific social problems (controls) engaged in a 10-minute conversation. Compared to controls, the higher functioning autistic group referred less to a previous stretch of the conversation and more to an aspect of the physical environment. The Asperger group…

Locally free reflexives in British English are analyzed as intensified nonnominative pronouns, subject to a contrastiveness requirement and a requirement that the character referred to be more central than other characters in the set. The extent to which discourse prominence marking can mimic locality marking may explain conversions of intensives…