Outlines the approaches to "computer composition" and questions the efficacy of such models. Argues that in order to come to terms with the great revolutionary "beyond" posited by some theorists, the computer must be first of all conceptualized as transformative. (HB)

Uses longitudinal data on language acquisition to examine children's language and sense of self and others. Referential analysis of children's discourse found that children do locate self and other in a spatio-temporal realm. Form-function analysis found that children's discourse about self was more varied in form and in semantic and pragmatic…

The relationship between prototype meanings and frequency of use is investigated with a view to establishing a foundation for the problem of "prototype acquisition." One polysemous basic verb, "put," is used in this study of native speaker discourse, and implications for both prototype theory and the acquisition of polysemy are…

Results of an empirical study of the learners' language of a group of Chinese language students show that topic-controlled deletion is a prominent feature in Chinese that is distinctly different from English and that it may result in English speakers' difficulty in forming Chinese topic chains. (nine references) (LB)

Models of ethnographic research in education treat context in an arbitrary way, and the theory of language used is inadequate. However, a discourse analysis framework can be useful in improving qualitative research in education by relating accounts of specific sites and events to their social contexts. (27 references) (MSE)

Using a qualitative discourse-analytic framework, this paper compares the planned spoken English of a native speaker of Chinese, whose English discourse was perceived to be hard to follow, with a native speaker of U.S. English. Differences in the use of lexical discourse markers, lexical specificity, and syntactic incorporation are discussed. (34…

The top 50 songs in English from a 1987 music chart were analyzed using a word-frequency count. For teaching English to speakers of other languages, pop songs were found to offer short, affective, simple, native texts with a lot of familiar vocabulary recycled, yet vague. (14 references) (Author/LB)

Suggests that claims of sex differences in interruption behavior should not be uncritically accepted. Examines frequency of interruption in fourth-grade, ninth-grade, and college students. Finds that males did not interrupt females any more than females interrupted males. (RS)

Personal letter writing, a major literacy event in Tuvalu, an independent island nation near Fiji, is strongly influenced by culture-specific discourse conventions such as religion. The influence is evident in the vernacular, but also in English letters of Tuvaluan biliterates, whose native patterns of discourse are transferred across literacies.…

Discusses the use of document outlines to reduce navigation problems in hypertext. Measures of syntactic and lexical balance in an outline are proposed, and the degree to which these balances occur in a sample of documents is shown. Based on balance in an outline, a method for semiautomatically generating an outline is applied to a textbook. (45…

In conversations between bilinguals, each of whom is a learner of the other's language, two different local patterns of codeswitching may emerge: compliance and mutual convergence. It is argued that a pattern of compliance is ultimately more accommodating that convergence, contrary to the claims of Speech Accommodation Theory. (20 references)…

Examines transcribed excerpts from a casual discussion according to sentence-level, textual/situational, and cultural structure. A brief comparison is made with a more formal written text to provide an additional background against which to illuminate the casual spoken discourse structure. (20 references)

Examines corporate videos as cultural texts, claiming that they function as rites and ceremonials in modern organizations that facilitate organizational socialization. Notes that video-enacted rites can be a valuable tool in communication ethnographies. Defines and analyzes four types of rites: integration, passage, renewal, and enhancement. (SR)

Examines the current tradition of cross-cultural speech act research and concludes that each of the approaches so far proposed for analyzing cross-cultural speech acts is inadequate in one respect or another. (45 references) (GLR)

Literary "discourse theories," increasingly applied to history and society in recent years, are losing favor among conservative and liberal scholars as focusing too narrowly on the role of language. These poststructuralist theories hold that language and knowledge are slippery, that words and cultural texts rarely mean what they appear…