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)

Considers pragmatic competence and misinterpretations in foreign-language use. Findings indicate that too many language teachers are still clinging to prescriptive views of language use. Practitioners should reevaluate the ways students' use of the language adds to its wealth and scope. (CB)

With the increasing need for specialized foreign language instruction, teachers need to understand the different kinds of language needs and language types corresponding to the professions and disciplines. (MSE)

To create an environment which motivates students to learn the conventions of formal writing, teachers must teach children the place that these conventions have in language and in linguistic history. Principles that give students a broad picture of language are listed. (JL)

Questions the validity of two assumptions behind the search for the "best" pedagogical (English as a second language) grammar: (1) that there is one ideal pedagogical grammar; and (2) that the success of a pedagogical grammar depends primarily on the linguistic theoretical assumptions incorporated in it. (Author/CB)

A comparative analysis of four studies that emphasized linguistic similarities (rather than differences) between nonstandard speakers and other groups focused on developmental characteristics of the semantic categories encoded by nonstandard speakers compared with other speakers. Implications for language assessment are discussed. (JW)

No language is as varied in history as American English and no language is as rich in word choices. Additions to our language from other cultures are discussed. Four categories of activities involving words are presented. (MT)

Discusses three categories of difficulties unique to the translation of Judaica: (1) such problems as terminology, abbreviations, transliterations, and acronyms; (2) the material requires the translator to know literature, folklore and linguistics as well as Hebrew and the target language; (3) a linguistic-stylistic dimension unique to Hebrew.…

Describes a study that investigated the distribution of the pronouns of address in the German Democratic Republic by looking at the pronouns and terms of address in different newspaper tests. Pronoun use was dependent on the kind of text, on party membership, nationality, social class, and the roles of the addressee and addressed. (SED)

Notes the prevalance of advertising language and personae in student writing. Includes exercises that evoke the advertising voice, suggesting that using these as a stepping stone to teaching advertising is preferable to a separate advertising unit. (HTH)

Begins a discussion of the social mechanisms of linguistic change by describing the distinctions noted by T. Bynon (1977) between two different approaches to the study of linguistic change. Presents a model designed to explain why linguistic change seems commonly to take place in some social conditions but not in others. (SED)

Experimentally tests for direction of causality in negative correlations previously found between a measure of teacher control of conversation and measures of deaf primary school children's initiative and loquacity. Results show that as teachers change style, their students follow them, exhibiting changes in initiative and mean length of turn. (RH)

Study showed that university students respond with greater interest to lecture titles that clearly indicate the nature of the ideas to be communicated rather than to those that contain the specialized expressions indigenous to academia. (RM)

Studies the impact of children's verbal style, age, and sex on social perception and concludes that dialect functions as an important cue in the judgment of others and results in linguistic stereotyping early in children's social development. (MH)

Analyzes the pronunciation of initial word position consonant clusters in modern French according to linguistic context and derivation; and analyzes the pronunciation of the "silent 'e'" according to linguistic and stylistic considerations. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)