Many genre analyses have been carried out in English for specific purposes settings, but none has made full use of computer analysis to obtain exact linguistic information on the moves and strategies of a genre. This article reports a genre analysis, complemented by the Wordsmith suite of computer programs for corpus analysis, of the moves and…

Characterizes the perception of stylistic nuances of lexical items in both Swedish and Finnish among members of the Sweden Finnish minority in Sweden, with special emphasis on Swedish. Results are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate on immigrants and integration, and suggest a more similar language use may indicate a higher degree of…

Analysis of the speech habits of Spanish language instructors at the University of Southern California revealed that native Spanish speakers, as well as near-native Spanish speakers, sometimes produce labiodental [v] as an allophonic variant of Spanish /b/. Quantitative analysis by the VARBRUL statistical program indicated that linguistic, social,…

Although often viewed as burdensome, academic writing guidelines are rarely treated as actively problematic. Even progressive scholars are unlikely to challenge the cultural assumptions or political investments of academic style guides. Yet standards regarding clarity, precision, appropriateness, sensitivity, and objectivity are not politically…

This paper investigates English language literacy practices among teenagers, focusing initially on three young Singaporean students who are struggling to do well in English. By employing a conceptual framework that builds on a recent treatment of style as identity construction and drawing on interview data that recount the students' practices of…

Limitations in communication modality and interactivity influence the use of language in an online environment, and conversely, language may be adapted to compensate for the online constraints. This is significant for participants in online learning environments (OLEs) who rely on written verbalization to achieve their educational objectives.…

One fruitful line of research has been to explore the local linguistic as well as global rhetorical patterns of particular genres in order to identify their recognizable structural identity, or what Bhatia (1999: 22) calls "generic integrity". In terms of methodology, to date most genre-based studies have employed one or the other of Swales'…

Language instruction in secondary education is dominated by standard language ideology--a view of language that sanctions one ("standard") variety at the expense of other ("nonstandard") ones. While it is clear that students need access to privileged rhetorical forms, it is similarly clear that most current pedagogies do not facilitate such access…

This article examines ethnographic data that show Belgian adolescents of Moroccan descent stylizing Standard Dutch. Analysis addresses the importance of this variety in Belgian-Flemish society and in the school these boys attended, and shows how in interviews with Moroccan boys the hegemonic status of this variety is generally accepted. In…

Good translation requires writing skills in each of its three stages: decoding the original text; transferring its cultural and linguistic element into the context of the target language; and encoding the information in that context. During decoding, the translator must be conscious of speech level, word usage, cultural references, syntactic…

A study of distinctive characteristics of the style in which people communicate in computer-mediated communication (CMC), focusing on use of politeness conventions, is reported. Aspects of the concept of "face" and politeness in social interaction are first reviewed, and threats to speaker's and hearer's face are outlined. The…

Every language has different systems for expressing third party information. While in some languages grammar rules stipulate how to do this, in both Japanese and English the degree of indirection or direction a speaker should use to express information obtained as hearsay is genuinely a pragmatic language issue. English speakers tend to express…

It is proposed that genre/discourse community interaction is a critical element in the teaching of English for Special Purposes (ESP). All text is intended to promote interaction between writer and audience. Authentic texts generally have a central purpose: to change opinion, introduce a new idea, or encourage a specific action. The principle…

A study re-examined the hypothesis that an identifiable register of child-directed speech (motherese) contributes to child language acquisition. The hypothesis was studied from two perspectives: (1) that it has not been documented adequately at earlier ages; and (2) that individual differences in style of language acquisition interact with…

Krashen's (1981) second language learning monitor model and Labov's (1978) first language acquisition monitor model are compared, and it is concluded that monitoring is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but is variable. It is also suggested that the ability to monitor in formal language styles may improve accuracy in less formal styles, based on…