Spontaneous speech samples collected from six autistic and Down's Syndrome children were analyzed for language referring to various psychological states. Autistic children were comparable to Down's Syndrome controls in their talk about desire, perception, and emotion. However, they used less language to call for attention and to refer to cognitive…

Describes investigation of effects of counselor's language choice and skill on perceptions of counselor credibility by participants with and without disabilities. Language and participant disability status had no effect on ratings of counselor credibility. Counselor skill had strong effect on all dependent variables. Discusses implications for…

Explores how inferential or evocative language functions to determine meaning and focus in screenplays. Demonstrates that, although "shooting scripts" might be read as instructions, "screenplays" can be understood only as a form of writing that communicates its meaning through the connotative nuances of language. Shows how…

States that derivations of a word are often as intriguing as the explanations psychologists offer for human behavior. Explores the idea that etymology and psychology offer more than just interesting parallels--the meaning and metaphor of each is twisted into and around each other. (PA)

States that the application of cybertextual technologies to experimental poetics is the context for this brief exposition of machine modulated literary work. Raises issues crucial to the work described here--the role of (literary) text in cyberspace; silent reading in new visible language media; and the confusions of computer as medium. (PA)

In this article, the author laments the way students abuse the term "like" in their common language. She feels that the word has become a pervasive parasite in the speech of many unwitting American teenagers, and discusses the many purposes "like" serves in conversation. "Like" can be a verb that stands for "said." It is a shortcut that allows the…

The progressive spread of English as the main language of international scientific communication has been interpreted in many different ways by several scholars. The paper presents a brief review of the scientific debate on such topics, focusing on the main stereotypes which have been created in order to provide explanations for the development of…

In recent years, research within the sociocultural perspective on moral learning has contributed important knowledge about how individuals develop their moral ability by participating in sociocultural activities. To a lesser extent, sociocultural research has focused on the role of individual continuity in these processes. The purpose of this…

English uses the horizontal spatial metaphors to express time (e.g., the good days ahead of us). Chinese also uses the vertical metaphors (e.g., "the month above" to mean last month). Do Chinese speakers, then, think about time in a different way than English speakers? Boroditsky [Boroditsky, L. (2001). "Does language shape thought? Mandarin and…

The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the constituents, affects English-speaking children's compound segmentation. This finding is consistent with a usage-based theory of language acquisition, whereby children learn abstract underlying linguistic structure through their experience with particular…

This article presents the author's reflection on Statement 4 of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) "Statements of Belief". The statements attempt to outline beliefs about what might form the most important work of Australian English teachers. The author explores Statement 4, which heralds: "We are…

For decades there have been linguists who proclaimed the significant role of kinesic expression in carrying the meaning of spoken language (e.g. Efron, 1941; Birdwhistell, 1952; Kendon, 1972). Drawing on such studies, there have also been pioneer studies of gesture in second language learning and use (McNeill, 1992; Gullberg, 1998, 2006), and…

Parent report instruments adapted from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) examined vocabulary development in children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6 for two Chinese languages, Mandarin (n = 1694) and Cantonese (n = 1625). Parental reports suggested higher overall scores for Mandarin- than for Cantonese-speaking children from…

A critical/creative paradigm in contemporary English carries with it an imperative that students should be given opportunities for deep engagement with texts relevant to what matters in their everyday lives. In this paper, I argue that the materiality of everyday life includes the physical and geographic places where we live. When students live in…

The author examines the effectiveness of a curriculum aimed to raise awareness of prospective English teachers and writers while studying the psychological and sociological impact of language use. Action research tested whether students already knew how to argue and think critically when they came to a 200-level undergraduate course. Finding that…