Two studies exploring the effects of biological and psychological gender, age, and interviewer gender on attitudes toward the use of gender-inclusive ("chairperson,""mail carrier") and gender-exclusive ("chairman,""mailman") language are described. Individuals seeking the widest range of gender role…

A Grahamstown (South Africa) survey determining the number of slang words known by 12- to 17-year-old public and private school students demonstrates that age, not sex, is the more significant variable, although school type is also important. Predicts that slang usage by girls may soon equal that of boys. (DM)

Reviews corpus-based research that draws on theoretical insights from systemics, genre, and discourse analysis for exploration of small-scale specialized corpora of academic writing. (Author/VWL)

Finds that communication modality moderates effects of power of language style on attitudes toward speaker's recommendation but not on evaluations of the speaker. Indicates that systematic information processing is used to form attitudes toward a recommendation when arguments are represented in writing, whereas audio and audio-visual modes…

Attempts to establish a description of mathematical word problems as a linguistic genre, particularly considering its pragmatic structure. Through a description of the pragmatics and discourse features of the genre, and through comparison of the word problems genre to other spoken and literary genres, finds clues to unspoken assumptions underlying…

Offers glimpses into the landscapes of people's lives. Discusses Edith Bruck's "Who Loves You Like This,""Life Stories: Profiles from 'The New Yorker'," and Hugh Sidey's "Portraits of the Presidents: Power and Personality in the Oval Office." (SG)

Considers the socio-stylistic distinction of the French variable morpho-syntactic particle "ne." The interspeaker axes of variation in "ne" are summarized, and intraspeaker data deriving from a corpus of spoken French are considered. Examines intraspeaker variation in "ne" by focusing on the use of the variable by a single speaker in both speech…

The field of rhetoric has generated studies of definitional disputes and of the relationship between definition and power. Informed by the idea of collective definition created over time, these studies raise an important theoretical-practical question about definition and contestation that may be approached through a concept of authority.…

The author examined memory for text in terms of the independent influences of semantic knowledge associations and text organization. Semantic associations were operationalized as the semantic relatedness between individual text concepts and the text as a whole and assessed with latent semantic analysis. The author assessed text organization by…

Application of recently developed rhythmic measures to passages of read speech in colloquial and formal Tamil revealed some significant differences between the two varieties, which are in diglossic distribution. Both were also distinguished from a set of control data from British English speakers reading an equivalent passage. The findings have…

Some researchers have argued that voice is irrelevant to academic writing and that the importance of voice has been overstated in the professional literature [Helms-Park, R., & Stapleton, P. (2003). Questioning the importance of individualized voice in undergraduate L2 argumentative writing: an empirical study with pedagogical implications.…

Various conceptions of metaphor worked out within a generative framework are presented. The term metaphor is used to denote any instance of figurative language use. It is concluded that the restrictions imposed by Chomsky's theory are too idiosyncratic for any adequate study of metaphor to be developed within its framework. (Available from: See FL…

Kellogg Community College revised its catalog to make it more student-oriented by explaining open enrollment, credit hours, contact hours, individualized instruction, modular units, etc., in concise lay terms. 80,000 new catalogs were published as Sunday supplements to 6 area newspapers in June 1974. (DC)

The pragmatic use of nicknames as clarifiers separates the Maltese usage from those so common throughout the world where the nickname is used as a means of hiding identity. The familial character of most nicknames in Malta suggests they are the vestiges of a pre-Christian naming system. The major peculiarity in Malta is in the intermingling of…

Many authors of adolescent novels follow a formula when developing a pattern of action. The formula, however, is not predictable and may be one of action, humor, or ideas. (JH)