Suggests the contribution of analogies to text comprehension. Demonstrates that analogies are not functional in text comprehension, but instead they impair recall and inhibit processing. Considers the possible role of analogies as contributors to the aesthetics of an informative text. (HB)

Examines graffiti created by students in "film school" as an organizational document. Finds themes related to alienation and the discourse that counters the sources of that alienation. Shows how the humorous communicative style of graffiti creates tension among cultural meanings that mediates between alienation and liberation. (SR)

Provides an in-depth examination of the multiple, often conflicting concerns, that arose as an academic group "did" intellectual discussion. Offers a model of how intellectual discussants generally make attributions about each other. Uses results from the case study to critique context-general communicative theories (attribution,…

Considers how students are represented in institutional discourse and how students are viewed by their teachers. Outlines historical and current examples of the way students are represented. Calls for a closer examination of the relationship between rhetorical representations of students and reality. (HB)

Explores Singapore poet Edwin Thumboo's aesthetic use of consistent foregrounding, or use of certain linguistic devices to attract attention, in one poem from three perspectives: propositional; textual; and interpersonal. The approach adopted is functional-semantic in orientation and is designed to gain a better appreciation of the poem's texture…

Examines Judeo-Spanish in the light of language death/shift/revival theories, focusing on the Turkish Jews living in Istanbul who form the largest Jewish community in Turkey. Analysis focuses on dominant Eurocentric discourse each language carried, and their influence on the present linguistic situation in the Turkish Jewish community. (Author/VWL)

Surveys the interrelationship between language and politics. Touches on the context of political discourse, or political culture and ideology in new and old democracies and the reemerging manifestations of totalitarianism, censorship, and linguistic imperialism; then examines selected linguistic features of political discourse and their…

Provides examples illustrating that the study of technologically-mediated communication, if approached from an ethnographic perspective, draws attention to old questions of interactional patterning in what may be radically new contexts of communication. Notes a central issue to be explored, that of the implications of formulating the notion of…

Provides a developmental description of the language used by an academic discourse community. Casual conversations of six post-graduate students--all native speakers of English--were recorded in the Applied Linguistics common room at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Findings may help English-for-academic-purposes students to interact better…

Examines the nature of the relationships tutors create with their clients in a writing center. Finds that asking open-ended questions, echoing each other's speech, and using qualifiers are ways tutors worked toward collaboration; and that, in a number of cases, an undue or misdirected emphasis on the collaborative approach resulted in wasting time…

Analyzes spontaneous written expression (sampled from 11 workshops) according to a structured model of Creative Poetry Therapy. Finds similarity in the poetic indicators and in the expression of psychological needs, despite profound differences in the composition of the groups (children, youth, adults). Argues that the healing process of poetry…

Examines moments in the course of informal medical encounters between English health visitors and mothers in which motherhood and medicine collide. Within the conversations, motherhood, medicine, and morality are yoked to the interaction order that is inflected and influenced by the medical context of the encounters. The paper discusses motherhood…

Presents an exploratory study based on 20 interviews with Swedish conscientious objectors. The interviews represent a special form of institutional discourse, the evaluative interview, designed to help decide whether or not the conscientious objector is to be recommended for alternative civilian service. The practice has recently been abandoned in…

Describes the role of class discussion and a teacher's particular discourse moves in the development of an inclusive learning culture in a high school English literature course with a rigorous academic curriculum. Focuses on how the teacher transformed previously tracked gifted and talented and general students' understandings of what counted as…

Provides an analysis of classroom discourse by identifying the topics in the discourse and following their development. To identify topics, bottom-up approaches based on theme-rheme progression and lexical networks were used together with a top-down schematic approach producing semantic networks of keywords. (Author/VWL)