Folk etymology is defined as a change in word or phrase form resulting from an incorrect popular idea of its origin or meaning. Irregular phonetic-semantic shifts are produced by inter-language borrowing or by intra-language passage from one period to another. These shifts are more common in periods when there are no, or few, normative factors…

Automatic processing of word meaning by bilingual children was studied in a picture/word interference task. Thirty elementary and junior high students, fluent in French and English, named pictures as rapidly as possible while attempting to ignore distractor words printed inside the pictures' borders. The printed distractors interfered with naming…

A Chinese student of English is often faced with culturally based differences in denotation and connotation, idioms and proverbs, habits, and formulaic use of language. Since the native speaker of any language has built into his language repertoire his unique cultural assumptions and values, a culture-oriented curriculum in language teaching is…

Designed to analyze systematically the relative effects of different types of oral reading errors on comprehension, this instrument consists of a basic set (each with an easy and a hard version) of six stories. Every story is transformed so that it contains simulated errors of a particular type: (1) correct, (2) semantically related visually…

The author argues that unless Kohlberg's theory of moral development can be demonstrated empirically, based on scientific evidence, his ensuing plan for a program of moral education amounts to no more than a systematic program of indoctrination. Kohlberg identifies the moral stage of a person by eliciting from a subject the reasons referred to in…

This paper extended the investigation of the concept of negation into actual classroom environments by ascertaining the frequency with which pupils at three different elementary school academic levels are expected to process teacher-initiated oral statements (the pupils' aural school environment) which contain selected negation elements.…

The problems of eliminating the archaic sexual assumptions in our language are examined.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the Semantic Differential Technique is an efficient and reliable instrument for measuring attitudes in drug education. Its sensitivity to gradations in attitudes is demonstrated in an actual research study and suggestions for its potential uses in drug education programs are discussed. (Author)

Thirteen Semantic Differential bipolar variables representing various socio-cultural correlates and personality factors of psychoactive drug users as well as non-users were measured from a group of 80 college students and 20 adults. Drug users (n=44) within the last six months differed significantly from non-users in their intention of taking…

A method of training pupils to read for total comprehension by an analytical approach is proposed. Specific techniques are suggested. (RM)

The beginnings of a pragmatic rhetorical theory can help relate rhetoric to human meaning systems. A pragmatic rhetorical theory is not concerned with whether or not an intentional experience is true to an objective reality beyond human experience, but rather deals with how rhetoric interacts with experiences in the construction of human meaning…

Language policy and planning has become a major concern of applied linguistics. Most language planning is institutional and not systemic, planning not the forms of the language but the relationship between the language and the individuals who use it. Institutional language planning, policy formation, provides the context for systemic language…

A course in general semantics has as its primary aim to help students become aware of the interactions between words, perceptions, and behavior, and particularly how language both affects and effects belief and even action. Students are encouraged not only to be more responsive to language, but also to become more skillful users of language…

The theory of conventional metaphor, as developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is briefly recapitulated. The implications of this theory for teaching English for Specific Purposes are outlined. Chief among these cannot be accurately understood if the metaphorical chaining is not retracted; and (2) the ability of metaphor to add lexis that is not…

Level of state test anxiety and depression were related to encoding strategy (imagery versus sematic instructions) in a study of sentence memory. Subjects were 80 female undergraduate students. Negative effects for test anxiety were found in both strategy conditions. Negative effects were found for depression when the semantic encoding strategy…