Children encounter new words every day. Although dictionaries designed for young readers can help students explore and experiment with language, it turns out many mainstream children's dictionaries fail to accurately describe the world in which many students live. The challenges to children's dictionary publishers can be steep. First, there is the…

This article concerns the use of independent "jos" "if"-clauses as directives (requests, proposals, and suggestions) in Finnish everyday conversation. It shows that clause types which are traditionally considered subordinate can be used without any main clauses and, thus, do not project further talk to follow in the same turn. Other participants…

Youth development lost a pioneer and a champion, Peter Benson, in October. Benson was a pioneer whose ideas mattered and a champion of approaches to research and its use in the community that has made a difference around the world. Benson's work, life, and spirit have helped transform people's understanding of young people, what it takes to…

Objectives: To better understand the link between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and adult sexual functioning and satisfaction, we examined cognitive differences between women with (N = 128) and without (NSA, N = 99) CSA histories. Methods: We used the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count, a computerized text analysis program, to investigate language…

In this study, everyday conceptions of knowledge, information, and truth were investigated as 161 US undergraduates completed three online tasks that investigated understandings of these foundational constructs. For the first task, respondents graphically represented the interrelations of knowledge, information, and truth; the second task required…

Histories of education in America often discuss how concerns over women's health influenced public opinion on women's participation in higher education in the late nineteenth century. However, these histories almost exclusively focus on literature produced by the medical community--literature claiming that rigorous academic study was detrimental…

This paper draws attention to the ways in which spatial configurations operate as constitutive dimensions of sociolinguistic phenomena and vice versa; that is, the way in which communicative practices frame daily life and the broader urban reality. The paper presents an approach which integrates the study of Linguistic Landscapes, the dynamics of…

In this two-year ethnographic case study, I critically examine educators' relationships with students considered to present challenging behaviours in one classroom located in a predominantly White, middle-class school district. Focusing on the language and practices used by one special education teacher and three teaching assistants, I explore how…

Specificity, as a dimension of cognitive construal, refers to the capacity of a speaker to describe an entity or a situation in different accuracy and details (Langacker, 2008), which is linguistically reflected in lexical and grammatical levels (Wen, 2012). Modifiers can extend a simple sentence into a long and complicated one (Weng, 2007),…

Recent studies have used Coh-Metrix, an automated text analyzer, to assess differences in language characteristics across different genres and academic disciplines (Graesser, McNamara, & Kulikowich, 2011; McNamara, Graesser, McCarthy, & Cai, 2014). Coh-Metrix analyzes text on many constructs at different levels, including Word Concreteness…

It is common knowledge that hedging devices as a rhetorical technique common in all persuasive writing are considerably important in scientific discourse, for they are tools which facilitate presenting claims or arguments in a polite, acceptable and respectful manner. In addition, they are discoursal resources available to a scientific writer's…

Code switching, the use of any two or more languages or dialects interchangeably in a single communication context, is a common linguistic practice owing to the trend of multilingualism in the world today. In many situations of language in contact, constituents of one language can be found within the constituents of another language in a number of…

The views of experienced educational practitioners were examined with respect to the terminology used to describe children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), associated problems and the impact of speech and language difficulties in the classroom. Results showed that education staff continue to experience challenges with the…

This study investigated the mental health problems of 89 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) adolescents in New South Wales, Tasmania, and Western Australia. Participants completed the written (for oral students) or signed version for competent Australian Sign Language (Auslan) users version of the Youth Self Report (YSR). Students were educated in a…

This paper reviews some recent studies problematizing various aspects of identity in relation to mobile students' encounters with the social interactive and pragmatic dimensions of language. The paper will examine several salient demographic categories represented in the literature: nationality, 'foreigner' status, gender, age, and…