The papers collected in this volume, although taken from two separate seminars, represent for the most part various facets of the same problem area, that of cross-cultural discourse. Papers are: "Symbolic Internationalization: Beyond the Practical Use of Foreign Languages in Intercultural Education"; "How to Avoid Ethnocentricity and Stereotypes…

Research on adult second-language (L2) learner's self-repair is reported. Repairs are defined as "structure shifts," which are types of correction or improvement where the speaker leaves a structure uncompleted, abandoning it or shifting to another structure. Two principal types of repairs are distinguished: code- and discourse-related…

An in-progress interdisciplinary research effort, Conversation Analytic (CA) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) study, is reported. A conversation analytic approach to repair and self-explication is taken that covers both human studies and artificial intelligence. The term "human" is used here in place of "linguistic." Three…

A study determined whether using reader response logs in an introductory college literature class would prove to be an effective method of helping students learn to apply the critical methodology important to increasing understanding of literature. Subjects, 33 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory literature course, wrote response…

This paper addresses an analysis of cross-cultural discourse within the realm of business and economic informational texts. The study is based on the findings of Michael Clyne, who analyzed the organization of linguistic and sociological texts written by English and German speakers, for academic purposes. The paper outlines the premise and the…

An advanced writing course required of English education majors may also be taken by students in the humanities. The course helps students gain experience with longer and more complex essays, develop a more mature writing style, and learn how to make metacognitive evaluations of their own and others' writing. It also extends the contexts and…

A study examined classroom discourse in three literature class discussions among 15 high school juniors and their teacher as they tried to make sense of "Hamlet" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." Participants' moves (what the students and teacher were trying to do with their language during the discussion);…

A project examined the ways in which college freshmen constructed a gendered cultural identity in their narratives of events during their acquisition of literacy, and the ways in which teachers constructed the gendered, literate identity of their student authors. Three female teacher-readers were asked to: (1) evaluate the quality of each of 13…

A discussion of writing looks at research on the factors influencing written discourse and proposes a model of writing for academic purposes. First, studies of both cultural and individual aspects of the writing process are reviewed and the phenomenon of writing is viewed from both social and cognitive perspectives. The social perspective is that…

Reports of recent original research on linguistics by faculty and students of the University of Kansas are presented. Topics include: "Collaboration on Topic Change in Conversation" (Mary Howe); "Stories in Conversation" (Roberta Senner Hofer); "It's Like, 'What's Happening in the Evolution of Like?': A Theory of…

This study examined the effects of maternal directive and nondirective styles of interaction on the emergence of verbal communicative intent in toddlers, and sought to understand the association between maternal interaction styles and young children's pragmatic acquisition. During free play, maternal utterances of 12 mother-child dyads, with…

Although successful reading comprehension is described as the interaction of text-based processes and processes related to the reader's existing background knowledge or schemata, under different conditions readers show different patterns of text-based versus knowledge-based processing. Recent research suggests that students of English as a second…

In this study of ethnic attitudes in the Netherlands, the cognitive nature of prejudice and its manifestation in discourse are examined. In the Netherlands, in formal and public situations, overt discrimination is exceptional or indirect; however, in more informal situations negative ethnic attitudes are evident. Historical and socio-cultural…

Suggests a method of analyzing mass media advertising strategies within an integrated behavioral science research framework. Available from: Communication Research, Sage Publications, 275 South Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90212. Subscription Rates: institutional, $20.00 per year; professionals and teachers, $12.00 per year; full-time…

Introduction: The aim of the study reported is to examine user discourses identified in the Swedish public library field. The following questions are posed: What user discourses can be found and what characterises them? How are users categorised and what does this categorisation imply? The departure point in this paper is that the ways users are…