Surprisingly little work has been done to develop a valid rhetoric of scientific and technical discourse. What little work has been done has not kept pace with the changing needs of scientific and technical disciplines. Research is needed, specifically, on the rhetoric of technology assessment, on visual communication, and on technical manuals.…

An overconcern with the niceties of usage can undercut English teachers' efforts to eliminate public doublespeak. (JH)

Examines the narrations of several students of one event in order to analyze factors such as suprasegmentals, use of determiners, and verb forms, which contribute to cohesion and coherence in oral narration. (AM)

Suggests that storytelling is the communicational practice used by jurors to organize information, transmit intragroup understanding and guide judgments. Explores the storytelling process for answers to questions about justice. (MH)

The Hixkaryana language is discussed concerning its functions and forms of redundancy, and a transcription of the first part of a folktale narrative is shown. (NCR)

A description of scientific language using three approaches: text, textualization, and discourse. Scientific discourse is analogous to universal deep structure; text, to surface variations in diverse languages; and textualization, to transformational processes. The relationship of the primary and secondary (scientific) cultures and their languages…

Discusses a study designed to identify areas of research which may increase under standing of the relationship between speaker profanity and impression formation. Provides an experimental test of the predicted interrelationships between profanity, sex variables, and impression formation. (MH)

A summary of presentations on the teaching of reading skills in English to speakers of other languages. Topics included the focus on different kinds of skills, use of discourse analysis, and reading as realization of an underlying communicative process. (AMH)

Critically examines papers by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy. (AEW)

Discusses the public rhetoric created during the debate over the Panama Canal treaties. Examines three foreign policy dramas that emerged: Cold War, New World Order, and Power Politics. Argues that these dramas provide insight into how foreign policy rhetoric reflects Americans' conceptions of themselves and their global responsibility. (JD)

Preliminary results from a large research project on the use of Frisian and Dutch in the official domain in Friesland focuses on language use in contacts between civil servants and customers in service encounters. Language patterns observed include convergence, neutrality, switching, and asymmetry. (CB)

A study compared subjective and objective methods of evaluating college students' second-language communicative competence as expressed in their writing. (MSE)

Describes a project that considers: how one's ability to produce non-native linguistic intuitions develops during adult second language acquisition; how non-native intuitions relate to the emerging of one's receptive and productive abilities in a second language; and what may be the appropriate empirical methodologies for collecting and analyzing…

The formation of relative clauses in the work of 48 Italian high school students of English as a foreign language who performed a variety of written and oral tasks is analyzed. Results indicate that markedness can be a valid predictor of interlanguage but that it can also constrain intertask variability. (CB)

Examines the development of cohesive discourse among second language learners in light of native speaker discourse norms. Previous studies of cohesion in second language acquisition have failed to consider restrictions on the distribution of cohesive devices in English. Two of these restrictions are discussed. (Author/DJD)