A study examined the role that children, mothers, and fathers played in the construction of explanations in a corpus of mealtime conversations. Data for the study were drawn from conversations collected as part of the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development. Subjects, 32 preschool children eligible for the Head Start program and…

This paper is presented as one stage of a dissertation project titled "Educational Reform as a Social Field: Structuration of Discourse in Teacher Education in Finland." It examines educational transformations and continuities through a discourse analysis of governmental committee reports on teacher education, focusing primarily on the…

A model of mono- or multimedia document structure is proposed consistent with the notion that there should be few changes in subject between one document passage and adjacent passages, where a passage may be a phrase, sentence, or paragraph. An algorithm for ordering passages in a composition is provided which is optimal given only a concern for…

In the context of an ethnographic study of nonverbal communication within the Japanese home environment, issues in the use of videotape recordings for data gathering are discussed. The study investigated language use and behavior of Japanese host families in homestay settings, focusing on the use of nonverbal behavior to facilitate communication.…

This study examined the availability and utility of negative feedback provided in the context of task-based adult conversations between native speakers and non-native speakers. Subjects were 10 dyads each consisting of a native English speaker and a college-level student of English as a Second Language. Analysis of conversational interactions…

A study demonstrates the existence of a wartime register in Japanese newspaper journalism and characterizes its major linguistic and stylistic features. Special emphasis is placed on the aspect of modality as related to point of view. Modality expresses the mode within which the propositional content of a sentence is presented as certain,…

It is argued that there is a great need to integrate critical thinking instruction in courses in English for academic purposes (EAP) and English as a Second Language (ESL). Three primary components of critical thinking are identified: understanding the author's intended meaning; synthesizing all available information, which also includes…

Research on spoken discourse that was conducted for three master's theses at the University of Oulu is summarized. The studies were as follows: (1) an examination of linguistic strategies realized in business negotiations, based on an analysis of six recordings of simulated negotiations between eight Finnish engineers and a native speaker of…

A working definition is proposed for "scientific text" in terms of text function, based on pragmatic criteria derived from various approaches to the sociology of science. The term "Language for Academic-Scientific Purposes" (LASP) is preferred because it allows for the inclusion of texts in the human sciences, at the same time implicitly excluding…

This study examined how modes of organizing conversation determine the type of knowledge conveyed to preschool and kindergarten children. Approximately 150 audiotaped conversations from 23 classes of students of different age levels from 2 to 6 years were analyzed. Children's spontaneous speaking turns or answers to teachers' questions were…

In Judith Richards' ethnically diverse third and fourth grade classroom, the morning meeting is a time for discussion. The functions these discussions serve range from sharing personal news to talking about problem-solving strategies. During these meetings, the teacher has a polyphonic role. She participates, moderates, and sometimes writes…

A study described the characteristics of sociocognitive conflicts and the discourse associated with such conflicts, and determined how the cognitive processes exercised during discussion were internalized. Participants were 97 fourth-grade students and 6 elementary classroom teachers. Peer-led and teacher-led discussions of texts were examined to…

The place of women in the existing and emergent discourses of the visual and spatial is explored. When gender and the visual-spatial emerge together, the visual and spatial are almost always associated with the masculine perspective. The social construction of women is tied to visual-spatial representations in diverse domains. Within the…

Using a textualist approach (looking at meaning above and beyond overt message elements), a study examined televised public service announcements (PSAs) about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) produced by the Ad Council and the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Both ads identify young people who should be concerned…

The eight papers in this volume, prepared by staff and students of the Institute for Applied Language Studies of Edinburgh University, address a variety of issues in applied linguistics. The papers include: (1) "A Coding System for Analyzing a Spoken Database" (Joan Cutting); (2) "L2 Perceptual Acquisition: The Effect of…