This article is the second part of a report on research that examined immersion language teachers' strategies to modify their speech in order to maintain use of the target language. As described in the first part in "Babel," Volume 40, Number 2 (Veque, 2005), this classroom-based research, undertaken at Methodist Ladies College (MLC) in…

The developments of new technologies over the last decades provide some answers to the limited exposure imposed on second/foreign language (L2) learners, who study a target language in an academic setting in countries where that language is not actively used. Not only are such learners restricted in their exposure to the L2 in the formal academic…

When analyzing young people's media projects, it is easy to get excited about "youth voice" as a site of free expression and social critique. Tempting as this is, media scholars, as well as young producers and adult mentors, note the varied, often contradictory, voices and interests at play within youth videos, photography exhibitions, and other…

As part of a larger project, we studied how a foreign language test got discursively constructed in the talk of upper-secondary-school leavers. A group of students were asked to keep an oral diary to record their ideas, feelings and experiences of preparing for and taking the test over the last spring term of school, as part of a high-stakes…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2011 proceedings, see ED518589.]

The United States blood plasma industry uses various rhetorics to access donors and markets its products while managing its stigma and potential legal liability. The industry includes both the public "nonprofit" sector and the private, for-profit blood collection and manufacturing businesses owned by pharmaceutical companies that rely on…

This book presents different ways of viewing the teacher supervision process, based on a study of supervisors and teachers in a graduate program for beginning teachers sponsored by a college of education in the northwestern United States. Data were obtained through interviews, observation, and conversation analysis. Chapter 1 examines beliefs…

Just as minority spoken languages borrow from surrounding majority languages, so British Sign Language (BSL) borrows signs from English. BSL may borrow from both spoken and written English, but here we focus on the processes involved in borrowing from the written English word, using the manual alphabet. The end result of borrowing depends on an…

This thesis attempts to explain, in light of contrastive rhetoric, the Chinese preference of set phrases and the American disapproval of cliche. It asserts that because society and culture shape the way individuals use their language, Chinese and Americans hold different rhetorical expectations and observe different conventions in forming their…

It is argued that the negotiation of common ground is an important but neglected area of pragmatics and language learning. Samples of first and second language learners' conversations are analyzed to demonstrate the critical role of common ground in language learning, i.e., that (1) the interactions necessary for language learning are dependent on…

A discussion of interpersonal communication examines how uncertainty is used in interaction, develops the concept of ambivalence, and considers the implications for cross-cultural interaction. Two types of ambivalence are distinguished: strategic and genuine. It is shown that ambivalence may be realized not only at the utterance level but also at…

A study investigated language alternation (LA) between the native language (L1) and second language (L2) in the lessons of four teachers of English as a Second Language in Hong Kong secondary schools. Qualitative analysis of classroom discourse revealed that LA is often used as an effective marker of boundaries in discourse and changes in frame.…

A study of two contemporary American novels, told in first-person narration, explored the distribution and function of relative clauses in literary narrative. For comparative purposes, data from oral conversation, 2 written expository works, 6 other novels, and 20 short oral narratives were also considered. Three types of relative clause are…

A study investigated the role of the interpreter in doctor-patient communication by analyzing four complete medical interviews at a large urban hospital, each involving one of two Russian interpreters on staff. Both interpreters were native Russian speakers recently immigrated to the United States. Patients were middle-aged and elderly immigrants…

A study analyzed the discourse in a variety of Hong Kong newspapers to assess how an individual takes on the role of reader in relation to the rather complex public discourse of a daily newspaper, particularly in a multicultural, politically charged context. Four categories of newspaper (Hong Kong English, Hong Kong Chinese, non-Hong Kong Chinese,…