Classical African rhetoric contains five elements: a caller and a chorus validating the word; spiritual entities; the word drawn from and relevant to experience; responders; and the spiritual harmony achieved when the other elements are working together. Suggests that Black English contains structural remnants of African discourse. (CJS)

A study analyzed and compared the discourse of electronic mail messages from commercial and academic environments. Key text features were examined for style and convention patterns. Results suggest commercial messages follow normal conventions for standard written business English, and academic users may view the medium as a pseudo-conversational…

A study examined frequency of active, passive verb forms in two astrophysics journal articles, finding "we" plus an active voice occurs at least as frequently as the passive. This pattern typifies a previously unidentified type of research article, the logical argument scientific paper, whose characteristics are detailed. Similar pattern…

Examines the potential of small-group interaction to provide significant linguistic opportunities that whole-class teaching is less well placed to deliver. Compares data from two groups of children from the same classroom engaged in the same group activity. Draws on the work of Bakhtin to identify monologic and dialogic features in the children's…

Outlines major research findings in cognitive-discourse-processing research on learning from text. Describes general characteristics of classrooms based on constructivist principles of learning and that support critical thinking, problem solving, and collaborative learning. Argues that such classrooms raise a number of new issues for…

Discussion of the linguistic character of electronic mail (e-mail) looks at technology's role in shaping spoken and written usage, the growth of e-mail as a new communication genre, and formal linguistic properties of e-mail. Proposes a model of e-mail as a creolizing linguistic modality, analogous to pidginization and creolization processes well…

Summarizes a descriptive naturalistic study of the literary competence of a class of first and second graders as suggested by their responses during read-alouds of picture books. Finds that the children were sophisticated literary critics, and the storybook read-aloud situation was an important site for the development of their literary…

Examines how classroom cultures in the United States and Asia are discursively constructed by researchers in applied linguistics and education. Suggests that the literature of applied linguistics and some in education compares idealized perspectives of U.S. classrooms with more typical images of classrooms in Asia. (Author/VWL)

Argues that it is misleading to represent pragmatism in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) as a unified discourse offering ideological support to an unexamined educational, academic, and sociopolitical status quo. The article appeals for reflectively pragmatic approaches towards formulating and investigating issues in EAP and all language…

Analyzes video recordings of postgraduate seminars in the Arts Faculty at a South African university in order to define the nature of this practice in South African tertiary institutions. This article exposes these seminars as sites of competition for the floor with significant imbalances in participation by different groups, reflecting different…

Over 2 semesters, 15 first-year German students used a real-time networking program on the Macintosh in computer-assisted class discussion. Students interact directly with each other rather than interacting mainly with the teacher. Data (number of turns/entries, sentence types) are appended. (Contains 25 references.) (JP)

Reports on an INSET course for the staff of an international school in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The article argues that all teachers involved in the support of English-as-a-Second-Language learners can best communicate with each other and facilitate their students' learning through the medium of "common codes," which are defined and…

Using Swindler's settled discourse theory, examined 12 women superintendents' discourse to determine whether patterns in their talk about work experiences contain events or episodes of inequality. Five topics emerged: power, silence, style, responsibility, and people. Each was analyzed to discover how women treated such experiences in their…

Examines the role self- and other-initiations play in providing opportunities for modified output (MO), considered important for successful second language acquisition. Native- and nonnative-speakers of English performed three tasks: picture description, opinion exchange, and decision making. Results showed both self- and other-initiations…

We examined third graders' understandings of condensation using an expanded notion of the Emergent Perspective, a reflexive consideration of individual and group meaning-making situated in the culture of the classroom. Data were collected from two small groups of students in an inquiry-based, urban classroom during a unit on the water cycle.…