To determine formal principles of discourse processing and production, a study reviewed theories in various disciplines related to language and/or thought and thereby rationalized an approach of quantitative matrix analysis to the problems caused by discrepant discourse structures encountered in second language learning. Statistical analyses of…

Discourse is basically interactive. This is clear in conversation, but the concept can be extended to written language. Written text can be analyzed as spoken discourse. The methodology of English text studies has adhered too much to a textual approach and even extended it to spoken data. Another approach would be to begin with the spoken form of…

Fifty-five structures of the Chinese language are described and their particular usage patterns are discussed for the use of teachers, linguists, and advanced students of Chinese. Each structure is listed by its major structural element(s), its grammatical element(s), or a combination of the two. The examination of each structure consists of an…

Early speech-act theorists studied isolated speech acts, often in terms of single sentences invented by the investigator, an approach that had obvious limitations. It is now known that speech acts ought to be investigated by looking at utterances in their full interactional context. A hierarchical model of the structure of conversation that is…

A discussion of points raised by Dell Hymes in his article "On Communicative Competence" leads to a proposal for a clearer and more comprehensive theory of communicative competence based on two models, a matrix of discourse analysis and a model of communication interaction. Pedagogical implications of the theory are considered, including the…

This in-depth study explores problem areas of Hong Kong secondary and university students in writing narrative and argumentative compositions on two different themes. Subjects were 40 university English majors, 40 form four and 40 form six secondary students. The research indicates that the students at these grade levels experienced difficulty in…

Preliminary versions of the papers from the 1985 Summer Institute of Linguistics presented at the University of North Dakota session include: "Referential Distance and Discourse Structure in Yagua" (Thomas E. Payne); "A Note on Ergativity, S', and S'' in Karitiana" (Daniel Everett); "Some Aspects of Zapotecan Clausal…

Given the perspective of news as a significant cultural form, a study examined the symbolic world constructed by American newsmagazines, particularly investigating the dominant media frames (defined as consistent patterns of cognition and selection by which symbol handlers routinely organize discourse) employed by these news organizations. The…

To investigate the rhetorical relations between oral and written texts in adolescents' academic discourse, a study examined oral and written language samples of three high school juniors in a San Francisco area middle class suburban community (two males and one female) participating in an English literature class. Discourse analytic techniques…

The United States Supreme Court case, Meese v. Keene, in which the justices narrowly defined the meaning of the term "political propaganda," failed to address adequately the complexities of the issue. In this case it is necessary to bring together divergent views about communications in the analysis of the legal problem, including…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 11 titles deal with the following topics: (1) applying Burke's cluster-agon method to Betty Friedan's rhetoric; (2) the rhetoric of nonviolent action; (3) the president's wife as public communicator; (4) the identification and…

Some recent research on the development of reading materials for bilingual instruction and instruction in English as a second language (ESL) concerning the appropriate language of academic texts and students' self-awareness of the learning process is reviewed, and a plan for the development of an academic reading program is outlined. The plan has…

The project studied a critical aspect of school performance, how children know how to display interactional competence during classroom lessons. Using videotapes of classroom lessons and interviews with participants, the study analyzed the language used by teachers and students as well as their physical behaviors to infer the knowledge needed for…

Designed to present a historical account of instructional approaches to the teaching of comprehension as well as insights into effective approaches for the present and the future, this collection of papers is divided into three parts, concerned respectively with: (1) instructional research in reading comprehension, (2) the reader and the text, and…

Focusing on the point of contrast between the library, whose primary role is the preservation of knowledge, and other dimensions of an information society where knowledge has become increasingly fragmented and exteriorized, this paper begins by defining leadership and reviewing various meanings assigned to the term "discourse." Several…