Examines the problem posed to ethnographic research on speech communication by the traditional distinction between text and context as figure versus ground, or as hierarchical organization of focal events, or as phenomena within which those events are embedded. An ethnographic perspective on discourse within which text and context form an…

Examines the reduction of syntactic options in South Texas Spanish narrative discourse during the nineteenth century. Argues that nineteenth century Texas Spanish made ample use of the absolute construction as an orientation strategy in narrative discourse. (Author/VWL)

Outlines basic functions of passive constructions in language in general, and describes in more detail what form this takes in a proposal of American Sign Language (ASL). Compares discourse examples of active and passive constructions in ASL, addresses the role of topicalization in passive constructions, and discusses passives and reference…

Presents principles of dialog cooperativity derived from a corpus of task-oriented spoken human-machine dialog. Analyzes the "corpus" to produce a set of dialog design principles intended to prevent users from having to initiate clarification and repair metacommunication that the system would not understand. Proposes a "more…

Argues that the torrid conflicts of the 1960s produced a profound change in American politics--nowhere more evident than in the clash between radicals and liberals of the New Left and the emerging "neoconservative" defenders of American culture and politics. Finds that the neoconservative "priestly voice" produced rhetorical…

This article introduces the topic of this special issue of the journal. Explains the separate worlds hypothesis, discusses feminist critiques of separate worlds, and introduces children's gender indexing and considerations of culture, context, and power. (Author/VWL)

Describes linguistic and semantic features of technocratic discourse using a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework. Asserts that the function of technocratic discourse in public policy is to advocate and promulgate a highly contentious political and economic agenda under the guise of scientific objectivity and political impartiality. Provides…

Demonstrates that forms of address clearly distinguished between the ranks of patrons of the Kit Cat Club--founded in 1700 by Jacob Tonson to bring together men of the new professions--and the broker (Tonson), and that certain poets accorded Tonson the same linguistic terms of politeness they used to address their patrons. Pragmatic analysis of…

Highlights an important mediating process in rhetoric: the situational reconstruction of collective self-boundaries of speaker and audience. Using a psychorhetorical analysis of a missionary speech that was given by a Jewish ultra-orthodox preacher to a Jewish Israeli nonorthodox audience, points to rhetorical context markers the orator used to…

Summarizes the main features of discourse representation theory, situation-based approaches, and dynamic semantics, and discusses the role the novelty condition plays in each of them, providing the main theoretical coordinates against which to try an assessment of the role of the Chinese conditional and a proposal put forth by Chang and Huang…

Examined content of explanations from 4 children in everyday conversations recorded from 2.5 to 5 years of age. Found that explanations focused on varied entities and incorporated diverse modes. Pairings of entities with explanatory modes suggested appropriately constrained yet flexible causal reasoning, consistent with hypothesis that young…

Examines how a Japanese biochemist and technician structure a scientific training activity, focusing on interactional structure. Describes how the participants segment the training from previous and subsequent activities and how they segment that same training into smaller units, revealing that structuring actions are complex, negotiated, and…

This paper is a narrative experiment inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) figuration of the rhizome. It is a textual assemblage of popular and academic representations of cyborgs that might question, provoke, and challenge some of the dominant discourses and assumptions of curriculum, teaching, and learning. Emboldened by Deleuze's penchant…

This study examined 3-year-olds' explanations for actions of theirs that were premised on a false belief. In Experiment 1, children stated what they thought was inside a crayon box. After stating "crayons," they went to retrieve some paper to draw on. Children were then shown that the box contained candles and were asked to (a) state their initial…

This article adopts conversation analysis (CA) techniques to examine the way in which participants in service telephone calls to bookshops negotiate their requests. The study, which is based on data from NS and NNS corpora, concentrates particularly on the reason-for-call sequence--the part of the telephone call opening in which the business of…