Juxtaposes postmodernist discourses on language, identity, and cultural power with historical forms of language inequalities grounded in the nation-state. Focuses on mixed legacies of language-state relations within the pluralist nation state, colonial and post-colonial language policies. Examines the concept of linguistic minority rights beyond…

Provides reflections on articles contained in this special issue of the journal. Substantial comments are included for each of the four articles contained in the issue. (Author/VWL)

Describes procedures for constructing story-based causal diagrams. Discusses the cognitive and pragmatic constraints that govern the tendency to attribute events to incomplete causes. Uses causal diagrams to analyze major disagreements about the 1987 stock market crash. Explores how causal diagrams may mitigate the constraints on causal…

Discusses research on how race of actors in a text, race of participant, and race of experimenter relate to discourse processing. Uses the O. J. Simpson murder case to demonstrate the fruitful use of extended discourse and how belief-based disposition contributes to a rich mental representation of and inferential use of discourse. (PA)

School systems offer unlimited choice, controlled choice, or no choice. Concerns about school choice include what happens to those left behind, whether teacher autonomy is limited by emphasis on the most popular methods, focus on advertising/competition rather than educational substance, and further balkanization of the nation. (SK)

Explores a theory of 'politeness' which claims to describe and explain some universal features of dialogue, and considers what new insights it might give into teacher-pupil dialogue. Uses it to analyze two interviews between a teacher and pupil in order to assess the implications of any new interpretations. (Contains 20 references.) (ASK)

Analysis of current discourse about lifelong learning as the key to economic and social development suggests that its ability to enhance democracy is being compromised. Communities should reclaim lifelong learning for the purpose of the greater public good rather than private profit. (Contains 31 references.) (SK)

Bilinguals in the Southwestern United States use Spanish as an ethnic marker to accept other speakers as members of the in-group, or English to exclude them, in situations in which they have a choice of code. Shows that the choice of code used in El Paso, Texas is based on the perceived ethnicity of the other bilingual speaker. (Author/VWL)

Explores the discourse on working knowledge that subject matter experts use with technical communicators to represent work in organizations. Focuses on the narrative authority of speakers in the discourse process because participants constructing task representations bring distinct viewpoints to the documentation process. Studies imperative…

Examines "expert" discourse--complexes of signs and practices that organize and legitimize social existence and social reproduction--to demonstrate the ideological process involved in the manufacture of Standard English ideology and its continual duplication as necessitated by the three axiomatic conceptions of the English-sacred imagined…

Describes a 2-year series of critical discussions around literature with African American adolescents in an inner-city community. Explains the use of a Critical Discourse Analysis as a pedagogical and analytic tool. Presents an analysis that provides one way of conceptualizing the teaching and learning of critical literacy through a Critical…

Examines the nature and effects of predominant understandings or formulations of the relationship between literacy and work. Evaluates what workplace literacy programs have typically been designed to do. Discusses possible ways for future programs to create real opportunities for all participants to be truly involved in the process of workplace…

Subjects Sack's (1992) conjecture about there being "omni-relevant devices" in specific kinds of conversation to empirical analysis. Examines a data fragment taken from a corpus of materials in which "resettled" mental patients are undergoing "quality of life assessments." (Author/VWL)

Examines an argument about density among a middle school class of 10 students focussing on the argument as an example of a chaotic and complex system, the emerging development of understandings, and the underlying cognitive structures affecting students' understandings. (MM)

A workshop examined facilitated case history discussions as a means whereby teams could share their learning around a common focus. Facilitation enabled interactive, interprofessional education through an informal form of discourse analysis of the transcripts of the case discussions. (Contains 20 references.) (Author/JOW)