Focuses on the acquisition of linguistic devices used for discourse cohesion in Chinese and French. Particular attention is paid to how two types of learners acquire the linguistic means for marking topics, in particular French "dislocation," and its discourse-pragmatic functions. Data consist of narratives based on picture sequences, produced in…

Uses conversation analysis to examine talk of two British children at ages ranging between 2 and 10 years as they interact with other children, their parents, and their grandparents. Considers representations or discourses of childhood evident in these everyday conversations and ways in which children position themselves with regard to such…

Analysis of methods used by the right-wing environmental social movement to alter gains made by environmentalists finds that conservatives have both grassroots and elite sponsorship and the movement is an effective site of adult learning, resistance, and meaning making. (Contains 89 references.) (SK)

Suggests that while postmodern criticism has enjoyed a certain amount of currency, the cost of this success has come in the form of detachment. Argues that a reconfiguration of the relations between nature and culture suggests that the posthuman provides us with a fresh perspective from which to examine rhetoric. Identifies some of the problems…

Argues that the story's two themes--a celebration of artistic creativity and a ringing denunciation of prejudice--are closely related through their reliance on the importance of imagination, both artistic and moral. Employs recent work in moral theory to analyze the way in which the resolution of Estes's story turns on the characters' growth in…

Suggests that "The Shoe Bird" uses animal characters to explore women's authorship. Locates in Gloria, one of the main characters, evidence of the creativity and fortitude required to write as a woman in cultures where written language has conventionally been seen as the domain of men. (SG)

Reports on research conducted by the Queensland Centre of the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Australian Research Consortium within the civil construction industry. Argues that the dominant discourse of new capitalism adopt the rhetoric of worker empowerment while actually implementing technologies of top-down control. (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for…

Argues that R. A. Harris, in applying linguistic theory to technical writing, undermines his purpose by introducing irrelevant distinctions between competing syntactic theories and by failing to exploit the full potential of applications he mentions. Uses the passive construction to illustrate how linguistics can be used to advantage by technical…

Examines how the repressed feminine principle affects the four major discourses in Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose." Discusses the historical relationship between the masculine and the feminine in language and religion. Uses that historical frame to guide a close textual analysis of dialectical interplay between the masculine and the…

Provides a definition of comparison questions and shows how they relate to the semantic categories of two taxonomies for classifying questions, both of which omit comparison questions. Examines the comparison questions that auditors generate when they diagnose problems in a company. (SR)

Examines the use of ironic quotation in academic writing. Considers differences in irony within published exchanges, conference discussions, and unpublished papers. Argues that irony begins with rhetorical relations (between quoting writer, quoted writer, and reader) which leads to discipline-specific assumptions and interpretations. (KEH)

Discusses rhetoric as mirroring psychology. Examines Aristotle's three "pisteis"--the pathetic, logical, and ethical proofs, paralleling them to Freud's id, ego, and super-ego. Explores an adequate feminine psychology and a corresponding rhetoric. Outlines two models of persuasive discourse, the rational world paradigm and the narrative…

Investigates recursion in the paragraph, discussing it in the context of grammatical hierarchy and illustrating it by use of natural texts. Analyzes two short narrative texts at the paragraph and discourse levels, and presents both in tree diagram and function-set representations. (KEH)

Identifies and describes the features of spoken discourse that native speakers of English consider to be indicative of level of intellectual functioning. Discourse criteria include detail, coherence, story construction, storytelling performance, and metacomments. (SR)

Presents a description of textual cohesion in Modern standard Chinese (MSC), and describes three types of relations as discourse and text features that contribute to the overall unity or coherence of a text. (24 references) (Author/VWL)