Contributes to research on speech acts, power, and the negotiation of shared meanings. Argues that a primary off-record purpose of ostensible lies and of ostensible speech acts in general is to assert or affirm a status or power difference between speaker and addressee. Shows how ostensible lies are speech acts that flout the rules governing the…

Analyzes discussions on curriculum integration in terms of rationales for integration and effects of combining curriculums in middle schools. Finds that curriculum integration describes combining ideas and generating knowledge; considers pro and con opinions. Suggests that discussions represent a struggle for control over what is taught in public…

Adult literacy education can contribute to the political change process in Scotland by shifting from a narrow functional approach to a more critical one. The critical approach recognizes vernacular literacies and focuses on developing competence in diverse literacies and on identifying the contexts in which they should be used. (SK)

Examines and describes the pragmatic uses of the "nuclear winter" metaphor in the original "Science" article and its subsequent use in "Foreign Affairs." Analyzes conditions of the metaphor's birth in the former and its development and use as a conventional metaphor in the latter. Shows that the metaphor became a…

Examines six adolescent girls' talk around a young adult novel ("The Beggar's Ride" by T. Nelson). Reveals unexpected reading purposes: adolescent girls' reading for the combined purposes of agency and desire, exploring the fears and potentialities of being female and of the possibilities of autonomy. (SR)

Takes a critical look at some popular ideas about teaching mathematics that are forcefully promoted worldwide by the reform movement. Presents a theoretical analysis illustrated with empirical examples on the nature and limits of mathematical discourse. Focuses on the question of how far to go in renegotiating and relaxing the rule of mathematical…

In the discourse of learner self-management, learners must take responsibility for learning and are offered the possibility of individual autonomy and control. A critical perspective reveals that environmental constraints inhibit the success of technical-rational self-management techniques. An alternative view is the entrepreneurial self, a…

Contributes to communication theory and research by adding to a discussion of a computational model called latent semantic analysis (LSA). Argues that LSA does not handle all aspects of language processing, but offers a biologically and psychologically plausible mechanistic explanation of the acquisition, induction, and representation of verbal…

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication by analyzing Susan Dorothea White's painting, "The First Supper," as a subversive postmodern ironic reading of Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." Suggests that subversive irony assumes distinctive and complex technical and theoretical…

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication by exploring the concept of controversy within a theoretical framework which does not presume the existence of a public sphere. Suggests an alternative perspective based on the intersection of moments of opportunity and specific sites of discourse. Applies this…

Expands the symbolic resources of the African Burial Ground through a dialogical reading of an essay in the same issue of this journal which offers a rhetorical examination of the controversy surrounding the African Burial Ground. Argues that, post-critique, controversies may be recuperated to recover an expanded sense of coalitional engagement,…

Responds to two articles in the same issue of this journal regarding a controversy over the African Burial Ground in New York City. Raises a third set of questions, arguing that investigations of rhetorics of controversy can also include investigations of the rhetorics of incommensurability, investigating the development of logics and…

Contributes to scholarship advancing the understanding of human communication by examining A. Solzhenitsyn's 1978 address "A World Split Apart," and the intense critical reaction that followed. Examines the speech as a Jeremiad. Suggests that even though the speech conforms to the genre's touchstones, it may have been addressed to an…

Examination of interviews and role plays of 81 girls and 64 boys aged 7-11 found that children position genders as oppositional to one another. Choice of traditional gender roles results from gender category maintenance within symbolic gender cultures. (SK)

Transcripts of interviews for places on a diploma course in an educational institution in Singapore are used to illustrate phenomenon of distance and familiarity in unequal dialog. The study discusses how interactional movement along distance-familiarity cline reveals participants' relative power, status, mutual understanding in speech situation…