Examines recent claims by L. Moskovit about the use of the unattended "this"; argues that, in various cases, they fail to predict the referents that readers actually assign to a "this"; and offers an alternative framework for describing the considerations that go into distinguishing clear from unclear uses of an anaphoric…

Analyzes the interaction strategies employed by a conversational participant who is unsure that he or she understands the content or the context of the interaction well enough to contribute appropriately to it but feels impelled to continue participating anyway. (FL)

Suggests that a factor underlying the complex analysis of prose is amount of elaboration. Reports findings of two experiments supporting this idea. (FL)

Presents a method of discourse analysis applied to the discrimination of genuine from simulated suicide notes used in previous studies. Reported significant differences among language measures as well as the results of a multiple discriminant analysis using the discourse analysis. A language profile of the suicidal individual is given. (JAC)

Examines the role played by relative clauses in American Sign Language. (FL)

An analysis of two opposing talks given in connection with a television program; that of a union member and that of an employer. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Reviews the evolution of the term entropy from the mathematical and mechanical perspective and discusses implications for its use in the communication field. (MH)

Examines the mechanisms involved in changing from direct to indirect discourse, taking as a starting point research findings in linguistic pragmatics, which involve the practical application of speech symbol use between speaker and hearer. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Contends that the structure of composition is based on the principles of discourse and the forms of discourse. (DD)

This study examined how differences in communication style affect how likely particular types of messages (e.g. arguments, evidence, critiques, explanations) were able to elicit critical responses during four online debates. Event sequence analysis was used to compare the response probabilities for each type of message across messages that used…

This study examined discourse markers (DM) in Spanish that distinguished themselves by their frequency of use in dyadic interaction among young bilingual speakers in Sweden. It also established the distribution of DM in conversation. The DM were classified as initial markers (IM), corpus markers (CM), and terminal markers (TM). The study involved…

An ethnographic study examined a distinctive and recurrent form of problem solving interaction that has been previously unreported in the organizational communication and problem solving literatures--Informal Problem Solving Meetings (IPSs). The fact that participants in IPS meetings themselves neither name or ordinarily formulate Informal Problem…

How people define themselves or others as bilingual or not depends on their notions and social representations of bilingualism. Language provides different possibilities in order to make such designations: the use of lexical words (like "bilingual" in English), but also paraphrasing or other discursive strategies. This article examines…

Representations of speakers cannot be reduced to categories pre-established by the researcher, whether these correspond to the norm, theory, or common sense. The representational content is organized and works within the interview. Its analysis can allow one to trace different levels of community integration of the speakers that do not necessarily…

This paper utilizes a sociocultual perspective to argue that content literacy development and subject content learning are inseparable and that it is every classroom teacher's responsibility to support all students' academic language/literacy (LL) development needed for the learning of relevant content. Through an analysis of the New Jersey Core…