Transcript analysis is an important methodology to study asynchronous online educational discourse. The purpose of this study is to revisit reliability and validity issues associated with transcript analysis. The goal is to provide researchers with guidance in coding transcripts. For validity reasons, it is suggested that the first step is to…

The third edition of the "Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination" (Goodglass, Kaplan, and Barresi) introduced standardized procedures for coding discourse samples elicited using the well known Cookie Theft illustration. To evaluate the reliability of this discourse coding procedure, a transcribed sample was coded by 14 novice examiners…

Sfard and Kieran [Kieran, C., Educational Studies in Mathematics 46, 2001, 187-228; Sfard, A., Educational Studies in Mathematics 46, 2001, 13-57; Sfard, A. and Kieran, C., Mind, Culture, and Activity 8, 2001, 42-76] have developed a methodological framework, which aims at characterizing the students' mathematical discourses while they are working…

Among characteristics of children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS) are difficulties in social communication. This study describes the social communicative competence of two middle school children with AS participating in conversations in three different situational contexts. The conversations were transcribed and submitted to three kinds of…

This study considers some problems of reference found in figurative language, particularly in metaphor and metonymy. Analysis is based on the notion that the effects communicated by figurative language depend to a large extent on reference to more than one concept, experience, or entity, and that the presence of multiple potential referents…

It seems that this paper, as if it were some textual Elvis, by the author's own admission has eluded him. With the set of commas included in the title of the paper, it is not clear whether 2 or 3 people are being referred to. The paper's first version took Bakhtin as the reigning monarch of English studies and applied his complicated and…

Drawing on interviews and on the actual language that readers (students, teachers, and adults) use to interpret and respond to literary texts, this book examines the conventions that shape talk about literature in large groups, small groups, and adult book clubs. By looking across contexts, the four separate but related studies in the book raise…

As a preamble to the development of a storytelling aesthetic, a study analyzed written reports of recent storytelling events to investigate the claim that little theoretical and critical language regarding storytelling is currently in use. Ninety-six reviews of storytelling performances by 11 different storytellers were examined. Sixty were…

Noting that discussions about the interaction of science and politics are often heard, this paper addresses how these discursive arenas are defined and distinguished. It argues that political and scientific discourse may be distinguished by the roles they assume on the rhetorical stage, and the relevant roles which emerge are implementers and…

In a study published in 1987, Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson proposed that an abstract sociolinguistic principle guides and constrains a speaker's choice of language, and that this principle explains the politeness phenomenon in conversation. Moreover, central to this principle is the concept of "face," or personal self-image,…

Deng Xiaopeng's rise to leadership in the People's Republic of China has been accompanied by massive economic and structural reforms. Some claim that these reforms led to the rise of the pro-democracy student movements of 1987 and 1989, and there has been a notable amount of scholarly investigation into their political and economic consequences.…

President Bush's declaration of April 5-7, 1991 as National Days of Thanksgiving is a unique example of Presidential civil religious discourse: no other President has ever made such a declaration to thank God for a victory in war. Whether he intended to or not, President Bush engaged in a rhetorical form which allowed him to manipulate a very…

To better facilitate students' learning how to write with authority, instructors need to look more carefully at what it is they do when they teach composition courses. They must look critically at what they accept as "natural" or "true" about good writing practices. A training session for the graders of the Freshmen Placement…

An analysis of the English lexical items "even" and "only" looks at features of their behavior in discourse and brings attention to certain unexamined aspects of their role in text. Their syntactic behavior is reviewed and some problems with previous interpretations are examined. The features of "even" are defined:…

In the last 6 years, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been undergoing fundamental political reinvention. Scholars of language, literacy, and rhetoric can learn much from the study of rhetorical histories. Accordingly, a brief rhetorical history of these upheavals, particularly those in…