A study investigated the use of qualifiers, words and phrases used to indicate the level of approximation of propositional content or of speaker commitment to the proposition, in an atypical form of medical interview: conversations between physicians and patients on a radio talk show. Qualifiers used were classified as hedges (suggesting…

Each discourse community teaches and uses a particular version of reality. In the field of accounting, the interpretation of reality is an objective one. Such an interpretation is a constraint on writing, as are accounting's reliance on exclusionary language, its need to meet legal and professional requirements, its adherence to stylistic and…

The effects of various discourse variables on the psycholinguistic processing of sentences within paragraphs by 36 competent adult readers were investigated. Eye movement measures were used as the dependent variables reflecting psycholinguistic processing. When all of the constraints within which the study had to be performed were examined, it…

Transcripts of 24 spontaneous speech samples from 2 year old children are analyzed for use of nouns and pronouns in sentences. (Author/DEP)

Three types of jokes are distinguishable according to the style of speech used: 1) the merely prosaic joke, 2) the joke with a fictitious dialogue, and 3) the dialogue joke. These are analyzed in terms of communication, discourse analysis, and semantics. (Text is in German.) (DS)

A content analysis system was developed to examine the frequency of themes for 359 secrets obtained through an encounter group exercise. Sex-related secrets occurred most often, followed by failure-related secrets. Secrets relating to sex, mental health, and violence or destruction were perceived as the most risky statements. (Author)

The original text, literal, and free translations of a story are examined for dramatic, phonological, and grammatical style. Terseness is compensated for by variation of utterance; literary characteristics are repetition, ellipses, flashbacks, and dependent sentences. (MSE)

Still no decisive result has been achieved in the automatic machine recognition of sentences of a natural language. Current research concentrates on developing algorithms for syntactic and semantic analysis. It is obvious that clues from all levels of perception have to be taken into account if a long term solution is ever to be found. (Author/MSE)

In the "Gorgias," Plato focuses attention upon the value of dialectic as opposed to rhetoric, as well as the status of orators as opposed to philosophers. Through his agent, Socrates, Plato confirms dialectic as a legitimate endeavor while calling into question the place of rhetoric. Socrates is portrayed as a director who enacts a…

A study examined cohesive reference in a newspaper report of a law case, with the intention of helping students read such texts. Occurrences of two classes of items signaling referential cohesion were analyzed: personals (personal pronouns and possessive adjectives) and demonstratives (including the definite article). Factors that might lead a…

A study examined three eulogies offered by Adlai Stevenson upon the deaths of important public figures (Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Sir Winston Churchill), in order to determine how each address fulfilled the purposes of this unique rhetorical genre. Each eulogy was examined with the purposes of eulogistic speaking in mind: (1) to…

This study examined the authorship and discourse types of Canadian basal anthologies to determine whether the lingering centrality of the basal anthology in Canadian programs controls students and teachers by controlling language and reading. Each selection within five Canadian basal series (Gage Expressways II, Ginn Journeys, Holt Impressions,…

A corporate employee newsletter offers an ideal opportunity to discover how literacy functions as a means of assimilating individuals into a social structure. Underlying the corporate newsletter's assimilative function are the assumptions: (1) that in reading, employees rely on attitudes toward types of texts evolved within society as a whole; and…

An analysis of the role of the word "hence" and its near-synonyms examines the relationship between logic as a science, as a natural language, and as argumentation. The analysis is done in the context of elementary propositional logic. The first section is a limited discussion of the standard logician's treatment relegating "hence" to the realm of…

In decoding a text, one chooses the interpretation involving maximal redundancy, selecting meanings that are most likely and least surprising in the relevant context. Clues for this selection of meanings are gathered from phonetic, phonemic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, and stylistic levels. In disambiguating third-person-pronoun references…