Offers theoretical distinctions among the terms sacred, myth, ideology, and political myth. Analyzes representative speeches and debates on imperialism in the United States and Great Britain and contends that the distinction between the two rhetorical typologies concurrently existing in each nation account for the dominance of imperialist rhetoric…

Argues that movements are a kind of ritual conflict whose most distinguishing form is confrontation. (MH)

Examines the compositional attributes which characterize Christian sermons as generically distinctive. (MH)

This monograph presents a descriptive analysis of the syntactic patterns in 16 corpora of word combinations from 11 infants learning either English (six children), Samoan, Finnish, Hebrew, or Swedish. The mean utterance lengths range up to about 1.7 morpehmes. There are both reanalyses of corpora in the literature and new corpora. The data…

Syntactic analysis identifies the "conductor wires" permitting the listener to conceptualize the speaker's image of reality from information furnished by the linguistic message. Syntactic study is thus situated in the economy of the communication process. Mood, aspect and tense are studied in this framework. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A study of the syntactic organization of discourse and an attempt to show that in all languages organization is necessary for meaningful utterances. Topics covered are: the necessity of regular predication in French; a definition of the subject-verb unity; and the non-verbal predicate. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

This study was undertaken to ascertain which types of listener feedback lead to effective communication by observing how 4-year-olds adapt their speech to a peer listener during free play. (JMB)

Assesses three papers in this volume, those by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy, for their treatment of the following: (1) definition of semantic space, (2) defining children's processes of understanding that space, and (3) describing the contexts in which cognitive language is used. (AEW)

Suggests activities for teaching proverbs, an important part of the cultural education of second language learners. Activities include identifying proverbs in common discourse, creating skits and cartoons or pictures based on them, creating puzzles, inventing original proverbs, and analyzing their practical value. (MSE)

Describes a study that examines the effect of an adult-child discourse structure on the word combination produced by 17 children at the single-word utterance level. There was a significant difference between pretest and posttest multiword production for the experimental group of six children, but no difference for the control group. (SED)

Abstracts the International Reading Association's outstanding dissertation, a study examining narrative accounts in the day-to-day conversations of five- to seven-year olds with their friends, the range of narrative forms they produce, and the social and interactional functions served by such narratives. (SR)

Discusses the occurrence or nonoccurrence of the contraction of prepositions and determiners in German to emphasize that the communicative function of certain syntactic forms can only be understood, and should therefore only be taught, within the framework of contextual analysis. (CB)

Discusses the theoretical foundations of discourse analysis and intonation and emphasizes that intonation has received little attention in the communicative competence or proficiency movements, despite the fact that intonation is a powerful tool for negotiating meaning, managing interaction, and achieving discourse coherence. (CB)

Examines two passages from Thucydides'"History of the Peloponnesian War" to illustrate the origins of scientific writing and to explore the relationship between scientific writing and epideictic rhetoric. Concludes that Thucydides' work merits an important position in the history of scientific and technical writing. (JAD)

The dialectical approach to teaching literary analysis, using William Perry's model of cognitive development, engages students intellectually and actively in literary issues, takes a holistic approach to education, and confronts students with an alternative to their well-entrenched philosophy that an education is to be gotten and stored away. (MSE)