Describes a set of metadiscourse functions arising from the use of contrastive and non-contrastive expressions in academic argumentation. Describes interpersonal metadiscourse functions of connectives within argumentative essays. Proposes that interpersonal uses of connectives mitigate counterclaims and emphasize claims based on the assumed roles…

Presents thoughtful writings by underprivileged seven- and eight-year olds, and analyzes how they were produced. Includes an introductory lesson and supporting strategies related to content and method. Provides a view of the placement of such a lesson in the context of cognitive psychology and philosophy of education. (DR)

Reports findings from three experiments designed to show how readers inferred spatial information relevant to a story character's movements through a previously memorized layout of a fictional building. Examines how inference measures are related to spatial imagery. (HB)

Investigates changes in the internal structure of semantic categories as a result of cultural transition. Examines typicality shifts in semantic categories of Jewish Argentine immigrants in Israel. Presents a model mapping typicality shift patterns onto acculturation patterns. (HB)

Cohesion analysis has been used to investigate the language of schizophrenics and that associated with other psychiatric syndromes. Cohesion, one means of creating text, cannot account for all aspects of the pretheoretical notion of coherence. As a research tool, cohesion meets the dual criteria of an analysis of language in context and…

Examines how students in a bilingual third-grade classroom coconstruct knowledge through oral and written discourse. Explains that, by analyzing the various interactional patterns of the class, the multiple opportunities for learning become visible. Demonstrates how a group of students achieved the common task of writing a "planet story." (PA)

Explains how indexers choose keywords and how results can differ between indexers by focusing on certain properties of the terms rather than on the terms themselves. Based on research in semiotics, cognitive science, discourse analysis, and reading theories. Indexing terms from 833 bibliographic records from an environmental database are analyzed.…

Examines Mario Cuomo's 1984 speech at Notre Dame University in which Cuomo explains the contradiction between his abortion policy and the teachings of the Catholic Church through an appeal to the separation between church and state. Evaluates his construction of the role of religious rhetoric in public policy. (SR)

Examines the rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher, indicating how Thatcherism intensified existing ideological tensions within the British context; how Thatcherism constructed the public issue of "terrorism" in Northern Ireland as an "epic tragedy"; and how such a construction materially shifted and ensnared commitments to…

Examines the tensions surrounding the introduction of wirephoto into United States newspapers in the 1930s. Demonstrates that American journalists resisted the new pictorial technology by denouncing, disembodying, and deflating the technology. Suggests that journalism missed the challenge of adapting to photography by not fully considering its…

Presents a business communication scenario for students to role-play and analyze, using a systematic process for identifying communication roadblocks occurring on the job, especially when communicating with people from diverse backgrounds and other countries. Discusses ways to improve the communication process to enable students to develop…

Discusses the language of criminal justice ("rehabilitation" and "incapacitation") and public policy. Uses statistics from the United States Bureau of Justice to show that United States society deals with convicted felons with an approach that does not put much emphasis on either rehabilitation or incapacitation. (SR)

Uses Firbas' theory of communicative dynamism to analyze the ordering of the subject, verb, and object in Mandarin Chinese. The author demonstrates that the word order of Chinese is not so much determined by syntactic considerations as by information structuring constraints. (30 references) (Author/CK)

Examined how persuasion relates to structural characteristics of attitudes, including the number and supportiveness of initial beliefs. Found that the tendency for strong arguments to persuade more than weak arguments was more pronounced for message recipients who retrieved more beliefs as compared to those who retrieved fewer beliefs. (RJM)

Identifies and discusses divergent synecdochal representations of the handgun as vital to both the construction and maintenance of competing social realities (handgun as threatened liberty and handgun as threatened life) in the debate over the Brady Bill. Demonstrates how such representations serve as divergent rhetorical constructs for competing…