Discusses the quality of current political argument, the relation between this and public attention to politics, the competency of the public to evaluate political argument, and whether political argument and public competence can be improved. (SRT)

Argues that higher literacy levels, better instruction in rhetoric, and increased critical thinking abilities would improve both political discourse and public policy. (SRT)

Indicates that the psychotic and normal populations showed definable differences in encoding strategies when presented with an adaption of the Pear Stories study. Supports theories claiming that faulty filtering mechanisms, vulnerability to distraction, and attentional deficits account for psychotic subjects' reactions. (JD)

Considers recent developments in critical-interpretive approaches to organizations by examining the relationship between power, ideology, and organizational narrative. Discusses organizational narrative as one of the principal symbolic forms through which organizational ideology and power structures are both expressed and constituted. (NKA)

Discusses three studies which show that the first two of J. Searle's conditions are extremely important to maintain if a promise is to be made or understood. Supports the idea that promises do not by themselves obligate a speaker but are used to reaffirm previously existing, and often unstated, obligations. (NKA)

Draws on research in discourse analysis in an attempt to determine text authenticity through the authenticity of text types and to provide implications for classroom materials. An authenticity scale is provided for various conversational-text types. (SED)

Proposes a code for a new communication consciousness that would keep language sensitive and accountable to human experience. Focuses on mass political communication and the tendency toward systematic negative communication inherent in news pronouncements. (PD)

Describes how the talk of legislative policy makers in public forums builds a system of justification for their actions. Uses observations from a case study of the Utah State Legislature and develops a sociopragmatic perspective of argument fields. (PD)

Describes a study that developed a valid method of assessing coherence based on current linguistic theory and discourse analysis that was then used to reanalyze the "Describe" essays written by 13- and 17-year-old students for the 1969, 1973-74, and 1978-79 NAEP assessments. (HOD)

Points out that the revolt by Wordsworth and Coleridge against neoclassic literary convention gave context to many of their ideas about discourse. Shows how their shift in attitude toward language may be the source of their greatest contribution to discourse theory. (EL)

Advocates that rhetoricians pay attention to one of the most important factors affecting the overall structure of any composition--the outside limits--and that they practice what they preach. (EL)

Describes three experiments that show that when requesting information, speakers estimate the greatest potential obstacles to compliance and try to overcome them through their choice of indirect, or conditional, requests. In selecting their request, speakers in most situations try to pinpoint the obstacles as specifically as they can. (SED)

Reviews discourse analytic and text comprehension studies for their contributions to a cognitive process view of writing, then reports on a study that combines discourse analysis with online pause data to determine how semantic propositions reflect sentence-level planning patterns. (FL)

Presents the results of a one-year longitudinal analysis of the interlanguage of an adult acquiring English without formal instruction. Observations of the form-function relationships in the early interlanguage are included as well as the ways these relationships change over the 12 months of the study. (SL)

Presents the results of an investigation into how native speakers of English provide corrective feedback to errors in conversation with their nonnative speaker friends. Native speakers responded to errors by using either on-record or off-record corrective feedback and several noncorrective discourse devices to repair conversational difficulties.…