Analyzes second language oral proficiency interviews, including a case study and a contrastive discourse analysis. Findings indicate that the case study interviews are conducted according to a procedural script and that oral proficiency questions formulated for the other interviews are based on the interactional discourse characteristic of…

Analysis of postobservation conferences between 20 pairs of teachers and supervisors revealed four major micropolitical strategies used by participants to influence conference interaction. Two strategies--reflecting personal orientation and conversational congruence--prevailed in conferences rated positively by participants, whereas supervisor use…

This study is part of a larger study of genre conventions of annual reports and environmental reports issued by British companies. The article attempts to apply Swales' move-step approach to a different genre belonging to a different discourse community. (43 references) (Author/CK)

Replies to Billig's (1995) critique of his paper on the relations between language and ideology. The article argues that the paper critiqued is tentative and maintains that social cognition should not be reduced to structures of interaction or rhetoric. The article also emphasizes that ideologies are crucial in the cognitive and social management…

Examines the two rules of intonation most commonly found in English language teaching textbooks: those concerning intonation in lists and intonation in questions. The article suggests that teachers and materials writers must provide learners with descriptions of intonation allowing them to understand the communicative significance of intonation…

Examines the relationship between mathematical knowledge and social practices of the Renaissance. Suggests that all efforts to understand the conceptual reality and the production of knowledge cannot restrict themselves to language and the discursive activity, but that they also need to include the social practices that underlie them. (Author/KHR)

Mother and child dyads were videotaped four times over 16 days as they repeatedly read an initially unfamiliar storybook. Results are discussed in terms of maternal scaffolding approaches, child participation, importance of context and the nature of the task, and implications for intervention. (Author/VWL)

A study of the conversational patterns of two young children with blindness and two children with normal vision and their mothers found that average lengths of speaking turns of sighted children and their mothers were comparable, but blind children's turns were shorter than their mothers' turns. Mothers of blind children asked more knowledge…

Reflects on studies by teacher-researchers that show how attending to children's multiple oral discourses informs teachers' understanding of learning and language development. Discusses the school as a site of discourses in contact, ways of talking, appropriating new discourses, exploring different language genres, explicit practice in discussion,…

Examined how a new topic was introduced, maintained, and changed in the Japanese-English interlanguage data of a 45- minute interview between a native and a non-native speaker of English. Findings revealed that although the topic marking system of the interlanguage shared some features with the first and second languages, it maintained features…

This study presents evidence collected from basilectal texts that the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) mental predicates "think, know, want, feel, say, see, hear" have clear lexical equivalents in Hawaii Creole English (HCE), and that these HCE predicates occur, with minor qualification, in the syntactic configurations predicted by…

Explores how children negotiated social identities through language used in spontaneous, casual conversation. Examines how audio transcripts of the childrens' conversations exhibit different aspects of their social "selves" and suggests that their talk can be analyzed in relation to the individual self, the immediately situated social actor, and…

Assesses the relative roles played by men and women in the development of New Zealand English over the past 50 years, with particular attention paid to vowel shifting. Results indicate that women lead in new and dynamic changes, but lag behind men in the use of variables representing older changes. (71 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the theoretical category in discourse analysis called "inferrable information" and challenges the implicit assumptions that lead Prince (1981) to distinguish between inferrable and invoked information. Four marked syntactic constructions in Farsi and English are examined that have previously been shown to be relevant to…

Presents issues regarding the practical relevance of applied linguistics and the relationship between researchers and the institutions and practitioners with whom they work. Suggests that applied linguistics needs to constitute its intellectual base within practical work outside the academy rather than applying theory to practice. (54 references)…