Outlines the function of the "signifying monkey" in African American oral traditions. Focuses on vernacular discourse and African American personal narratives to discover linguistic and cultural features of African American students. Argues that these identity features be placed at the center of writing instruction for African Americans.…

Word learning by young children is viewed as a problem deriving from the use of forms of discourse texts. Uses of causal and temporal terms in private speech by a child studied longitudinally from 1;9 to 3;0 are analyzed from this perspective. (Contains 38 references.) (JL)

Finds that differences in the amount that mothers talk to their children are a function of both characteristics of mothers' language use and of their children's conversational participation. Shows that mothers who talked more to their children more frequently produced multiple utterances on a single topic and had children who talked more. (SR)

Describes the essential factors of developmental changes in argumentative writing behavior of children between the ages of 10 and 16, in particular on 4 tasks: an argumentative writing task, a textuality task, an argumentative script inference task, and an argumentativity judgment task. (SR)

Discusses various quantitative and qualitative techniques used to examine nonlinguists' beliefs about language, focusing on content-orientated approaches to conversations with African Americans about African American Vernacular English. Approaches to discoursal meaning based on vantage theory and argument analysis are also considered. (MDM)

Analyzes John Corigliano's "Symphony No. 1" to explicate its communicative value for the AIDS crisis. Contends that music without lyrics can serve as an argument by functioning as a form of enthymeme. Discusses enthymeme's relevance to music, identifies the premises established in Corigliano's work and analyzes how they are developed in…

This paper discusses topic management as a parameter of discourse that is essential for the establishment of coherence. The paper discusses a model for the assessment of discourse topic management, normal developmental patterns and prerequisite skills, and patterns of normal development versus disrupted topic management in specific…

Summarizes the current state of research in conversation analysis, referring primarily to six different perspectives that have developed from the philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics disciplines. These include pragmatics; speech act theory; interactional sociolinguistics; ethnomethodology; ethnography of communication; and…

Reports on a study that investigated metacognitive strategy use by a pair of students working with a computer database. Strategies are inferred from analysis of the discourse, and features of a metacognitive environment are discussed. (13 references) (GLR)

In a study of the textual metafunction of language, marked themes in research articles (RAs) were analyzed. Results indicate that thematic flow can be predicted on the basis of the rhetorical goals inherent in each section of RA discourse. (24 references) (Author/LB)

In a study of knowledge activation and sentence mapping, subjects read stories that described concrete actions, and then the content of the stories was manipulated (i.e. stories were written that implied different emotional states). It is suggested that the more emotionally evoking situations one encounters the more memory traces are stored and…

The relationship between teachers' theories of language and learning and the nature of classroom discourse is explored. Data from two classes on Aborigine lifestyles suggest that there are three components functioning in all lessons: interpersonal, content, and metalanguage. The quality of the metalanguage component influences the overall quality…

Discusses the integration of instructional science and computer science. Topics addressed include motivation for building knowledge-based systems; instructional design issues, including cognitive models, representing student intentions, and student models and error diagnosis; representing tutoring knowledge; building a tutoring system, including…

Studies whether global, causal inferences are made during comprehension. Provides verbal protocol data in the form of talking aloud during reading. Discusses the data with reference to processing claims and working-memory models. Considers what verbal protocols reveal about processing. (HB)

Drummond and Hopper's article in this issue, "Back Channels Revisited," is argued to have decontextualized Jefferson's acknowledgement token phenomenon. The need for careful coding protocols for research on conversational practices is discussed. (eight references) (LB)