Using sociocultural theory as a conceptual framework, this study examined selected features of student discourse of three pairs of third-semester learners of Spanish at the university level. Specifically the study investigated how these selected features, identified in an earlier research project, developed during opportunities to engage in five…

Discussion of the multilingual mind's organization proposes the Least Expansion Hypothesis, that knowledge of any language is organized in the same cognitive manner. A slot is created for knowledge of each level of language, storing knowledge of all languages pertaining to that level. A new knowledge unit is entered only when differing…

A study of interactions among 15 students in a computer-mediated graduate course found no sexist language or overt exclusionary behavior. However, women exercised less procedural leadership and influence on group products and had fewer productive contributions. (Author/SK)

Explores the notion that some social interactions are more conducive to the construction of knowledge than others. Describes the use of argumentation as a learning tool during play by analyzing transcripts of the interactions of four-and-a-half year olds. Derives implications for early childhood education from these examples and from a theoretical…

Looks at interactions between English-as-a-Second-Language students and English-speaking staff at the front desk of a language institute. Analysis focuses on the sequential organization of front desk encounters, revealing ways the participant's shared orientations to the organization and goals of these encounters facilitate native…

Analyzed the discourse of 9- to 12-year-olds on the subject of their development, creating an ethnographic account of the meaning of development in peer culture. The interviewed children distinguished a linear concept of development as both a natural process and a goal. Their discourse continually reconceptualized the relations between the sexes…

Reports on an aspect of a larger project broadly examining the role of language in health care practices. Discusses the effects of dementia on the speech of an aging white Xhosa speaker in the context of a health care institution. Dementia has not been conclusively demonstrated in black Africans. Shows the effects of dementia on the responses…

The marketing discourse pervading the restructured English public higher-education sector has several subdiscourses characterized as neutral (common-sensical), collusive (reinforcing the existing market system), or subversive. The third (postmodernist) discourse envisions marketing as a means of overturning tradition and allowing students to…

Compares a case where a Jewish museum educator engaged Catholic-school students in ordinary conversations about Jewish people and religion with the classroom teacher's traditional pedagogical approach, arguing that culturally specific museums are valid places for authentic learning. Observation and interview data indicated that the experimental…

Argues for a Foucauldean position on the self to extend critical theory. Discusses several philosophical accounts of the self, including the work of such philosophers as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. Concludes that Foucault's philosophy provides a powerful critical conception of the self for critical…

Offers a personal view of some developments in science and technology studies. Argues that the field has emerged from laboratory studies to engagement with broader issues of power and change. Explains that frameworks developed in the sociology of scientific knowledge have been applied to the analysis of things, of social boundaries, and of…

Attempts to use a construct of literary theory to solve a linguistic problem: the notion of narrative perspective to explain tense variation in Bulgarian narrative. The specific phenomenon of variation is between the past indefinite and the indirect tenses in passages where all the verb forms should be indirect. (24 references) (Author/CK)

Presents a study of the spontaneous pre-sentential negations of preschool English-speaking children that supports the hypothesis that child English nonanaphoric pre-sentential negation is a form of metalinguistic exclamatory sentence negation. A detailed discourse analysis reveals these child negations as echoic and expressive of objection and…

Price's comments argue that Peirce advances understanding of the way in which power relations have a direct effect on language use and learning; however, he raises questions concerning Peirce's theorizing of social identity. Peirce responds that Price's reading was structured by an "a priori" assumption that was not consistent with the objectives…

Examines the letter writing of two Romans, Pliny and Trajan, as examples of deliberative discourse. Suggests that their discourse may come closer to the discourse of United States corporations than to that of the United States Congress. Draws on theories of management communication. Looks at specific letters in addition to reviewing historical…