Using a corpus of 18 child-adult conversations, this study distinguished adult utterances that solicited information from those soliciting acknowledgment (i.e., where the response was predictable, and the utterance served a predominantly social function). Both types of utterance were usually responded to by children, but the form of response…

Uses interviews to examine how the self-help book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" shapes the identity of organization members who read and use the book. Suggests that such people are simultaneously enabled and constrained as they confront tensions between individualism and community, competition and cooperation, and domination and…

Lays out some historical background to the replacement of a system of discourse marking in German dialects spoken in the United States, exploring a number of implications for theories of language contact and codeswithing. Data suggest that discourse markers first entered German speech as emblematic codeswitches and eventually became borrowings,…

Highlights how language of journalists and academics to describe children's experiences reflects and influences the position and rights accorded to children in the English-speaking world. Contends that children's low status is perpetuated through "textual abuse" in academic literature on children's rights. Maintains that children are…

Analyzes the discussion of four "struggling" fifth-grade girls and the researcher as they transacted with Mildred Taylor's "The Friendship." Shows how participants' responses to the text and adult and peer guidance created a response development zone. Notes the girls used reading, writing, and discussion to address comprehension difficulties and…

Presents a study that applied a discourse analysis (DA) to the electronic discussion of a 16-week Internet-based section of a class in statistical methods in psychology. Reveals that several DA categories were related to the final course grade. Discusses the implications of the results. (CMK)

Examines the socio-pragmatic construction and textualization of scholarly Acknowledgements in English and Italian journals from a genre-analytic perspective. Points of difference or similarity between corpora and academic cultures are explored with special attention to such issues as generic complexity and staging, personal involvement, and peer…

Research on two approaches to assessment of second-language performance--second-language acquisition and language testing--is examined and compared with regard to systematic effects on language tests. Findings incidental to a test development project are then presented. It is concluded that a full account of performance testing requires a paradigm…

Through sequential analysis of actual interactions, describes real-world discourse activities performed by competent native and nonnative speakers of English to handle complex academic tasks. Using data from a graduate seminar, details two interactional resources exercised by the seminar participants in the doing of disagreement and critique.…

Reconstructs the discourse of the German youth and life-reform movement with regard to the attraction for the model of the "new" social movements that was developed for pedagogics. Shows that these cultural countermovements produced considerable enthusiasm by adhering to a program called "Social Reform through self-reform."…

Analysis of 12 teacher-fronted language lessons revealed highly repetitive structuring in the flow of discourse, frequent verbatim repetition in the collective reconstruction of texts, and restrictive turn-taking norms. Uses discourse analysis to redefine the relationship between ritual and negotiation in "lock-step" teaching in light of…

Documents three key strategies that the teacher used in her transitional efforts to make discussions possible in her low-achieving high school English classroom: developing an ethos of involvement and respect, using scaffolding and specific ways of phrasing questions to encourage discussion, and acknowledging and making space for the presence of…

Takes a discourse-analytic approach to study the research that two managers carried out in an educational institution to produce and legitimate knowledge used for decision making. Shows that the writing and reading of notes taken during interviews conducted as part of the research was a crucial step in the construction of the knowledge in which…

Reports on a qualitative study of dyadic discourse between university students of Spanish as a foreign language. Explored the social and cognitive behavior of learners as they participated in second language speaking activities. Repair, as it is formulated in the ethnomethodological approach to conversation analysis provided the lens through which…

In this paper the author argues for the use of Deleuzian theories in educational contexts. In particular, she is interested in the use of the concept of rhizomes, and the analysis of texts as rhizomes, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's work in "A Thousand Plateaus" (1987). She discusses the possibilities for using rhizomatics in educational…