Recommends the use of expressions of encouragement and confirmation (teacher to student), and shows in detail how these may be formulated without giving the impression of merely routine confirmation. (IFS/WGA)

Five experiments were conducted that illustrate microprocesses of discourse comprehension related to foregrounding. An intermediate case in which prior memories exist but must be reinstated to active memory was studied in detail. (SW)

The speech of two mothers to their infants between three and eighteen months was analyzed. Simplicity of speech was about the same at all ages, not showing abrupt change as children began to talk. It is suggested that mothers used a conversational model and changes reflect children's growing conversational ability. (CHK)

Analyzes a case where a group of local steelworkers in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, in conjunction with a small group of Protestant ministers, sought to gain public support for the redress of grievances, and how their subordination by the United Steel Workers' union and the Lutheran Church influenced their rhetorical activities. (SR)

Examines how, in the 1920s and 1930s, birth control advertisements (prolific and illegal) conflicted with the arguments for birth-control legalization. Applies M. Bakhtin's grotesque and classical categories and M. Douglas's pollution metaphors to analyze the language birth-control advocates used to distinguish between medical and nonmedical…

Describes three class activities devised to teach Thoreau's "Walden" at the college level, focusing on the dialogic quality of all language. The approach is based on the idea that every utterance functions in some way as a response to others, and that readers supply meaning in discourse. (MSE)

Used case study of an urban elementary school to examine connections between educational research and practice at the school level. Compared the school's new "protocol" process for group discourse to the research orientations within discipline-based, institutional, and teacher research. Uncovered the key role of discourse conventions in…

By employing an analytic device known as the "dominant interpretive framework," the interactional styles and strategies of two speech-language pathologists in 10 language intervention sessions with children were investigated. Results indicated several systematic patterns of interaction that constrained the ranges of interaction between the…

Argues that scientific knowledge in school is a social construct in which curriculum proposals are simply points of departure that are transformed by the social interaction that takes place within the classroom. Considers discourse as playing an important role in knowledge construction. Contains 31 references. (DDR)

This study used dependency analysis to document and describe the narrative discourse impairments of 10 children (mean age 12) and 10 adults (mean age 35) with traumatic brain injury (TBI), and matched controls. Individuals with TBI were significantly more disfluent than controls and their narrative performance required a significant listener…

Emphasizes that traditional textbook explanations of the preterite and imperfect tend to focus on their aspectual differences. The article argues that a comprehensive analysis of the interaction of these two tenses in narration must go beyond aspect to include their respective temporal and discourse properties. (30 references) (Author/CK)

Endorses the position that fabricated discourse presented as nonfictional in nature is a model of ordinary talk, which is relied upon to convince an audience of its verisimilitude. The purpose of the article is to document the strategies used in a puppet show, "The Sooty Show," and to demonstrate their effectiveness in generating a sense…

Reviews Deborah Tannen's collection of essays, "Gender and Discourse." The review maintains that this collection is padded with anecdotes but provides little evidence of the research supposedly underlying this work. It is concluded that what is needed in a discussion of gender and discourse is a methodology in which linguistic features…

Analyzed toddlers' verbal speech concurrent with nonverbal behavior. Fourteen dyads of unfamiliar peers were observed at 16, 20, 24, and 32 months of age. Found that six types of speech increased in frequency only after the peer partners had shown a marked increase in their readiness to imitate each others' nonverbal actions. (MOK)

Investigates the 10% to 20% null subject stage in 3-year-olds in Germany and shows that this stage, though long, is not final. Findings indicate that children in this phase use structures found neither in the state of early null subjects nor in adult German, namely, postverbal referential null subjects. Further study is proposed. (94 references)…