This paper discusses discourse comprehension with respect to individual differences. First, some general principles of discourse structure and the processing of discourse are presented. These principles emphasize the role of sentence and thematic structure. Second, possible sources of individual differences in discourse processing are discussed.…

This article describes discursive functions in the three major areas of non-literary written communication: (1) official or personal correspondence; (2) technical reading or editing; and (3) the press. Illocutionary acts are examined under their three aspects: graphic, lexical, enunciative. This description is intended to result in training…

The interpretation of the history of rhetoric was the subject of the seminar reported in this document. After a preface and a discussion of the "promise" of rhetoric, abstracts of seminar presentations are grouped under the headings of rhetoric and culture, rhetoric and philosophy, methodological considerations, and discourse analysis.…

Literally defined, topoi are places in the mind where items of information (ideas, arguments, etc.) may be stored. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a critical analysis of a number of studies which have appeared in communication literature on the concept of topoi and to discuss the function of topoi in communication. Utilizing the…

The focus of this experiment was on the effects of associative strength on retention of connected discourse, in terms of both single words and strings of words. Also of interest was the short- and long-term retention of two types of information, verbatim and substance. Verbatim information covered words and word sequences identical to those in the…

This word frequency list was extracted from a corpus of fifty half-hour conversations recorded in Paris during the academic year 1967-68. The speakers, who did not know that they were being recorded, were all well-educated professionals and all speakers of the most standard dialect of French. The list is made up of all phonetically discrete words…

Students who are taught to understand and apply Korzybski's uses of semantics to their writing will learn to write more concretely. As students locate words and descriptions vertically on Korzybski's scale of abstraction levels, they will become able to perceive how meanings change when descriptions become either more general or specific, to…

The contributions of Cicero and Quintilian, the two leading Roman rhetoricians, were based on their acceptance of the prior philosophical theories of Isocrates, which emphasized a cultural approach to rhetoric. Cicero and Quintilian, drawing from Isocrates, sought prospective orators who had a natural talent for eloquence and who could adopt a…

Several methods illustrating how textbooks traditionally teach the use of pronouns in discourse in Thai are examined and criticized in this study. Examples of how "referential identity" and "lexical identity" are interrelated are provided. It is pointed out that (1) the semantic features of age, gender, and relationship are not sufficient to…

Recent research indicates that interaction patterns between parent and child change according to the increasing language skill of the child. These patterns are linguistically summarized here. All are correlated with the child's age, but many relationships are still unexplored. (Author/KM)

The emergence of the "pragmatic" approach, in which the concepts of symmetric communication and discourse competence stand out, is seen as creating a danger that sociological and philosophic interests will overshadow linguistic ones. (IFS/WGA)

Proposes a reexamination of the ellipsis within the framework of discourse grammar, as opposed to a grammar of sentence structure. (AM)

Thirty physical education students and 30 music education students read a passage which could be given two distinct interpretations. Multiple-choice test scores, theme-revealing disambiguations and instrusions in free recall indicate that high-level schemata provide the interpretive framework for comprehending discourse. Schema theory and its…

Suggests using visual cues such as boldface type, indenting, and color coding to help students identify important words in sentences and relationships between sentences. (MKM)

A study based on recordings of oral information given to the public at information desks. On the basis of the study, sociolinguistic rules valid for the manner of initiating conversation in like situations are derived. Suggestions are offered for the use of such data in foreign language classes. (AMH)