The ten papers in this volume are largely revisions of papers presented at the Texas conference, held March 22-24, 1973. The first paper, "Against Universal Semantic Representation," by Gilbert Harman, argues against the need for (and the possibility of) a level of semantic representation in a theory of language. "Remarks on the…

This paper describes a graduate course for language arts teachers at Georgia State University in Atlanta, titled Social Dialects and Language Learning. Classroom procedures and activities in the course were organized into five cumulative, related phases to engage the teachers in useful fieldwork in order to achieve major objectives of the course.…

A sociolinguistic, ethnographic analysis of Christian Science oral testimonies is reported in this study. The study is based on the analysis of transcripts of four testimonial meetings of a branch church, interpreted through knowledge of Christian Science official literature, informal interaction with Christian Scientists, and knowledge of other…

Full reading comprehension is dependent on a knowledge of language usage, specifically, how syntactic constructions function in relation to pragmatic knowledge. To avoid some of the problems which might arise concerning the pragmatic aspects of reading comprehension, the following steps may be taken: teach children very early the relationship…

This study was designed to investigate four problem areas of communication research: source credibility, language intensity, the gender of source as it affects the source's persuasiveness and credibility, and the scarcity of multifactor studies using gender of source as one of the independent variables. Independent variables for the study, which…

This paper describes the "euphemistic lexicographical technique," which is recommended for use by lexicographers for the frank recording of vulgar speech. This is a monodirectional technique to be used in bilingual dictionaries prepared for speakers of only one of the two languages. The vulgar words will not appear in the source language…

Political language employed in serious inquiry differs systematically from language employed to promote loyalty to authority in respect to syntax; grammatical completeness and complexity; proportion of nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech; and forms of qualification. Formal language entails continuous effort at verfication or falsification and…

This study explored the viability of several theories in describing adjective memory. For the study, college students were told either to form images or to learn sentences. A noun-prompted sentence recall task exposed their memory for adjectives modifying either subject nouns. Results revealed that subject modifiers were better remembered than…

This paper discusses specific issues involving governmental conduct in communication with the public, outlines a set of conditions that frequently stimulate social interest in governmental responsibility, and develops a corresponding set of guidelines for use in the evaluation of instances of questionable governmental conduct in communication.…

In spoken and written situations which focused the teachers' attentions on information rather than on their language, samples of 100 English teachers' actual language were obtained with respect to five debatable usages: "everybody...their,""reason...is because,""who" as an object pronoun, "will/would" with the first person subject to express…

This paper discusses some of the factors involved in deciding which variety of English to teach in areas of African where English is the language of education. Three main alternatives are recognized: American English, British English, or African English. Until recently, English was taught almost exclusively with British materials, and students…

The word "que" is used in Spanish both as a relative pronoun and as a conjunction. As a relative pronoun it can be singular, plural, masculine, feminine, neuter, indefinite, or variable and can by its use in modifying persons and objects serve as a subject or a complement. The relative "que" can precede articles and prepositions. As a conjunction,…

This volume comprises a comprehensive indexing to the nine texts in spoken and written Chinese prepared by the author and published by the Yale University Press: "Beginning Chinese,""Character Text for Beginning Chinese,""Beginning Chinese Reader,""Intermediate Chinese,""Character Text for Intermediate…

The purpose of this book is to assist undergraduates in discovering basic phenomena of rhetorical situations and rhetorical talk and in interpreting those phenomena socially. The nature of oral rhetoric and its criticism is treated in chapters one and two. Chapters three and four deal with how obvious and less obvious ideas may be espied and…

The five papers included in this book are all concerned with exploring a functional approach to language study. "Relevant Models of Language" suggests a functional interpretation of the child's early language development; "The Functional Basis of Language" related the child's language developmental functions to a functional…