English contains a considerable number of lexical combinations with various forms and labels, making it an interesting field of inquiry for researchers. The significance and popularity of support verb constructions (SVC) is that they are used largely by native speakers and include some of the most common words in English but seem to be problematic…

In the United States, we tend to understand linguistic systems as separate and autonomous, and by this understanding, bilinguals are people who speak two different languages and switch between them. This understanding of bilingualism, however, does not reflect the reality of the way many bilinguals use language. Rather than "code-switch"…

Given that intervention has been relatively under-researched in pragmatics, this paper offers a linguistic-pragmatic examination of a case of bystander intervention, a notion which is generally known in social psychology. This study approaches the phenomenon of bystander intervention by analyzing discourse data transcribed from a video posted…

This study investigated and analyzed the use of rhetorical appeals, and the presence of hedges, and boosters in the argumentative essays of ESL learners. It is aimed at exploring the linguistic differences between male and female writers in terms of how they put forward their claims in an argument and how they appeal to their audience. The study…

Looking at the frequently used English words on billboard ads in Jakarta main streets, one may have a presumptive thought that English will dominate Indonesian language. The assumption, though, has led to the analysis of the role of both languages on billboard ads and the possibility of English control over Indonesian. The study presented…

This work approaches the concept of social media engagement through a lens of participation theory. Following the work of Goffman (1981) and others, this dissertation uses the concepts of the participation framework and the participant role to explore engagement as a function of participation in interaction. The purposes of this dissertation are…

This dissertation takes a discursive approach to Hawai'i stand-up comedy, which is a highly dramaturgical genre, and it examines the cultural specificity of Hawaii comedy in an explicitly interactional context. This culturally-specific performative genre is a discursive site where comedians and their audiences jointly construct multivocal humor…

All employers occasionally must deliver bad news to their employees, but few bad news situations can compete with the delicate task of announcing layoffs. In an electronic age, when layoff notices delivered via email are quickly leaked to outsiders, CEOs must take into account not only the employees who will be affected by the layoffs but also the…

Drawing inferences from both quantitative and qualitative data, this study examines the extent to which American companies tailor their Web advertising for global audiences with a particular focus on French-speaking consumers in North America, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and French Polynesia. Explored from a sociolinguistic and social semiotic…

This study explores how intertextuality influences the narrative practices of young deaf children in two classrooms. Specifically, the study examines how variations in what texts are made available to juxtapose and variations in how texts are juxtaposed influence the narratives young deaf children produce. A major premise underlying these two…

There is a system of English mouthing during interpretation that appears to be the result of language contact between spoken language and signed language. English mouthing is a voiceless visual representation of words on a signer's lips produced concurrently with manual signs. It is a type of borrowing prevalent among English-dominant…