In the name of responsible argument, persuasive rhetoric need not eschew all the devices used by propaganda. Emotion is not only inevitable in discourse, it is the necessary base for action. Educators should not consider propaganda evil for the very reason they consider poetry good: its emotional power. This kind of thinking creates a specious…

Defines criteria to identify children's language overextensions and investigates how young children in the early stages of language acquisition rename objects analogically during a standardized play situation. Results indicate that analogic extensions are well within the capabilities of children from one year, eight months to two years, four…

Poetry provides language that is most likely to amaze, astonish, and delight reader and hearer. And children, before school spoils it for them, seem to have a natural affinity for poetry and verse. This paper discusses the ways in which children respond to poetry. The paper notes that relatively little research has been done to determine how…

Argues that a consensus is emerging that rhetorical axiology is the most important goal in teaching composition. Proposes a metatheory about the components necessary to a theory of composition. Uses the metatheory to clarify the role of a philosophy of composition. Argues that composition studies in the 1980s moved toward a homogeneity of purpose…

Explores: (1) expression in talking, particularly as it expands the writing process; (2) spoken traces of culture filtering into writing; and (3) richness and color of expression as writing motivators. Describes four strategies for improving writing instruction that recognize the orality of composition and the duality of language. (SR)

This article argues that word finding problems of children with dyslexia reflect deficits that underlie both naming and reading problems. Research on the co-occurrence of reading and word finding problems is reviewed, and a four-phase research program is reported. Findings focus on the causal relationship between naming speed deficits and reading…

In his comment, A. Roelofs claimed that a feedforward-only theory of spoken word production (WEAVER++) can account for certain basic facts of spoken word production that B. Rapp and M. Goldrick (2000) argued could not be accounted for by feedforward-only theories. Rapp and Goldrick argued that to account for these facts, mechanisms such as…

More than ten years have passed since the widely publicized debate about personal and academic writing that played out in the 1990s between Peter Elbow and David Bartholomae. But the question of the relative merits of these two different types of writing for student writers continues to be an issue of concern for teachers of composition,…

It is difficult for an instructor to designate his philosophy in teaching composition when it is derived from a background in cultural studies at one school and from an "expressivist" program at another school. Furthermore, in naming his approach, he must take into account the influence of his feminist instructors as well as his own…

Raises some questions about the way children write stories and the part teachers play in their writing. (HOD)

Summarizes historical and contemporary examples of stories for children that contain a "magic element" or "oral sorcery" that complements the basic structure of beginning, consistent sequence of events, and full stop ending. (CRH)

Details typical charges against expressivist rhetorics, while sketching a version of expressivism underwritten by the principles and procedures of ordinary language philosophy. Suggests that the teaching and learning practices that emerge from this analysis compete with the vague, sometimes grandiose ambitions of expressivist practitioners as they…

Discusses methods of assessing language comprehension in apes. Considers the possible effect of brain physiology on the differences between productive and receptive language skills. Examines the possibility that differences between synaptic transmission and volume transmission, or transmission across extracellular spaces, of neurological impulses…

Describes a classroom experience in which the curriculum, committed to helping students use language to criticize and change their social world, gained validity and vitality because of the allegedly racist social climate on campus. Argues against those, such as Susan Miller, who essentialize expressivist pedagogies that are grounded in…

The blockbuilding, painting, and oral expressions of young children provide evidence of a natural tendency to symbolize experience and to use the symbolic elements of expressiveness, creativeness, and living form. Up to the present time, educators have not fully grasped the fact that the need to symbolize is at the base of all education. They…