A study to develop a methodology for discovering how one important notion or semantic category, "frequency of occurrence," is expressed in words, phrases, or other linguistic devices in academic English began with a search for devices expressing that notion, by analyzing text from a news magazine, a New Zealand geography textbook, and a…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the hypothesis that English cliches reflect sex-specific styles of speech and that sex-specificity of expressions is related to differential usage by male and female speakers. Hypotheses were derived from Tyler's claims that the "neutral sphere" is infused by the male style, rendering it an inhibiting…

Recent research indicates that fourteen linguistic and paralinguistic patterns--thought to measure uncertainty, vagueness, dependence, and negative affect--discriminate between men's truth telling and deceptive language behavior. This study sought to determine if these same patterns also discriminate between women's truth telling and deceptive…

This paper studies meaning as a construct of human interaction. Basic to this approach is the concept of the act of communication, which may be realized verbally or non-verbally. In order to integrate non-verbal behaviors into descriptions of discourse and interaction, a series of functional, not anatomic, categories is needed. For the kinesic…

Compared were the maternal linguistic environments of 21 normal (20-32 months old) and 21 Down's syndrome children (3-12 years old) matched for level of language development as assessed by mean length of utterance (MLU). Verbal interaction in two free play home situations was tape recorded. Twenty measures of maternal speech (including sentence…

A study of feedback in conversational question-response exchanges focused on the questioner's feedback to the respondent. It examined three types of "followup" moves: the ordinary type revealing the questioner's attitude to the response and closing the exchange; the type signaling the questioner's reaction to the response and inviting…

Impromptu speech is characterized by the simultaneous processes of ideation (the elaboration and structuring of reasoning by the speaker as he improvises) and expression in the speaker. Other elements accompany this characteristic: division of speech flow into short segments, acoustic relief in the form of word stress following a pause, and both…

An assessment battery, measuring multiple aspects of language, was administered to 29 children between 4 and 5 years of age who had been born prematurely. The children, who weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth after less than 37 weeks of gestation, were recruited from a cohort of children originally admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit…

Poets' working drafts and their comments on their processes indicate overwhelmingly that they, like experienced writers of other genres, are extensive revisers. The biggest difficulty with the term "revising" is that it designates both the changes made to a text and the mental processes and attitudes that underlie these changes. Even the…

Impromptu speech is heard only once, at a rate of perception that depends on the speaker's delivery, and is specifically adapted to the listeners. These features trigger cognitive activities that facilitate translation. Impromptu speech is characterized by a constant interconnection between cognitive competence and language competence and between…

Prison language, primarily the lexicon, at the Women's Correctional Center (WCC) in Columbia, South Carolina is described. This center is considered here as a speech community and a subculture. Inmates have developed speech habits and vocabulary which indicate the social structure of the prison and inmate values. They coin or metaphorically extend…

Discourse is basically interactive. This is clear in conversation, but the concept can be extended to written language. Written text can be analyzed as spoken discourse. The methodology of English text studies has adhered too much to a textual approach and even extended it to spoken data. Another approach would be to begin with the spoken form of…

Disciplines interested in communication have failed to describe adequately the comprehension or production of taboo or dirty words with the result that little is known about the phenomenon. A review of research leads to the assumption that taboo word comprehension and production are the result of some or all of the following elements of the…