Examines whether, and how, deaf adults adjust their nonvocal communicative behavior when facing one of three audience types: hearing adults who have learned a signed language, deaf adults who use a signed languageand deaf children of deaf parents. (FL)

Suggests that young children use their expectations of a context-specific, normal range of pause duration in timing the onset of a turn at speaking. (FL)

Proposes a top-down procedural model for the dynamic extraction and use of context structure to resolve references. (FL)

Presents an interpretive study of 1 family's discourse concerning aggression between 2 brothers (9-years, 9-months and 11-years, 11-months old). Analyzes 10 parental strategies, representing all the turns within a long conversation in which parents took the lead in promoting their younger son's narrative and logical understanding of his offensive…

Describes the essential factors of developmental changes in argumentative writing behavior of children between the ages of 10 and 16, in particular on 4 tasks: an argumentative writing task, a textuality task, an argumentative script inference task, and an argumentativity judgment task. (SR)

Examines students' summaries of three lectures. Finds that the percentage, but not the number, of propositions correlated positively with the accuracy scores in the summaries. Suggests that analyses of errors, lexical substitutions, discrepancies in grades, and differences in students' scores for the different lectures revealed interesting results…

Reports the findings of a study designed to investigate children's deictic changes, use of speech act verbs, and preference for reporting system in their retold narratives. Claims that a linear age function emerged and that children's mastery of direct and indirect speech extends over many years. (HB)

Analyzes the referential strategies used in narrative discourse by 10 adults and 60 Japanese children aged 3 to 7 years. Determines the factors underlying choice of nominal versus elliptical forms. Discusses results in terms of cognitive, social, and linguistic factors underlying referential choice. (HB)

Analyzes parents' use of indirect requests and other types of figurative language (metaphor and idiom) addressed to their children. Finds that indirect requests occurred most frequently but that parents also used other nonliteral forms as well. Shows that parents were using the range of nonliteral forms primarily to achieve the single goal of…

Provides evidence for the utility of schema-based frameworks which assume that schemas and scripts organize information, aid in comprehension, and guide information retrieval. (FL)

Uses techniques of the study of conversational analysis in oral language in the study of American Sign Language conversations, and concludes that such conversations are structured in ways that parallel those of spoken language. (FL)

Proposes that dialogue provides children with opportunities to participate with adults in creating linguistic relationships of which they would be incapable alone. Reports the findings of a study of dialogues between mothers and their young children. (FL)

Reports the findings of a study that was designed to explore children's use of language in the adversative episode. (FL)

Presents evidence against the "deficit" interpretation of Black dialect and argues instead for at least one version of the "difference" hypothesis. (FL)

Explores how agoraphobia is realized through the activity of storytelling. Analyzes one agoraphobic woman's narrative to articulate the narrative structuring of a panic episode, the grammatical resources systematically recruited to portray panic as unaccountable and the protagonist as irrational and helpless, and a recurrent communicative dilemma…