In this article, the authors present parent-educator conversations, which were selected to illustrate common communication patterns and provide links to some of the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children's recommended practices for communicating and collaborating with parents. Using conversation analysis, researchers…

Textual analysis is an umbrella term used to introduce undergraduate students to a variety of methods for describing and interpreting messages contained in texts. A common goal of a number of textual analysis methods, including the analysis of qualitative interviews, social text analysis, discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, is to…

It is often assumed that online collaborative learning is inclusive of diversity. In this exploratory paper, I challenge this notion by developing a theory which proposes that inclusion occurs through congruence between learners' social identities and the identities implicitly supported through the interactions in a particular community. To build…

This paper proposes a set of methods and a framework for evaluating, modeling, and predicting group interactions in computer-mediated communication. The method of sequential analysis is described along with specific software tools and techniques to facilitate the analysis of message-response sequences. In addition, the Dialogic Theory and its…

Some language features are described that could account for feelings of people from different cultures not being on the same "wave length" when they communicate with each other in business negotiations. Candlin's explanatory approach involving a "top-down, bottom-up" methodology is used. It views language as being indeterminate…

Asserts that the field of discourse processing offers some solutions to the challenge of promoting deep comprehension during learning. Sketches the salient components of discourse processing mechanisms and points out how such mechanisms can be recruited to improve deep comprehension. (EV)

In this article, I respond to Wanda Pillow's (2000) challenge to "Educational Researcher" and other educational journals to provide more working examples of postmodern research not in an effort to contain such research, but in an effort to irrupt or break apart efforts at containment. Specifically, I present a methodological approach for listening…

Uses Kenneth Burke's theory of perfection to explore the vocabularies of nuclear weapons in United States public discourse and how "the Bomb" as a God term has gained imbalanced ascendancy in centers of power. (MS)

This article elaborates a model for understanding pedagogy in online educational forums. The model identifies four key components. Intellectual engagement describes the foreground cognitive processes of collaborative learning. Communication processes operating in the background accumulate an ever richer store of shared understandings that enable…

Over the past two decades, theorists and researchers in cognitive structural developmental psychology have begun to investigate the social processes that impact upon individual cognitive growth. Studies have focused on how interactional processes lead to cognitive development but not on how the interactional processes are formed. This paper…

Examines fundamental rhetorical constructs that students and business professionals should consider when analyzing textual and financial information contained in corporations' annual reports. Discusses how students in business communication classes evaluate the rhetorical effectiveness of specific annual reports, as well as the ethics associated…

Conveys the power of children's questions and highlights the process of questioning in a whole-language classroom. Suggests that the role of questions in the classroom talk demonstrated to the teacher the connections and relationships between discourse content and discourse structure. (RS)

Initiation, response and follow-up (IRF) exchanges produced by a student and his tutor in an internet-based tutorial interaction have been analysed in terms of the multifunctional characteristics of each utterance. Different functions, related to different purposes, were observed in the IRF moves performed by the student. The control over the…

A study was conducted in a Korean language preschool in Koreatown, Los Angeles, California which used student-teacher interactions to examine how a teacher's use of deixis socializes children about what constitutes good eating practices and what cultivates them. The data for this paper came from a larger study of language socialization practices,…

Examines reasons for discourse communities becoming a subject of writing research. Provides a brief example of the kind of analysis possible, focusing on the composing environments of two similar organizations. (AEW)