An in-progress interdisciplinary research effort, Conversation Analytic (CA) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) study, is reported. A conversation analytic approach to repair and self-explication is taken that covers both human studies and artificial intelligence. The term "human" is used here in place of "linguistic." Three…

A discussion of writing looks at research on the factors influencing written discourse and proposes a model of writing for academic purposes. First, studies of both cultural and individual aspects of the writing process are reviewed and the phenomenon of writing is viewed from both social and cognitive perspectives. The social perspective is that…

This series, designed for use in inservice teacher workshops, addresses the question, "How do children and teachers use language to get things done?" The transcribed classroom discourse presented and discussed in each volume illustrates functional language in a real context based on the videotaping of undoctored classroom events from…

This volume is one in a series of studies in linguistics that is intended to supplement the "International Review of Applied Linguistics." Discourse analysis, or looking at language as text in context, is presented in the first chapter. This is correlated with what is known about the differences between languages in a second chapter on contrastive…

An overconcern with the niceties of usage can undercut English teachers' efforts to eliminate public doublespeak. (JH)

Examines how evaluation works through a text to convey the overall purpose of the writer of the text by using a developing corpus of academic research articles from a variety of disciplines. Findings indicate that the type of evaluation varies according to the type of entity and that two categories of research entity exist: those related to…

Argues that in seeking a healthy fusion of power, applied linguistics is in a position to discover the appropriate response to the dilemma of injecting ethical responsibility into the profession while dealing with the competition for power between marginalized groups and the establishment. (15 references) (Author/CK)

This paper examines points in oral test interviews where an interviewee explicitly seeks clarification from the interviewer on the content of a question posed, prior to attempting to answer a question. Some of the interviews are drawn from the Finnish Foreign Language Diploma for Professional Purposes examination (Tyoelaman kielidiplomi); others…

The journal IDEAL is intended as a forum for research into the acquisiton and teaching of English as a Second Language. Volume 4 contains the following articles: "Pragmatics and Reading in a Second Language" (Patricia L. Carrell); "English Across Cultures: Native English Speaker in the Third World" (P.B. Nayar); "Pragmatic…

This paper describes a collaborative project that sought to combine teacher development and illuminative research. Eight teachers on a general English course, working in pairs, observed each other's lessons and then held discussions, which were recorded and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Published coding systems were used by the…

Much recent research into college writing has focused on syntactic measurements. Significant problems inherent in such use of these indices arise for their validity at and beyond the college level and center on the terms "maturity,""complexity," and "growth.""Maturity" has not been satisfactorily defined, nor has the level of competence been…

Through examination of the discourse markers "ano" and "sono" in Japanese, this paper explores how these linguistic devices function differently in conversation. The focus of this analysis is the mental and social functions through which a speaker attempts to achieve an interpersonal rapport with a listener. In particular, the…

A test on the effects of native/nonnative (NS/NNS) English-speaker status and gender on the structure of directions issued by native speakers of English is reported. It confirms that direction giving is highly conventionalized and that NS/NNS status and gender systematically influence a small range of linguistic choices. (24 references) (Author/LB)

Presents a notion of small culture as an alternative to what has become the default notion of large culture in applied linguistics, social science, and popular usage. A small-culture view of English-language curriculum settings reveals mismatches between professional-academic and organizational cultures at the mezzo level of the institution. (VWL)

A working definition is proposed for "scientific text" in terms of text function, based on pragmatic criteria derived from various approaches to the sociology of science. The term "Language for Academic-Scientific Purposes" (LASP) is preferred because it allows for the inclusion of texts in the human sciences, at the same time implicitly excluding…