Studies in the field of transcultural nursing in the USA and Australia have shown that bilingual nurses who work in their non-dominant language face many communication challenges. The majority of the linguistic problems they encounter are related to their inability to interpret and use language appropriately in different, authentic nursing…

This study analyzes the conversational styles of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring…

This paper investigates native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) interaction in the workplace in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Based on empirical data from a 10-month email exchange between a medium-sized British company and a small-sized Italian company, the general aim of this study is to explore the nature of the intercultural…

This article examines differences in conversational style between British English and Ecuadorian Spanish, which can be the source of communication conflict among speakers of these two languages in telephone conversations, and presumably other types of interaction. (30 references) (JL)

An examination of the stylistic differences among writing from literary specialists, from science, and from social science shows that a more precise diagnosis of the writing problems of clarity and coherence is possible. Ten randomly selected paragraphs from each of four publications, the "Canadian Medical Association Journal," the "Canadian…

A survey of 210 professional communicators measured their sensitivity to the problem of readability, especially as it has been treated in the plain English movement (the drive to improve written materials and to make the unreadable readable). The results of the survey showed that 23% of the communicators rated the plain language concept…

This study seeks to provide an introduction to some linguistic features of adolescent-therapist conversation, focusing on characteristics of adolescent speech that may appear during therapy. These include problems of expressing feelings, therapy talk as schoolroom talk, powerful forms of questioning, adolescent narrative, and lying. (26…

The technical complexity of the language of academic journals is discussed in terms of graduate students' needs for information, especially in developing countries. An examination of problems in two articles in "Language" and one in "American Anthropologist" points out the nature of the difficulties and some of the solutions. (Author/LB)

Like legal language, medical language is a private language, a separate stratum containing some words specially defined for medical purposes, some existing only in the medical vocabulary, and some adding precision or solemnity. These characteristics often cause a breakdown in patient-doctor communication. Analysis of data obtained from prototype…

Drawing on personal observations and on a study of patient reactions, this paper considers the problem of doctor/patient communication failure in the inner city clinic. It first discusses the role of dialect variation in communication failure, causes of communication failure in the medical interview, factors contributing to doctor/patient…

Examines communication training aimed at women, such as assertiveness training, as an example of linguistics applied to real-world problems and argues that both the problem and the proposed solution are sociolinguistically and politically misconstrued. Such training often makes overgeneralizations regarding women's communication skills and assumes…

Describes the physical and linguistic structure of subcommunities of Hmong students in northern California with emphasis on communicative channeling and cultural mechanisms regulating information dissemination. Hmong students and their teachers use cultural/linguistic brokers extensively to communicate. (nine references) (Author/CK)

Sixty half-hour family discussions generated by the "revealed differences technique" were analyzed to determine the emotional intensity and quality (friendliness/attacking) of messages between individuals in families with schizophrenic and "normal" sons. Thirty families in each situation (schizophrenic/normal) were matched for comparison. Both…

The textbuilding conventions of courtship narratives told by older women of contrasting ethnic minorities are examined. Listener responses to the stories indicate that storytelling conventions are not shared or understood by all listeners. It is proposed that membership in different speech communities based on factors such as age, sex, ethnicity,…

A comparative study of turn-taking in North American and Spanish conversation investigated (1) differences in styles for the two cultures and (2) any resulting misinterpretation of communicative intentions. Data for the first were drawn from two dinner parties, one with four American women, conducted in English, and one with four Spanish-speaking…