Examines how interlocutors' beliefs about each other's goals affect conversational references, comparing pairs who were either informed or noninformed about the goal difference, or misinformed that goals were the same. Finds that misinformed and noninformed pairs overlooked clues that may have signaled the goal discrepancy, made conversational…

Compares the communicative effectiveness of spontaneous monologues and dialogues on nonparticipating addressees overhearing talk. Finds that overhearers were more accurate at following instructions in a referential communication task when listening in on dialogues than when listening in on monologues. Suggests greater number of discourse markers…

Offers a retrospective view of organizational factors affecting the redesign of the Midwest Bell Telephone Bill. Shows how financial considerations, organizational time frame, and employee training and experience influenced the bill's development process. (MM)

Advances the development of a classification system, based on the salient speech act distinctions made by ordinary people, which can be of practical use in characterizing extended segments of discourse. Presents an attempt to use speech act theory in the quantitative study of interpersonal communication. (HTH)

Examines factors contributing to or interfering with the negotiation of meaning between non-English-speaking pupils and English-speaking teachers and peers. Proposes a model of interpretive processing with three hierarchically interrelated levels. Finds that, in certain situations, shared background knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for…

Determines the characteristics of interactions that influence judgments of interruption behavior in naive observers. Asks subjects to decide whether an example of an interruption was an interruption and then rate it in terms of how "good" or "bad" it was. Finds that naive observers use some of the same features described in…

Investigates the conventions that govern telephone communication through answering machines, both domestic and institutional. Finds that talk on answering machines is highly structured and highly routinized. Identifies the internal structures of both callers' contributions and machine contributions. (SR)

Examines the oral discourse of four university teaching contexts (lectures, laboratories, writing classes, and writing conferences) for the incidence of exchange patterns. Defines exchange patterns and explores previous research on three-part exchanges. Presents new research on two-part exchanges. Focuses on how non-native speakers of English…

Finds that self-reported loneliness was not related to depression or social anxiety for either young or older adults, and was not related to young or older adults' social skill as measured by partner attention. Indicates that social anxiety, however, was related to social skill during intergenerational conversations. (SR)

Investigates the extent to which forward inferences are activated and encoded during reading, as well as their prevalence and their time course. Finds that inferences were encoded and retained in working memory in both high- and low-predictability conditions, and that high-predictability forward inferences were encoded into long-term memory.…

Notes that the rapid rise in private practice of an economic model known as "contract medicine" (such as the HMO) has introduced powerful new organizational constraints on interaction between member physicians and their patients. Examines the negotiation of specialty referral in two practices participating in contract plans. (MM)

Examines "girl talk" (a typically female speech event involving long and detailed personal discussions about people, norms, and beliefs). Demonstrates that girl-talk interaction constitutes a temporary community within which norms are cooperatively defined through a painstaking process of negotiation and consensus. (RS)

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…

Presents one of a set of five analyses that all examine the same data; the discourse of a problem-based learning group in medicine. Offers an overview of the five analyses, including how they differ. Includes a transcription of the six-minute data segment featuring a group of second-year medical students and a faculty tutor/coach discussing a…

Explores the kinds of persuasion used by preschool children in two role-playing tasks. Finds that children role played effectively and persistently, with Bargains and Guarantees the most frequently used strategies. Finds that the choice of strategies changed with age (more Positive Sanction, less Assertion) and with sex (boys used more Norm…