In the age when environmental sustainability is among the chief concerns and goals of communities around the world, a number of linguistic studies have been conducted to illuminate the roles of language in protection and destruction of ecological systems. Most of the studies, however, focus on written and/or formal discourses. The present study…

Refusing is a common speech act; nonetheless people from different cultural backgrounds employ different refusal strategies. The present study compares refusal strategies used between native speakers of Javanese in Indonesia and native speakers of British English in the United Kingdom. Empirical data were elicited by means of discourse completion…

There is an ongoing debate whether phenomena of disfluency (such as filled pauses) are produced communicatively. Clark and Fox Tree ("Cognition" 84(1):73-111, 2002) propose that filled pauses are words, and that different forms signal different lengths of delay. This paper evaluates this Filler-As-Words hypothesis by analyzing the…

Getting acquainted with others is one of the most basic interpersonal communication events. Yet there has only been a limited number of studies that have examined variation in the interactional practices through which unacquainted persons become acquainted and establish relationships across speakers of the same language. The current study focuses…

One of the most complex aspects of verbal interaction to master in a second language is the use of pronouns of address. In French for nursing students, pedagogical prescriptions favour the use of "vous" for interactions with patients; however, corpus linguistic studies have shown that "tu" is increasingly used in the French…

While most research in applied linguistics has focused on second language (L2) speakers and their language capabilities, the success of interaction between such speakers and first language (L1) speakers also relies on the positive attitudes and communication skills of the L1 speakers. However, some research has suggested that many L1 speakers lack…

This dissertation takes an ethnomethodologically-grounded, conversation-analytic approach in investigating the sequential deployment of linguistic resources in Spanish-language talk-in-interaction. Three sets of resources are examined: 2nd-person singular reference forms (tú, vos, usted), indicative/subjunctive verbal mood selection, and…

Ethnolinguistic vitality, communication accommodation, and markedness model frameworks guided research assessing language ideologies, practices, and criticism among multi-ethnic Locals in the Hawaiian Islands. Results from Study 1 indicated that respondents draw from widespread ideologies that influence them to employ Standard English in…

Discusses a quantitative study of the use of Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI) in Sydney, which reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic of a language change in progress. The social motivations of AQI are examined in terms of local identity and the entry of new ethnic groups into the community. (Author/SED)

Presents the "Englishes" of children from different social backgrounds that are reflected in the forms and functions of their individual ways of communicating. Discusses implications of these language varieties for the classroom. (HTH)

This study examined the speech act of agreement and disagreement in the ordinary conversation of English-speakers in India. Data were collected in natural speech elicited from educated, bilingual speakers in cross-sex and same-sex conversations in a range of formal and informal settings. Subjects' ages ranged from 19 to about 60. Five agreement…

A study examined repair in native-nonnative (Mandarin) speaker English conversation, focusing primarily on the previously unobserved lexical element "yeah" which occurs in a speaker's ongoing or same turn at talk. Conversational analysis was used to examine the data collected and transcribed. The data was composed of roughly 120 pages of…

This collection of essays explores the diversity of contemporary English language use, both spoken and written, around the world. The first chapters focus on the use of English within various kinds of interpersonal communication, and later chapters look at artistic and creative products of English speakers and writers, discussing the kinds of…

Articles on diverse areas of linguistics include the following: "Correlative Constructions in Chinese" (Steve Harlow, Connie Cullen); "Xhosa Isinkalakahliso Again" (John Kelly); "Conversational Phonetics: Some Aspects of News Receipts in Everyday Talk" (John Local); "Parametric Interpretation in Yorktalk"…

Essays on English in South Africa and its neighboring countries include: "A History of English in South Africa" (Len Lanham); "English in South African Society: A Preliminary Overview" (Bill Branford); "Black English in South Africa" (David Gough); "Language Contact, Transmission, Shift: South African Indian…