This dissertation asks what young children do with style at a time when their social and linguistic worlds begin to expand beyond the home, into the peer group. Grounded in a yearlong ethnography of a preschool classroom in the San Francisco Bay Area, I show how play moved gradually from indoors to outdoors as children got older. This shift…

Disagreement has been traditionally viewed as a dispreferred response, which speakers tend to avoid or mitigate due to its presumed face threatening effects. However, more recent studies argue that disagreement is not inherently dispreferred or marked, but needs to be contextualized. This article examines the interactions of Vietnamese EFL…

The goal of this study is to inform teachers' practice by identifying specific language strategies that young children use in their play and suggesting ways that teachers can build on our findings to support students' language and literacy. Deductive analyses of video-recordings of 5-year old children playing at the sand center revealed that…

The purpose of the present paper is to study the positions and emotions of grade 7 students who work with technology to learn geometry. This consideration of students' emotions is socially based, which makes it necessary to use a socially-based theoretical framework in order to study them. One such theory is the discursive analysis framework…

Researchers and teachers often invoke context to explain their particular research/teaching issues. However, definitions of context vary widely and the direct impact of the context is often unexplained. Based on research showing contextual differences in second language (L2) learner beliefs and interactional behaviors, the current project compared…

A study examined variation in code choice in the same speakers in two contrasting situations--interorganizational and intraorganizational bargaining. Naturalistic interactions between teams of teacher's union bargaining agents, role-playing teachers, and school board members in the two settings were coded, using measures of structural and lexical…

This pamphlet is the second in a series of ten stemming from the view that language is central to learning, that teachers can gain insights into their work and into learning by examining the language of the classroom, and that current language theory can be the means to such insights. The pamphlet contains a description of a study designed to…

"Pacification" as a technique of social control has a negative effect because of its destructive or disintegrative impact on behaviors of individuals in social or problem-solving situations. "Pacification" uses communication techniques which discount some aspect of the problem-solving process: the problem itself, its…

Gender and group composition variables in a computer-mediated communication context are examined. Subjects were 36 undergraduate male and female psychology students. Findings are analyzed in terms of choice of language; participation; satisfaction; and interpersonal conflict. Ten tables present study results. (Author/AEF)

One hundred and ten college students, placed in 22 problem solving discussion groups, interacted for three fifty minute periods each. Three trained observers systematically recorded the interaction. Group members were classified as being task or socio-emotionally oriented and the functional leader in each group was identified by role category.…

Considers the positive impact black organizational members can make in the workplace because of their unique interpersonal style. Reviews the literature addressing cultural differences between black and white interpersonal communicators, and also addresses cross-cultural difficulties. (NKA)

Used a lexical statistics program to analyze conflict and nonconflict discussions of two different groups of college students. Found preliminary evidence for a pattern of greater redundancy and less vocabulary diversity for the discussion groups in conflict. (PD)