Reading research in K-12 English-speaking contexts reveals that inferential and expository texts cause substantial difficulty for students but less such research exists regarding other languages. It was the purpose of this quantitative cloze-based study to expose any relationship between student difficulty and particular features of the Arabic…

Every discipline has its own specialized language, its membership rites, its secret handshake. In its most benign and neutral definition, jargon signifies "the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group." More often, however, the jingly word that Chaucer used to describe "the inarticulate utterance of birds" takes…

The language used by adults in an early childhood setting is one of the most telling indicators of the values of a center. Each center has its own culture of language that consists of often heard phrases and scripts used when teaching and caring for young children. Listening closely to words, tones, and scripts--educators tune into what is unseen,…

For the past twenty years or so, the author has been fortunate to write for a fairly broad audience. While he was teaching, or running an educational program, or doing research, he was also composing opinion pieces or commentaries about the work he was doing. This process of writing with part of his attention on the classroom or research site and…

Each profession has its own insider language. Thick with acronyms and polysyllabics, such argot helps colleagues communicate complex ideas precisely and with as few words as possible. But even by the standards of technical talk, the jargon of education often seems unnecessarily, perhaps willfully, opaque--even to other educators. To the…

This paper explores the use of "legalese" in non-policy debate resolutions. After defining legalese as legal jargon and terminology, the paper discusses how resolutional words and terms function within intercollegiate debate. It next deals with the purpose and practice of legal jargon within legal scholarship and practice, noting that…

This article discusses professional language and communication in real-life settings and provides a critical overview of research on language for specific purposes. Ideas for renewing this field of study are presented. (78 references) (MDM)

Describes a project which investigated perceived differences in the oral communication of technical information, and whether discrimination of gender based upon these perceptions is accurate. Results showed significant gender difference and that respondents largely based their perception of gender on use of technical language or jargon. Manner and…

Legal writing is a unique form of composition. The legal style is characterized by a reliance upon nominalizations, archaisms, jargon, and foreign (especially French and Latin) terms and a scarcity of verbs and adverbs. Twelve judicial opinions, all on the subject of whether an advance degree should be considered marital property upon divorce,…

This article summarizes procedures used in translating technical jargon in the field of behavior therapy to plain English. It lists phrases translated from applied behavior analysis to public education, presents acronyms useful in remembering sequences of steps, and describes two tests to help in decision making in behavior analysis applications.…

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)

The experience of the child victim as a courtroom witness in sexual abuse cases is examined in this study of a testing program involving 30 children aged 6 to 15. The purpose of the study was to identify needs not recognized by courts that can be responded to, denied, or exacerbated through language. Based on court transcripts, differences were…

An ethnographic study examined slang as spoken on campuses of two universities in the United States, one on the West Coast and one in the Midwest. Subjects were students from Intercultural Communication classes, who served as participant/observers and data gatherers. Subjects were instructed to collect slang terms that they heard on campus and,…

This learning activity package is designed to help apprentices understand some of the different ways in which words can be used to mean different things, depending on where and when one uses the words. It provides examples of words and phrases that are used in the workplace in ways different from the way they are used in regular conversation. Five…