Language samples elicited through a picture description task were recorded from 38 adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome (WS) and one control group matched on age, and another matched on age, IQ, and vocabulary knowledge. The samples were coded for use of various types of inferences, dramatic devices, and verbal fillers; acoustic analyses…

Differentiates between "hipobolicos", i.e., people lacking in a feeling for hyperbole; and "hiperbolicos", people with a feeling for hyperbole. (Text is in Spanish.) (DS)

Syntactic synonymy enables the speaker to use syntactic devices to say the same thing in a number of different ways. It is based on three criteria: (1) similarity of semantic content, (2) certain syntactic similarity between the components of the synonymous structures, and (3) differences in surface structures. The third criterion separates…

Explores the difficulty in defining cliche and distinguishing it from other idiomatic and indelible expressions in the English language. (HTH)

Hexagonal'' refers to the new vocabulary and idioms that continue to infiltrate Spanish, French, and other languages. (SK)

Political language employed in serious inquiry differs systematically from language employed to promote loyalty to authority in respect to syntax; grammatical completeness and complexity; proportion of nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech; and forms of qualification. Formal language entails continuous effort at verfication or falsification and…

Discusses the study of colloquial Spanish in literary texts. Presents an annotated list of Spanish colloquial expressions extracted from "Paralelo 40" by Jose Luis Castillo-Puche. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Certain intellectual phenomena, e.g. racist attitudes, are based on fixed formulas of everyday speech. The linguistic roots of such evils must be discerned before they can be exorcised. Some cliches, e.g. racist ones, insinuate themselves into verbal behavior structures. French cliches reflect certain collective French attitudes: positive towards…

Discusses the many uses of the honorific title of "Don" in Spanish literature and Spanish colloquial speech. It may be used to joke and express irony, as in the expression "don ladron" (sir thief), and forms part of many idiomatic expressions. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

An experiment was conducted to investigate the hypothesis that English cliches reflect sex-specific styles of speech and that sex-specificity of expressions is related to differential usage by male and female speakers. Hypotheses were derived from Tyler's claims that the "neutral sphere" is infused by the male style, rendering it an inhibiting…

Filled with examples of French slang and colloquialisms, this article notes the importance of learning such everyday language to speak French correctly. (CHK)

Discusses the semantic field of "expression" and the implications for the teaching of oral and written expression. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Recalls the atmosphere of teaching college in the 1960s. (SRT)

Recent research supports the theory that unskilled writers produce writing through the mediation of spoken language. That is, their writing contains inexplicit meanings, or semantic abbreviations, characteristic of conversations in which the listener is familiar with the situational and cultural contexts of the monologue. Two studies further…

The practicing writer encounters four determinants of his use of prose. First, the language itself determines the expression: English, with its wealth of words and styles and with few traditional restrictions, provides problems of choice and temptations to overwrite. Second, the application of verse forms to the novel and a demand for consistently…