The "massification" of higher education in Australia and the associated increasing student diversity have significant implications for tertiary education. In particular, students seem to be struggling with the demands of tertiary literacy with commentators claiming that literacy standards are in decline. The solution has been to provide…

A taxonomy of metadiscourse--defined as discourse that people use not to expand referential material but to help their readers connect, organize, interpret, evaluate, and develop attitudes toward that material--was proposed in "College Composition and Communication" (Vande Kopple, 1985). More surveying and classifying has been done since…

James Davison Hunter's solution to the dialectical impass of the culture wars is disappointing. He proposes that participants in the discourse grant openly both the "sacredness" of the positions held by the opposing others and the fallibility of their own: that they ground their interaction on a prior consent to compromise. That…

This annotated bibliography considers the real-life outcomes of uncovering the history of women's rhetoric. By examining the public rhetoric of early U.S. female abolitionists, women's rights advocates, and suffragist proponents, the paper uses a historiographic method that considers the voices of women speaking in the public arena. The method of…

For Peter Elbow, a writing classroom should be an opportunity for students to tell their stories to a community in which everyone is safe to take risks, and all support each other in the development of their expressive skills. To be "other," however, is always a scary thing. The lesbian, gay, or bisexual writing student is usually seen as having a…

Argues that neither traditional "knowledge delivery" models of teaching, nor a purely "student-centered" approach, adequately addresses the challenges of student diversity. Proposes an emphasis on the sociocultural nature of learning and teaching, modeling learning as acquiring the capacity to participate in discourses of an unfamiliar knowledge…

A review of eight books on Latin American education, published after 1995, analyzes the process by which Latin American "discursive space" is constructed in the educational literature. Similarities in the principles dominating recent educational reforms and the main perspectives in the literature that "explain" these…

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…

Argues for a contingency view of communication clarity and effectiveness based on the impact that an organization's language customs have on perceived effectiveness. Examines the psychological-social function of organizational language and discusses the role that language has in creating new knowledge in organizations. (KEH)

States that computer-mediated communication on the Internet offers new challenges and opportunities for technical communication. Describes the cases of Lotus "MarketPlace" and the Clipper chip to illustrate the specialized nature of technical communities on the Internet. Suggests that when technical messages are not overly complex,…

Discusses a cautionary, honest approach to qualitative business communication research, which adds validity and strength, used in a study of a hospital discourse community. (RS)

Argues that the college reading and learning discourse community should enlarge its support and perspective by listening to and learning from other academic communities. Explains why college composition is the perfect place to start; examines its history, associations and professional journals; discusses genre theory as an example of composition's…

Does the phrase "retirement community" conjure up images of a Florida condo next to a golf course? If so, think again. This article describes the growing number of residential senior adult communities that have sprung up on, or near, the campuses of colleges and universities around the country. Such housing offers residents an array of activities…

I draw attention to the distinction between reductionist views of "language" and the rich and complex ways in which we might approach language as social practice and suggest the latter view is evident in the set of papers collected here. Socially oriented linguists, including those in New Literacy Studies (NLS), look beyond reductionism, to…

To help students meet the demands of society, the University of Houston is using the framework of learning communities and constructivism to create a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching to provide media-rich thematically linked courses to engage a diverse student population. A case study investigated three semesters of thematically linked…