Analysis of the communicative skills of a nine-year-old deaf boy with minimal schooling showed pantomiming and gestures to be his major mode of communication. Certain semantic patterns prevailed. Use of left or right hand also had semantic correlates. Formal and idiosynacratic signs were discovered in the boy's vocabulary. (Author/PJM)

Discusses "language-in-use" as an index of rhetorical efficacy, suggesting that the substance and form of verbal reactions to discourse may reflect the degree of audience internalization. Concludes that language-in-use assists the critic in determining whether changes in thinking and behavior are occasioned by words or actions, or both. (JMF)

Discusses the Greek contribution to the alphabet and the development of written communication. Contrasts oral and written traditions and the impact of each. (JMF)

Analyzes five basal readers and 10 adolescent novels to determine the occurrence of three types of language styles or registers: formal, informal, and technical/special. Concludes that the basal readers contained examples of all three types of registers while the novels contained relatively few examples of technical/special language. (FL)

Describes the process of rewriting a poorly-written document into plain English. The process includes redefining the audience, altering the content, reorganizing the content, changing the verbal and visual style, and retaining the document's legal force. (JMF)

Sixty middle-class and 60 lower-class children between the ages of three and five were asked to respond to six types of "wh-questions." Social class significantly affected the overall frequency of correct responses within each age group of children tested. (Author/DB)

Presents responses from 22 teachers on activities used to increase student awareness of language usage and language patterns and to heighten student appreciation for specific works of literature. (RL)

Proposes that communication strategies describe the learners' pattern of using what they know as they try to communicate with speakers of the largest language, and that communication strategies have an interactional function. Specific criteria are suggested for defining the notion of communication strategy as distinguished from learning and…

Shows that hesitation phenomena are intricately connected with propspective and retrospective speech production tasks and mark critical points in processing. Two major hesitation categories exist: stalls and repairs. Stalls head off errors and represent error-free output; repairs take care of errors already committed. English and German examples…

Proposes that arguments used popularly in religious controversies are historically stable and that the rhetorical critic's attention to topics or sources of reference ("topoi") for argumentation enhances the analysis of such controversies. Examines the Catholic debate over vernacular reform and emphasizes the relatively narrow range of "topoi"…

Significant correlations were obtained between Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory scores and two clusters of items from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development: goal directedness and language use. HOME assessments were made when children were 6 and 12 months old; the Bayley was administered at 12 months.…

Reports three studies concerning individual differences in children's use of consonants during early phonological development. The findings indicate that these differences fall within a predictable range, that the linguistic environment cannot account for several of them, and that they are partly due to variations in the choice of lexical items.…

The mental activities of reading and responding to literature and the difficulties that occur as students try to produce written accounts of what they have gained are explored, as are the demands made on the student's language when putting into words what s/he has gained through a study of literature. (Author/KC)

Three prime time television situation comedies with primarily Black casts were studied for frequency and variations in use of Black English Vernacular (BEV). It is suggested that homogenization of BEV on American television reflects the attitude that BEV is not a legitimate language choice. (GC)

The study examined the adequacy of replacing generics with more gender neutral terms (e.g., someone or people) for 141 eight to eighteen year old hearing impaired students. Results showed that generally the neutral terms enabled students to limit masculine bias. (Author)