The study examines the development of the registers of academic writing by African American college-level students through style and grammar: indirection inherent in the oral culture of the African American community and the paratactic functions of "because." Discourse analysis of 74 samples of academic writing by 20 African American undergraduate…

Argues that the educational system should encourage "down to earth" language by including oral recitation in the curricula, particularly recitation of popular poetry with accompaniment. Using the shuttle disaster as a striking example, claims that the modern media overuses conceptual language to disguise the hard meaning of what is being…

Concludes that readers recall syntactic subjects very poorly. Suggests that to understand more precisely how readers represent such subjects in memory, new and rich models of language and of possible domains in text will be needed. (FL)

Describes a cloze test designed to measure writing flexibility, then examines its effectiveness in distinguishing experienced college-level writers from the inexperienced ones. Concludes that the measure is effective and that responsiveness to style features is a significant component of experienced writing. (FL)

Suggests general changes in the standard reading and writing curricula and examines the language of writing instruction, in college level individual writing conferences, to take a closer look at issues involved in implementing the curricula for higher and lower achieving students. (FL)

Describes a set of metadiscourse functions arising from the use of contrastive and non-contrastive expressions in academic argumentation. Describes interpersonal metadiscourse functions of connectives within argumentative essays. Proposes that interpersonal uses of connectives mitigate counterclaims and emphasize claims based on the assumed roles…

Submits expert use of anaphoric "this" to a cloze procedure for comprehensive analysis. Finds that current stylistic guidelines proscribing unattended "this" are overstated; and "attended this" (a demonstrative adjective introducing a noun phrase) is best employed when synonyms for the antecedent and descriptive…

Analyzes the relationships between complimenting strategies associated with male and female language use and evaluations of the effectiveness of written discourse. Finds that use of certain complimenting strategies associated with male and female language use correlate with lower ratings of ideational effectiveness. Illustrates ways that gender is…

Discusses orality as an historical feature of African American language habits. Provides historical evidence of the literate values and habits of African Americans since the early 1800s. Resists the tendency to deny variation in the habits and values of ethnic groups. (HB)