bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Second Language Proficiency and Acculturation: An Investigation of the Effects of Language Status and Individual Characteristics
Authors: Clément Richard
Published: June 2009

The present study investigates the relationship between language status and individual differences in attitudes and motivation as they relate to proficiency and acculturation in a second language. All respondents were Francophone university students with either a minority ( n = 110) or a majority background ( nn = 183). They were requested to fill out a questionnaire including measures of ethnolinguistic vitality, attitudes and motivation as well as to participate in an interview aimed at assessing their oral proficiency in English as a second language. Analyses of the data show that minority group members evidence more self-confidence in their ability to use the second language and greater proficiency in the second language than majority group members. Level of acculturation was a function of proficiency in the second language and an interactive function of language status and frequency of contact. Correlational analyses revealed that proficiency and acculturation were most strongly associated with self-confidence. Attitudes and motivation neither had an important influence on language outcome nor were they influenced by language status. These results are discussed for their theoretical implications and with reference to second language education programmes.
‘You'll Love This One…’ An Exploration Into Joke-Prefacing Devices
Authors: Cashion Joan L. , Cody Michael J. , Erickson Keith V.
Published: June 2009

Humour is an important social phenomenon. Humorous people are likely to be perceived as spontaneous, honest and likeable (Kane, Suls & Tedeschi, 1972), and the tactical use of humour can enhance a speaker's persuasiveness and credibility, reduce tension, demonstrate solidarity, and provide pleasure (Civikly, 1983; Gruner, 1978). Generally, studies of humour have focused on theories of humour appreciation applied to incongruity resolution, arousal reduction and superiority (McGhee & Goldstein, 1983; Suls, 1983; Wicker et al., 1981; Zillmann, 1983). However, little is known about humour types, social functions, or introductions. Since most joke recountings function to promote ‘positive face’ (Brown & Levinson, 1978), it is highly probable that jokes are adapted to audiences by preface devices which explicitly affirm their purpose as a means of gaining positive face. How humour is prefaced, then, may reflect its social function. Thus, this paper explores joke-prefacing devices and joke types, and how both relate to perceptions of amusement, offensiveness, and speaker insensitivity.
Second Language Attrition: The Role of Motivation and Use
Authors: Gardner R. C. , Lalonde R. N. , Moorcroft R. , Evers F. T.
Published: June 2009

This study investigated the nature of second language (French) skills lost by grade 12 students over the course of the summer vacation, and the role played by attitudes and motivation in promoting language achievement and language maintenance. The results demonstrated that students rated many of their skills somewhat weaker after the summer vacation, but these effects were more general for items dealing with understanding skills than for speaking skills, and somewhat intermediate for reading and writing skills. Comparisons on objective assessments appeared to indicate improvement over the summer months on some skills, except for grammatical accuracy, that decreased, but these were interpreted as quite probably reflecting measurement artifacts. Although the attitude and motivation measures correlated quite meaningfully with the various measures of French proficiency, they did not correlate with loss of skill as indexed by simple change scores. A causal modelling analysis indicated nonetheless that attitudes and motivation were implicated in second language acquisition and retention, the latter primarily because motivational variables determine the extent to which individuals will make use of the second language during the summer period.
The Role of the Listener: Addressee Influences on Message Formulation
Authors: Krauss Robert M.
Published: June 2009

Psycholinguistic models tend to depict speech production as a unidirectional process in which speakers create messages for generic addressees. Missing from such characterisations is an analysis of the process by which addressees influence the form and content of messages created for them. Addressees affect message form and content in at least two ways: (1) Their personal characteristics help define the common ground they share with the speaker and, hence, the knowledge the speaker can draw upon in formulating messages; (2) In conversation, their on-line responses serve to inform the speaker about changes in their knowledge state and, hence, about the communicative effectiveness of the messages transmitted. A series of experiments illustrating these processes is described.
The Development of a Comprehensive System for Classifying Interruptions
Authors: Roger Derek , Bull Peter , Smith Sally
Published: June 2009

This paper describes the development of a new system for classifying interruptions and simultaneous speech, entitled the Interruption Coding System (ICS). The system is organised in the form of a binary flow-chart, and a clear distinction is drawn between interruptive and non-interruptive speech. Interruptions are further divided into single and complex forms, and the flow-chart terminates in a total of 17 empirically discriminable events. In contrast to previous scoring systems, ICS is thus both comprehensive and easy to use.
Interruptions in Political Interviews: A Study of Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock
Authors: Bull Peter , Mayer Kate
Published: June 2009

Eight televised interviews were selected from four different interviewers, who each interviewed both the Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher) and the Leader of the Opposition (Neil Kinnock); the video recordings were analysed using a new interruption coding system devised by Roger, Bull & Smith (1988). No significant difference was found between Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock either in the extent to which they interrupt or were interrupted by the interviewers; indeed, significant positive correlations were found between the different types of interruptions performed and received by the two politicians. The results were quite contrary to what might have been expected from the work of Beattie (1982), who claimed that Margaret Thatcher is frequently interrupted because she gives misleading turn-yielding cues. Where the politicians did differ was in the extent to which Margaret Thatcher explicitly protests at being interrupted; this gives the misleading impression that she is being excessively interrupted, although the objective evidence presented here clearly shows that this is not the case. The impression that she is badly treated is compounded by her tendency to personalise issues, to take questions and criticisms as accusations and frequently to address the interviewers formally by title and surname, as if they need to be called to account for misdemeanours. It is argued that these stylistic features have the effect of wrong-footing interviewers and putting them on the defensive.
Speech, for Instance. The Exemplar in Studies of Conversation
Authors: Hopper Robert
Published: June 2009

This essay considers studies of speech and language that base claims in exemplars by discussing: (1) some classic exemplars used by Austin, Wittgenstein, and others; and (2) exemplars' specifications of message and scene. One exemplist school, conversation analysis, receives emphasis in this treatment, and is contrasted with experimentation in terms of sampling, design, and techniques for analysis. Recommendations for exemplist research include: (1) giving priority to naturally occurring tape-recorded exemplars; (2) employing experimental techniques to extend exemplist research; (3) maintaining openness to innovation and serendipity.
On the Symbolic Functions of Vocal Affect Expression
Authors: Scherer Klaus R.
Published: June 2009

Starting from recent evidence on symbolic representational functions of primate calls, the question is raised as to whether human affect vocalisation might also serve cognitive representational as well as affective functions. An early model of sign functions, the Bühler Organon model, which postulates symbol, symptom and signal functions for all signs, is described. Furthermore, a distinction is made between push factors, which determine affect expression mainly via physiological effects, and pull factors, which influence expression via socially mediated models. Pull factors often seem implied in the signalling functions. While physiologically based push factors often provide symptoms of sender state, it is argued here that they may also serve cognitive representational functions in the sense that they reflect the antecedent cognitive appraisal processes that produced the affect state in the sender. In conclusion, a speculative link between the symbolic function of affect expression and the origin of language is discussed.
Verbal Processes in a Labour/Management Negotiation
Authors: Hinkle Steve , Stiles William B. , Taylor Laurie A.
Published: June 2009

The transcript of a labour/management negotiation was analysed using Stiles's verbal response modes (VRM) taxonomy to assess the value of general-purpose discourse analysis in studying negotiation processes. Temporal trends and labour/management differences in response mode use indicated that VRM coding successfully quantified important aspects of the negotiation. Comparisons were made between the results of VRM analysis and those of more specialised methods for analysis of discourse in negotiations.
Other-Relatedness in Language Processing
Authors: Graumann Carl F. , Herrmann Theo
Published: June 2009

Addressee-orientation or, more generally, other-relatedness must be considered a basic feature of language-in-use. Nevertheless, this feature has been largely neglected in language studies, mainly in experimental psycholinguistics. This neglect was one of the reasons for the foundation of the Heidelberg/Mannheim Research Group on Language Processing in Social Context (LISCO), whose major topic is the other-relatedness of speech and of language comprehension. Examples of this research and of the guiding theories are given as an introduction to this Special Issue which contains six reports on the work of the LISCO group plus an invited comment by Robert M. Krauss.
Hearer Questioning and Instruction
Authors: Wintermantel Margret , Siegerstetter Julia
Published: June 2009

This study deals with instructions which are given by experts (in this case car mechanics) and which concern the carrying out of concrete (here: mechanical) operations. Within the instructional dialogue, a transfer of knowledge between an expert and a novice takes place. The instruction produced by the expert is understood as the result of a problem-solving process. The expert knowledge about the carrying out of the mechanical operation is conceptualised as being represented in a hierarchical form. The single utterances which make up the whole instruction can be assigned to different levels of this action hierarchy. It is shown that the expert's adaptations to the novice occur as movements in the action hierarchy. These movements can be interpreted as systematic changes in the degree of solubility. This can be taken as an argument for the use of the problem-solving paradigm as a theoretical frame of reference for the psycholinguistic analyses and theoretical reconstruction of instructional dialogues.
What Men and Women are Said to Be: Social Representation and Language
Authors: Kruse Lenelis , Weimer Ernst , Wagner Franc
Published: June 2009

A psychological model was developed in order to analyse concepts of gender role-specific experiences and behaviours, verbalised in media texts. Descriptions of typical man-woman interactions were sampled from West German magazines taken as vehicles of social representations. The texts were analysed with a view to the man's and the woman's contributions to an interaction sequence. A multilevel analytical model enabled the identification of the syntactic and semantic structure of propositions. Elaborating Fillmore's and van Dijk's notion of frame, it was possible to represent interaction sequences by means of verb concepts and subject roles. To specify the content of these relational actions, a hierarchical category system was developed. Results demonstrate that representations of gender-role relationships in media texts still follow traditional cliches.
Other-Relatedness in Language Processing: Discussion and Comments
Authors: Krauss Robert M. , Fussell Susan R.
Published: June 2009

In contrast to the individualistic approach that characterises much current work in psycholinguistics, the work of the LISCO group takes a broad and inherently social approach to the study of language use. We discuss three of the central issues and themes that run through this collection of papers: (1) the types of other-relatedness in language; (2) the need to specify the loci of addressee effects in the language production process; and (3) methodological strategies for the study of other-relatedness. Connections between the work of the LISCO researchers and other investigators are noted. We conclude by discussing some considerations for future research on other-relatedness.
The Impact of Risk Message Content and Construction on Comments about Risks Embedded in 'Letters to Friends'
Authors: Dunwoody Sharon , Neuwirth Kurt , Griffin Robert J. , Long Marilee
Published: June 2009

In an effort to examine the ways in which content and framing components of mediated risk messages influence individuals' cognitive and affective responses, this study asked university students to read and respond to two risk stories that varied along four dimensions: level of risk expressed, severity of health symptoms experienced as a result of the risk, presence/absence of 'risk' in the headline, and vividness of story lead. Subjects, after reading the stories, were asked to write about the risks in letters to friends who were likely to encounter those risks themselves. Content analysis of the letters then isolated statements of risk likelihood and statements about level of worry. Results suggested that all four independent variables influenced those cognitive and affective dimensions of the letters, with symptom severity having the most frequent impact. The four manipulations often interacted to influence the dependent variables, suggesting that thinking in terms of main effects for such manipulations may be misleading. The authors suggest that distinctions between information content and stylistic strategies may be inappropriate.
Negotiating Child Health Care Routines during Paediatrician-Parent Conversations
Authors: Parrott Roxanne , Greene Kathryn , Parker Rhonda
Published: June 2009

Paediatrician-parent conversation is examined, using an adapted Bargaining Process Analysis coding scheme to determine how interactants sustain traditional roles versus encourage mutual involvement. Findings demonstrate that paediatricians rely on use of requests, whereas parents often use confirming messages. During interactions in which parents present specific concerns to paediatricians who address those concerns, parents use more requests than in situations where no specific concerns are voiced by parents. Moreover, during conversations when parents do not raise concerns, paediatricians are less confirming and parents more confirming than in the situations where parents present issues. The discussion acknowledges that many options exist to promote involvement other than those observed in this project. Change may create more opportunities to discuss areas of misunderstanding or disagreement regarding child care and development.
Negotiating Interpersonal and Medical Talk: Frame Shifts in the Gynaecologic Exam
Authors: Beck Christina S. , Ragan Sandra L.
Published: June 2009

Extending from previous research on code switching and conversational framing, the present study focuses on the interaction between a nurse practitioner and her patients during gynaecologic exams. Specifically, this research found that the nurse practitioner and her patients initiated and responded to cues that shifted the medical encounter from medical to personoriented and then back to medical frames. Further, this research indicates that such frame shifts serve a rhetorical function in the encounter which facilitates the actual medical examination. Finally, these interactions exemplify the efficient and empathic integration of both interpersonal and medical dimensions of the medical examination.
Dialogic Teaching of Medical Terminology at the Cancer Information Service
Authors: Hopper Robert , Bosma Juanita E. Handy , Ward Jo Ann
Published: June 2009

Medical terminology helps health care professionals to achieve efficient communication with each other, but causes difficulties when health care professionals try to inform patients and their loved ones about their conditions. This report examines naturally-occurring telephone conversations between information specialists of the Cancer Information Service (CIS) and callers who seek medical information. We describe four formats for bringing medical terminology to consciousness: asking questions as asides, parenthetical clarification, responding to patient difficulties, and using terms to refer to a caller's description. Information specialists use a variety of conversational devices to bring medical terms into these telephone encounters.
An Inferential/Strategic Explanation for the Social Organisation of Teases
Authors: Alberts J. K.
Published: June 2009

Previous work on teasing has examined the surface features of teasing interactions and has suggested that responses to teases are generally serious and are so because of the negative characterisations which are inherent in teases. The present study uses an inferential/strategic model for examining the social organisation of teases. Based on this analysis, it is argued that tease responses are formulated on the basis of the recipient's interpretation of the teaser's goal. It is claimed that tease recipients attempt to interpret the teaser's goal based on multiple clues to meaning. This interpretation then informs the type of response the recipient is likely to make: serious, humorous, or mixed. An analysis of teasing episodes revealed that there are three sources for clues to meaning: background knowledge, communciation content, and paralinguistic cues. This analysis attempts to provide a more encompassing explanation for the social organisation of teases.
Exploring the Affective Impact of Interpersonal Influence Messages
Authors: Dillard James Price , Harkness Claire Dzur
Published: June 2009

The principal reason for carrying out this study was to establish a relationship between the linguistic form of influence messages and their affective outcomes. A subordinate goal was to examine the impact of perceptions of legitimacy, a key feature of influence attempts, on affect. Eight directives, i.e. short strings of words intended to change the behaviour of a target person, were developed that varied in terms of explicitness and dominance. These were incorporated into a scenario in which one person sought to borrow another's classnotes under conditions of high or low legitimacy. Subjects listened to an audiotape description of the scenario, in which they were asked to imagine themselves as the target of the directive, then provided ratings of their affective states. The results revealed an interaction between explicitness and dominance such that directives high in both produced anger, annoyance, and surprise. Legitimacy was a strongedictor of affective outcomes; it showed significant associations with anger, annoyance, surprise, depression, sleepiness, happiness, delight and relaxation, as well as arousal and valence.
Speaker, Partner and Observer Evaluations of Affect during Social Interaction as a Function of Interaction Tempo
Authors: Warner Rebecca M.
Published: June 2009

Getting-acquainted conversations for 55 dyads were tape recorded. Speaker affect was evaluated by speakers, conversation partners and observers. On-off vocal activity was analysed to yield 14 interaction tempo variables. Factor analysis reduced these to four factor scores. Multiple regression analyses used these interaction tempo factors to predict speaker affect ratings made by speakers, partners, and observers. Speaker evaluations were significantly related to predictable patterning of talk within speaker and durations of interruptions and pauses. Partner ratings of speaker affect were significantly related to these two factors and to speaker talkativeness. Outside observer ratings were related to all four interaction tempo factors. Speakers who were more talkative, had longer interruptions and shorter pauses, whose amount of talk was more closely coordinated with partner talk, and whose amount of talk was predictably patterned over time, were rated more positively. A higher percentage of variance in observer ratings (44%) was explained than in speaker (16%) or partner (19%) ratings; participant ratings were probably influenced by many other types of information while observers had only voice to base their evaluations on.
Identity Enactment in Intellectual Discussion
Authors: Tracy Karen , Carjuzaa Jioanna
Published: June 2009

This article examines the ways in which academics (faculty and graduate students) go about claiming an nteractionally appropriate face during intellectual discussion. In particular, it examines discussion situations to see how participants enacted the institutional and intellectual identities that prior interviews had suggested were salient. Discourse analysis of the discussions suggests that different intellectual identities were established through some identifiably distinct ways by which speakers framed the work they presented. Institutional identity (rank) was enacted through three primary activities: talk and silence patterns, question types, and responses to noncomprehension. Implications of this work for other areas of inquiry are highlighted.
Perceptions of Overaccommodation Used by Nurses in Communication with the Elderly
Authors: Edwards Helen , Noller Patricia
Published: June 2009

The aim of the study was to determine how aspects of communication between nurses and the elderly were perceived by elderly people, future nurses, and uninvolved observers. Respondents (elderly women and nursing and psychology students) rated videotapes of interactions between a nurse and an elderly woman on three dimensions: patronizing, status, and solidarity. Three communication strategies and their combinations were represented in the vignettes. Because the strategies presented were perceived as patronizing by all three groups, no group effect was found for the patronizing dimension. The results show clear group differences particularly between the nursing students and the elderly, with the elderly rating many of the strategies more positively than did the nursing students. The results are discussed in relation to previous evaluations of overaccommodation, and implications of the different perceptions are considered.
Infant Voice and Mouth Movements Affect Adult Attributions
Authors: Bloom Kathleen
Published: June 2009

How are adults able to engage in prolonged "conversations" with preverbal infants? Without language, how does the infant hold the adult's conversational attention? Past studies by the author found that features of the preverbal infant's voice affect adult impressions. In the presentstudies it was hypothesized that specific features of the infant's face during vocalization account for adult social perceptions. In Experiment 1, a videotape of 24 thirty-second segments of 3-month-old, vocalizing infants was presented to three groups of adults. Twelve infants in the tape produced 'speech-like" syllabic sounds, and 12 infants produced, nasalized vocalic sounds. The conditions of tape presentation differed for the groups: AI V (audiovisual), Audio only, Video only. Adults rated infants on characteristics of social favorability and communicative intent. All groupsgave higher ratings to syllabic infants independently of modality of presentation. Therefore, visual, as well as, auditory cues to syllabic vocalization affected adult reactions. It was hypothesized in Experiment2 that mouth movement was the visual cue that influenced the adults' more favorable impressions of syllabic vocalizations. A videotape of 16 thirty-second segments was presented to three groups (A/V, Audio, Video) of adults. In this tape, 4 of the infants were shown moving their mouths and 4 were shown with no mouth movements. The 3-month-olds were randomly presented twice, and syllabic and vocalic sounds were dubbed onto the video track so that infants served as their own control for sound category. In the absence of audio cues (Video-only group), adult ratings were influenced by the infants' mouth movements. Taken together these experiments indicate that adults use features of speech (sound quality, mouth movements) in forming impressions of the infant as a social and communicative partner.
The Role of Soclal Identity in Second-Language Proficiency and Use
Authors: Kelly Caroline , Sachdev Itesh , Kottsieper Petra , Ingram Maysa
Published: June 2009

The present study provides a test of the basic intergroup model of second-language acquisition where subjects were 67 members of the Spanish community in London. Dependent variables comprised measures of actual and self-reported second-language proficiency as well as measures of language use and opinions about language use. Independent variables comprised measures of ingroup identification and perceptions of intergroup relations. Analyses provided some support for the intergroup model, particularly the impact ofgroup identification and vitality on patterns of language use, although findings relating to certain other aspects of the model were rather mixed.
Do Language Reforms Change Our Way of Thinking?
Authors: Prentice Deborah A.
Published: June 2009

A naturalistic experiment investigated the effects of language reforms on several aspects of thought. Half of the students in an introductory psychology class received corrections any time they used "he" as a generic pronoun in their written work; the other half received no corrections to their written language use. At the end of the semester, all students completed measures of their language use, their gender imagery, and their attitudes to-ward language reforms. Results showed that the language corrections did reduce students' subsequent use of gender-biased language but did not affect their imagery nor their attitudes toward language reforms. Additional results revealed thatgender imagery was related to the gender connotations of the language encountered in the imagery task, especially for female students, and to language use for students who did not receive corrections. Implications of these results for the debate about the masculine generic prescription are discussed.
Responsive List Construction
Authors: Lerner Gene H.
Published: June 2009

Research by Gail Jefferson has established that list construction in conversation can be used to perform a range of interactional tasks. This report provides an extension and application of Jefferson's work to demonstrate how this practice can be used to produce a delicately formulated, multifaceted response. A preliminary characterization of a single case of responsive list construction is presented. Next, the practice of list construction is described. List construction can be used to formulate a class of objects through an inductive procedure by moving from the particular to the general. This feature of list construction can be used to correct an error in an unexposed fashion by recasting a problematic, but possibly complete, remark as merely the first item in a list. These features of list construction are then applied as analytic resources in a further explication of an individual utterance presented at the outset of the report. Responsive list construction can be used to achieve a qualified acceptance of a prior speaker's utterance by incorporating that utterance into a list of related items, thus in effect balancing multiple social concerns.
On Identifying Questions, Replies, and Non-Replies in Political Interviews
Authors: Bull Peter
Published: June 2009

It has been claimed that the question and answer format is the defining feature of the news interview, although the definition of what constitute questions, replies, or non-replies is by no means self-evident. Such definitional issues are central to theoretical disputes about the nature of the political interview, but nevertheless to date have received scant attention in the research literature. In the study reported here, a set of guidelines is presented for identifying questions, replies, and non-replies to questions; these are based on the detailed analysis of 33 televised British political interviews from the General Elections of 1987 and 1992, and also from interviews that John Major (the present prime minister) gave in 1990 and 1991. In addition to presenting these guidelines, it is argued that responses to questions in political interviews should not simply be dichotomised into replies and non-replies, but rather should be seen in terms of a continuum, with a substantial proportion of what are called intermediate responses occupying a position midway between a full reply and a complete failure to answer the question.
Options and UMS
Authors: Christenfeld Nicholas
Published: June 2009

Most people who have speculated about the causes of ums in speech (also known as filled pauses) have suggested that they are produced when the speaker is confronted with a challenging choice. This idea, in spite of its intuitive appeal and theoretical usefulness, has never been directly tested. The present experiment manipulates the complexity of options facing a speaker by having subjects describe mazes with a varying number of alternate possible routes. The mazes with more options did produce more filled pauses. However, in describing even the simplest maze, one of the easiest possible speech tasks, the subjects still said um regularly. It is suggested that options are only one factor in filled pause production, and that breaking up the rhythm of speech may also fosterfilled pauses.
The Analysis of Face Work in Discourse
Authors: Wood Linda A. , Kroger Rolf O.
Published: June 2009

The Brown-Levinson (1987) theory of politeness has attracted a great deal of attention from a variety of disciplines. However, the lack of systematic methods for assessing discourse in terms of politeness has hampered the evaluation and development of the theory and the comparison of findings from different studies. The authors present a proposal that attempts to address some of the limitations of previous approaches and to extend their application to facework. The authors describe a theme for conceptualizing facework in discourse based on an ethogenic hierarchical analysis of action sequences in social episodes. From that scheme a procedure is derived for coding discourse in terms of its functions with respect to the face of speakers and hearers. The procedure is illustrated with examples from a research project on the use of facework in letters of appeal in an academic context.
Racial Discourse, Attitude, and Rhetorical Manoeuvres
Authors: Verkuyten Maykel , de Jong Wiebe , Masson Kees
Published: June 2009

Eleven ethnically Dutch adults, living in an old neighborhood in the center of the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, discussed in twogroups during fourevenings the situation in their neighborhood. Transcripts of the discussions were analyzed focusing on racial attitudes and their expression. Three questionsguided the analysis. First, the relationship between holding strong views and the variability of attitudinal positions expressed in discourse was studied. Second, the question of the meaning of different rhetorical manoeuvres or devices in expressing racism was addressed. Third, some of the ways in which racist views are presented and justified were explored. It is argued, first, that variability in attitude expression depends on the normative position of the speaker Second, it is argued that "rhetorical" manoeuvres are not only strategical but can also have a more genuine meaning. Third, it is shown that using personal experiences is a powerful device for justifying racist talk.
Patients Who Deceive
Authors: Burgoon Michael , Callister Mark , Hunsaker Frank G.
Published: June 2009

Afield investigation was completed surveying the communication practices of 754 adults. Questionnaire items were designed to tap the multidimensional nature of deception in patient-physician interactions. A battery of sociodemographic items was also included. Data reduction techniques were used to produce a measurement model with concealment lequivocation, falsification, and truthfulness as three orthogonal, internally reliable dimensions of deceptive communication in the practice of clinical medicine. Statistical controls indicated that social desirability of honest versus duplicitous responses were not correlated with willingness to admit using deception in patient-physician interactions. Summaries offrequency of use of different kinds of deceptive communication by different population subgroups were offered. Discussion focused on the theoretical utility of the measurement model and the practical implications for the practice of medicine. Finally, information management techniques available to health care providers were suggested to (a) increase conversational surveillance, (b) detect language selection/ use associated with different kinds of deceptive communication, and (c) provide interactional strategies to reduce patient deception.
The Language of Detecting Deceit
Authors: Kalbfleisch Pamela J.
Published: June 2009

Techniques used to convince potential deceivers to tell the truth or to draw out information and cues to deception have long been part of the conventional wisdom of attorneys, police officers, investigative reporters, and other professionals who work with potential deceivers. A comprehensive search of this pragmatic literature yields myriad message strategies that these practitioners believe to be effective in obtaining accurate information and detecting deception. These diverse strategies were placed into a typology categorized by the ecumenical motivations facilitating truth-telling, increased information exchange, and cues to deceptive communication. Sample message tactics for implementing these overarching strategies are incorporated into this classification. This typology provides an organizational scheme for the diverse techniques drawn from pragmatic literature and can serve as a template or heuristic model for examining deception detection in interpersonal settings.
Reactions to Falsifications in Public and Interpersonal Contexts
Authors: Robinson W. Peter
Published: June 2009

This research focused on reactions to and evaluations of lies in public and interpersonal contexts. It was shown that people in general are not radical social constructionists; they endorsed the existence of false statements and claimed that lies were told more by some authorities and people than others. Some lies by authorities evoked reactions of amusement, and acceptability or indifference by up to half of the respondents, but most were judged as wrong, and seriously so, especially when the consequences for victims were dire. For lies in interpersonal contexts, where the respondent could be judging others or self in the role of liar, it was found that perceived wrongness was both weaker and more differentiated across situations forjudgments of self. For neither public nor interpersonal lies was there a single general factor underlying the interitem correlations. Across the domains, judged wrongness of lies by the media and politicians was unrelated to corresponding judgments in interpersonal contexts, but those associated with legal contexts correlated significantly with each of the four interpersonal factors, especially those concerned with lies about illegal acts. Questions were posed about the ways in which such judgments are embedded in daily life, and possible similarities and differences between public and interpersonal contexts were identified.
When Hearing's Not Believing
Authors: Dickon Risa E. , Manusov Valerie , Cody Michael J. , McLaughlin Margaret L.
Published: June 2009

This article compares respondents' beliefs about others' private and public explanations for failure to fulfill two compliance-gaining goals: providing assistance and accepting advice. Participants generated open-ended responses that were either acceptable accounts (public explanations) or probable causes (private attributions) for another's noncompliance. Data analysis showed that attributions and accounts tend to vary in form, and, as expected, public explanations perceived as likely to be communicated were more unintentional, uncontrollable, unstable, and external than were private explanations for both failure types. People's reports for both attributions and accounts, however, were influenced by the nature of the compliance goal, with means for scenarios depicting failures to take advice consistently more intentional and controllable than the responses for failing to provide assistance.
Responding to Rejected Requests
Authors: Ifert Danette E. , Roloff Michael E.
Published: June 2009

This study examines persons' reactions when encountering refusals of requests. Three different obstacle types-unwillingness, imposition, and inability-are discussed as determinants ofpersistence. Linguistic moves following a refusal are then investigated to understand how obstacles expressed in a refusal influence the type of response to refusal. Results suggest that intimate requesters indicate a greater desire to persist when confronted by unwillingness obstacles than by inability obstacles. Requesters encountering unwillingness obstacles also tend to be less likely to forgive reluctant request targets and more likely to inquire about the basis for refusal and to produce additional persuasive messages than those encountering inability obstacles. These differences may influence both the types of obstacles that refusers choose to express and the relationship between requester and rejector after refusal.
Language about Women and Men
Authors: Weatherall Ann
Published: June 2009

Past psychological research on language about women and men has largely focused on examining the cognitive processes involved in the comprehension and production of linguistic sexism in experimental contexts. An understanding of the social factors influencing sexist language use may be achieved by analyses of conversations. Fictional dialogues, taken from a British soap opera, Coronation Street, were chosen to explore the potential of examining conversational language. A quantitative analysis of the scripted interactions provided virtually no evidence ofa pervasive bias against women in language. However, a focused qualitative approach revealed how sexism can invade specific linguistic interactions. The results show that the negative evaluative position of women in language is not universal. The linguistic status assigned to women largely depends on the exact nature of the context in which any interaction is taking place.
Evaluations and Stereotyping of Accented Speakers by Pre-Adolescent Children
Authors: Nesdale Drew , Rooney Rosanna
Published: June 2009

An experiment was carried out to examine the effect of language accents on children's evaluations and stereotyping. Forty 10-year-old and 40 12-year-old Australian children from monocultural and multicultural schools listened to the same passage read in English by boys with strong and mild Italo-Australian and Viet-Australian accents, and broad (i.e., strong) and general (i.e., mild) Australian accents. In addition, for half the children each accent was given its appropriate ethnic designation, whereas the remaining children listened to unlabeled accents. The children rated the accents on evaluative (status, solidarity) scales and on traits comprising the stereotype of each group. The findings indicated that their evaluations were influenced by accent ethnicity and accent strength. In addition, the older but not the younger children's evaluations were affected by accent identification and ethnic contact. The data also suggested that the accents evoked ethnic stereotypes. The emerging complexity of the language attitude-stereotype relationship is discussed.
Social Influence and Language Learning
Authors: Sachdev Itesh , Wright Audrey
Published: June 2009

Videotaped discussions (among in-group or out-group members) promoting integrative or instrumental benefits of learningEuropean orAsian languages were presented randomly to participants who subsequently rated several Asian and European languages. Responses from 176 English schoolchildren (males and females, 13 years old) on measures of self-reported contact, identification, perceived status and demographic vitality, desire to learn, and integrative and instrumental value of languages were analyzed. As expected, perceptions were consistently more positive about European (especially when promoted by in-group) than Asian languages (especially when promoted by out-group). Promotion of instrumental benefits of European languages accentuated these differences, whereas in-group promotion of Asian languages attenuated existing differences. Self-categorisation and social identification processes are discussed to explain the findings.
The Mediating Role of Narrative in Intergroup Processes
Authors: Pittam Jeffery , Gallois Cynthia
Published: June 2009

This article shows how the use of narrative mediates intergroup processes in spoken discourse. Sixty male and 72 female young Australian heterosexual adults participated in 4-person conversations (same-sex or mixed-sex) about HIV/AIDS and safe sex. Twvo hundred and thirty-two extracts from the transcripts that met the criteria for narratives were coded for in-group and out-group, agent and object (if any) named, extent of group homogeneity, and positivity/negativity. Major results of analyses of variance showed more positivity to in-groups than out-groups, children with AIDS, and people with medically acquired HIV; There was little difference in homogeneity amonggroups. On the other hand, qualitative analysis of several extracts indicated that negative affective reactions to the out-group and perceived out-group homogeneity were collaboratively negotiated, using narrative to assist in defining the out-group, the tone adopted by the participants to the out-group, and how participants positioned themselves relative to the issue discussed.
Implicit Versus Explicit Strategies of Out-Group Discrimination
Authors: Franco Francesca M. , Maass Anne
Published: June 2009

This article addresses the role of intentional control in intergroup favouritism and out-group discrimination. We hypothesise that explicit strategies of discrimination (reward allocation, trait attributions) are under people's intentional control, whereas the linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) represents a strategy that allows relatively little conscious control. An experiment is reported in which basketball fans (N = 88) of two different teams were compared, one known for its uninhibited expression of intergroup hostility, the other known for considering aggressive behaviours unacceptable. Aggressive fans showed greater out-group discrimination than unaggressive fans on reward allocation and trait attribution, but comparable degrees of LIB. This suggests that on explicit tasks such as reward allocation, out-group discrimination can be inhibited relatively easily, whereas intentional control appears considerably more difficult for subtle differences in language abstraction. The LIB may therefore constitute a useful tool for assessing prejudice while minimising the impact of social desirability considerations.
The Context of Intergroup Commvnication
Authors: Singelis Theodore M.
Published: June 2009

This article discusses the background of intergroup communication research, comments on the articles presented in this special issue, and suggests some issues and methods that may be prevalent in the future. It is proposed that intergroup communication research has been influenced by the Western bias toward individual-level analysis, resulting in an excessive focus on cognition at the expense of contextual factors. This tendency may be balanced in future research by a greater consideration of context, an integration of levels of analysis, and attention to the influence of emotion. Also in the future, an expansion of methodologies will better incorporate the complexity and emergent qualities inherent in intergroup communication. It is concluded that the future of intergroup communication research is promising.
Reactions to Older People being Patronized
Authors: Harwood Jake , Giles Howard
Published: June 2009

This article examines young people's evaluations of young and elderly targets in a patronizing encounter. Intergenerational patronizing vignettes were presented to respondents who evaluated the target characters. The presence of patronizing talk by a young individual, the nature of the older adult's response, and the thoughts of each target were manipulated in the vignette. The thoughts were manipulated as caring or dominant (younger individual), and assertive or passive (older individual). The young individual was evaluated more negatively in the patronizing, rather than neutral, speech conditions. Less assertive responses to patronizing speech resulted in evaluations of increased warmth and incompetence for the elderly patronizee. Caring thoughts by the patronizer led to more positive evaluations of her or him, although such thoughts were unlikely to be attributed when not provided. Relationships between these findings and previous research are discussed, and applied and theoretical implications are considered.
Accent Accommodation in the Job Interview
Authors: Willemyns Michael , Gallois Cynthia , Callan Victor J. , Pittam Jeffery
Published: June 2009

Using the framework of Communication Accommodation Theory, this study investigated the extent to which job applicants objectively and subjectively altered their accents to converge to or diverge from the speech style of the interviewer. Forty-eight male and 48 female job applicants participated in two interviews for a casual research assistant position. In one interview, the interviewer had a broad Australian English accent, and in the other one, the interviewer had a cultivated accent. Applicants showed broader accents with broad-accented interviewers than with cultivated-accented interviewers. Applicants did not converge to the cultivated-accented interviewers, however, and male job applicants were more likely than were females to diverge from the cultivated-accented interviewers. There were also discrepancies between objectively rated changes to applicants' accents and their subjective judgments about the extent of accent accommodation.
The Relationship between Locus of Control and the Evaluative Consequences of Powerful and Powerless Speech Styles
Authors: Hosman Lawrence A.
Published: June 2009

This article examines the impact of receivers' locus of control on their evaluations of speakers exhibiting powerful or powerless speech. The results indicated that those with an external locus of control evaluated a high-power message more positively than did those with an internal locus of control. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a speaker using a powerful style is threatening to receivers and causes them to bias their speaker evaluations positively. The results also address the apparent paradox between the positive evaluations received by a high-power message and the negative connotations associated with power and dominance.