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This study investigates verbal interaction in a series of intercultural management-level meetings in a large international airline corporation based in Hong Kong. It presents an analysis of the interactive style and the underlying interactive strategies of some of the participants in the four meetings, suggesting that variations in the use of such strategies relate to the different impressions speakers create, particularly with regard to influence and control. It was found that despite their overall similarity in structure and function, there seems to be considerable variation in interactive style both within and between meetings, relating to the level of formality and the behaviour of the speakers in terms of 'influence attempts'. What became apparent is that the use of interactive strategies, at both procedural and message-related levels of discourse, are stylistically-sensitive; ie how individuals use such strategies is dependent on what they consider to be appropriate interactive behaviour, which in turn is influenced by their underlying socio-cultural value system. There also appear to be a set of commonly recurring interactive strategies used in the meetings, although the choice of strategies varies from meeting to meeting and participant to participant. It seems that when interactive strategies are shared by several participants in a meeting, one interactive style will tend to dominate, to the advantage of 'in-group' users and the detriment of other 'nonusers'. The study has both a theoretical and practical aim. It tries to build on exisiting concepts of interactive style both within linguistic and management studies and suggest some provisional 'parameters' of interactive style and a 'taxonomy' of interactive strategies. It is hoped that these might be of some theoretical use for future research in the field and of some practical use for workplace communication training and materials production

Humour has often been overlooked as a serious subject of study, but humour studies is a growing area of multidisciplinary research, of which one contributing discipline is linguistics. Much of the focus to date has been on identifying the mechanisms that trigger humour in self-contained joke texts. This thesis is part of a growing shift in focus towards studying (a) spontaneous, situational humour analysed in context, and (b) function rather than form. The literature on the social functions of humour is reviewed, and a new model proposed as an analytical framework. The model features five main functions of humour, which relate, respectively, to (i) amusement, (ii) social relations, (iii) self-presentation, (iv) representation and (v) the managing of the on-going action. Whereas the first four functions are largely drawn from the literature (albeit in a modified form), the latter function has been inadequately investigated to date, and its inclusion in the model is informed by the analysis. The data is taken from Question Time, a BBC political panel discussion programme, and a theoretical framework specific to the data is drawn from media studies and research on mediatised politics. Instances of linguistic humour are identified and analysed utilising a range of analytical concepts from various different areas of linguistics, such as discourse analysis, pragmatics, Politeness Theory and Conversation Analysis. The model is applied to the data, and consideration is given to how each of the five functions are manifest in this specific genre. Conclusions are drawn as to the nature of humour in Question Time, and related to themes drawn from the theoretical framework, including the role of humour in staged debate, the use of humour by politicians for the purposes of self-presentation, and the role of entertainment in mediatised politics. Two recurring themes throughout the thesis are the multi functionality of humorous utterances, and the importance of situating humour in all levels of context.

Studies in Critical Discourse Analysis are concerned with current political and social issues. Because of its interdisciplinarity, Critical Discourse analysts were investigating issues like 'racisim' and 'legitimization' in discourse. However, most of these studies have analyzed western discourse, and even those which analyzed Arabic data were in most cases analyzing the translation and not the Arabic text. This study can be seen as an additional contribution to this field, as it investigates the words of four major speakers (George Bush, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin), related to the War in Iraq between 2002 and 2006. In this study we highlight some of the major discursive and formal strategies used by these four speakers, in addition to the local and global meanings and the structure and argumentation used in their speeches. Through this analysis, we investigate the speaker's methods of persuading, manipulating, and reassuring their audience, and the shifts in their discourses which accompany their political position at the time. We also study the nature of these speeches when delivered to audiences in the West and the Middle East. The study highlights the exercise of power and the effect of the speakers' ideologies in their discourse. It compares these speakers, who come from four different cultural backgrounds and traditions. We concentrate on the power markers used by the speakers, and two ideological aspects of their speeches: the ideology of religion and the ideology of the 'state' and the way these are implemented through the speeches. This comparative study concludes that despite the different rhetorical traditions of these fours speakers, none of them hesitates during an international conflict to depart from their tradition in order to achieve a greater effect on the audience.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that multilinguals' ability to learn languages increases the more languages they know; experimental evidence supports the idea that language learning promotes the development of metalinguistic awareness. The aim of this study was to investigate whether multilinguals' grammatical metalinguistic awareness is related to their attainment over and above their language experience. In order to do this, it was necessary to investigate empirically the hypotheses that attainment in another language is related to multilinguals' experience of learning languages and to their metalinguistic awareness, and that metalinguistic awareness is related to language learning experience. Thirty native English-speaking educated adult multilinguale were assessedo n their ability to learn the initial stageso f Basque under controlled conditions, their previous language learning experience, and their metalinguistic awareness (explaining native language grammaticality judgements, MLAT4, translation from Middle Egyptian, knowledge of Basque rules, implicit and explicit artificial grammar tests). The data were analysed using regression analyses in a within-participants design. The results show that the multilinguals were better at learning Basque (1) the more languages they could read and had, at least partly, studied, and (2) the more explicit grammatical metalinguistic awareness they had developed. Multilinguals' explicit metalinguistic awareness assisted language learning over and above language experience when the Basque rule knowledge test was included in the set of metalinguistic variables, but not when it was excluded. Multilinguals' language experience was related to their performance on the tests of explicit metalinguistic awareness, but not to the implicit test, nor to hypothesised overacceptance of ungrammatical items on the implicit and explicit artificial grammar tests. As a group, the multilinguals were better at the explicit than the implicit artificial grammar tests. In an exploratory factor analysis of the six metalinguistic tests two factors were found, interpreted as deductive and inductive grammar awareness, which appear to correspond to Carroll's (1993) `grammatical sensitivity', and `inductive language learning'. Performance on metalinguistic tests that assessed both inductive and deductive grammar awareness was related to language learning attainment. The results suggest that multilinguals' language learning ability may be related to their development of explicit grammatical metalinguistic awareness, in addition to the other abilities they gain through their experience of language learning. iii

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