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This study draws on previous findings regarding adverbial clauses in relation to speaker and interlocutor gender in a corpus of current actual speaker data. Our aim is to examine those same relations in a corpus of Shakespeare’s comedies and histories. Mondorf (2004) investigated four types of adverbial clauses in a corpus of modern speech and found that the women used more causal, conditional and purpose clauses than the men, while the men used more concessive clauses. Mondorf’s explanation for this difference is that women use the three clause types that mitigate the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition, while men tend to use more concessives, which strengthen the commitment. She also found that in mixed-gender conversations these trends were generally intensified. However, other analyses have indicated that these patterns do not hold across contexts. Much more research is called for to understand the localized relations among adverbial clause usage, speaker gender and context in particular settings. One question to pursue is whether we can see gendered patterns of adverbial usage in historical varieties of English. Accordingly, in this study we analyse dialogue in Shakespeare’s plays to ascertain whether Mondorf’s findings can be extrapolated to the language of these fictional speakers. The results indicate that Shakespeare generally does not use the adverbial clauses to portray the gender of the characters in ways similar to those of actual, modern speakers. Only small differences are found, regarding purpose clauses in the histories and conditional clauses in the comedies. The analysis indicates that female and male characters speak very similarly with regard to syntax, and adverbial clauses contribute to the construction of characters in very localized contexts.

The rather novel phenomenon of cybergrooming, or the solicitation of minors for sex via the Internet, has yet to be fully explored. This is a problem because such predatory behavior can lead to psychological and/or physical abuse of minors. The present study seeks to fill this knowledge by performing a qualitative, grounded theory analysis of naturally-occurring cybergrooming discourse. Data were drawn from the website of the online watchdog group, Perverted Justice. The first 20 lines of talk transmitted by the adults in these chat conversations were sampled from 100 transcripts published by Perverted Justice.Multi-step coding, facilitated by the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti, revealed 11 themes of social action that discursively emerged in at least 25% of said transcripts: (1) conversational openings; (2) initial solicitation of age, sex and/or location; (3) specific questions regarding 'child's' life; (4) follow-up topicalization of 'child's' location; (5) seeking visual images of 'child;' (6) complimenting 'child's' appearance; (7) soliciting topic for discussion; (8) explicitly sexual statements; (9) soliciting 'child's' age preference for sex/romance; (10) arranging further contact; and (11) disclosing personal activities. These themes are then explored in their own context, in relation to each other, and as elements of the broad behavioral framework of cybergrooming.

Supportive messages occur within most relationships. Researchers have found strong relationships between social support and various physical and psychological health outcomes, but the specific mechanisms at work have yet to be fully explored. Many factors contribute to whether a supportive interaction is processed as helpful or supportive by the recipient including relational factors, message content, past experiences, etc. For peer dyads, the context and supportive messages individuals provide their peer may inhibit or contribute to their perception of their peer’s supportive behavior. The current study examined the impact of contextual factors (such as family communication patterns and relationship quality) on message content and the perception of social support within peer relationships. Emerging adult dyads (N = 127) were recruited from a large Southern university in the United States to discuss one of four topics (e.g., a stressful life event, risky sexual behavior, loss of a loved one, discuss a traumatic event) with a peer so that the processes among contextual factors, supportive message content, and supportive message processing could be examined. The association between contextual factors on how individuals processed a supportive interaction was mediated by the content of the supportive conversation. Limitations, strengths, and implications were discussed.

This study investigated tertiary second language learners’ attitudes toward storytelling as a classroom activity. Instruction and practice in storytelling were given to 26 international undergraduates for ten weeks. Questionnaires were administered before and after the treatment to assess learners’ interest in storytelling and beliefs about its effectiveness as a learning task. The results of the pre-treatment questionnaire showed that while participants’ interest in storytelling was very low, their expectations of its effectiveness were relatively high. Asian or low proficient participants indicated higher interest than Europeans or high proficient learners. The results of the post-treatment questionnaire showed that participants’ attitudes changed only slightly. The results suggest that initial interest and expectations might play an important role in maximizing the effectiveness of storytelling for adult second language learners.

Excerpt: The ways in which language and linguistics figure in women’s science fiction reference communication both within human societies and among humans and other societies.