Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 14, Issue 1, 1991

This paper analyzes the role of language in the perception of violence in television news stories. 240 people were asked to watch and/or listen to news stories and then to record their perception of the information. The difference between perceived violence from pictures only on the one hand, and spoken narrative with or without pictures on the other, was highly significant, indicating that the spoken narrative was responsible for the perception of violence in the stories.

The paper draws upon a study of interaction between staff and non-native speakers of English in the Outpatients Department carried out at the request of a large public hospital. It discusses the nature of communication in the medical setting and the effects of institutionalized models of interaction on patients of both non-English speaking and English-speaking background. An attempt is made to characterize typical language exchanges at various points in patients’ passage through the system and to offer explanations for communication problems arising from selected interactions between patients and hospital staff. Outcomes of these interactions as evidenced by patients’ ability to demonstrate understanding of their medication regimes are also considered.

While according cross-cultural factors an important role in communication with non-English speakers, and accepting that NESB patients on account of their limited English may be disadvantaged in the medical encounter, it was concluded that communication difficulties can arise intraculturally as well as cross-culturally and that the differentiated roles of staff and patients constitute the overriding constraint on effective communication. Implications are drawn for the ways in which social interaction between unequal parties is mediated through language.

This paper identifies the nature of the administrative policies prior to ‘The Wyndham Report’ and then traces changes up until the late 1970s. It reports research that used documentary analysis and depth interviews, and has three main findings. First, the administrative policy changes from 1962 to 1979 overlooked their impact on Languages education. Second, school-based decision making exposed Languages to diverse administrative practices, including those that reinforced elitism. Third, the falling numbers of candidates being examined in Languages in the late 1970s was only halted by the introduction of ‘Z Courses’ and by the demand for community languages.

From the earliest days of civilization — and until quite recently — it went without saying that the principal business of education was to ensure that an educated person had a mastery of language.

Modern Language Association, USA, 1977)

This article presents the first results of a research project which investigates patterns of language use in the Italo-Australian community in Sydney. All three languages spoken by the majority of Italo-Australians are taken into account: Italian, dialect and English. This article focusses on English. Use of English by 202 subjects (of different generations, Italian regions, age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds) is explored in 46 situations in four domains (family, friendship, work/school and transactions), taking into account congruent and incongruent situations with regard to three main factors: interlocutor, topic of conversation and place where it takes place.

The data show a widespread shift to English which starts among younger subjects of the first generation and increases dramatically among the second generation. Furthermore, use of English by Italo-Australians depends more on personal characteristics of speakers and addressees (such as age and generation) than on topic or place of conversation.

Television plays a major role in the lives of children. This studies examines one aspect of children’s television – the reading of picture books. Interaction centred around picture books has been shown to be an important element in the acquisition of literacy. Mediated picture books and “live” picture books encourage different patterns of interaction between reader and child. The reading of a television picture book, unlike that of a live picture book, is a text, not an interaction centred about a text. Such texts can form the basis of useful interactions between children and others, but exposure to mediated picture books alone does not appear to replace the function of “live” picture book reading in the acquisition of literacy.