An introduction to discourse analysis

TLDR: This paper found that African-Americans are more likely to use abstract nouns than adjectives in academic social language to describe their goals and achievements, as well as use them in their activities.

Abstract: language 124 abstract nouns 30 academic social language 30 achievement statements 124 activities 12, 83 activity building 86, 93, 140 adverbial phrases 150 adverbs 101, 150 affective statements 124, 126 African-Americans: children 91, 106–7, 110–14; Hispanic doctors 131; storytelling 147; teenagers 43; Vernacular English 113 agent-patients 19 agreement 95 ambiguity 31, 32 Americans: Native 14–17, 19 see also African-Americans anthropologists 56 applied issues 8 articles 100 asprin bottle warning 23–5 assemblies 46–8 Athabaskans 16–17 ‘atrophied’ term 55–6 bachelors 58–60 background/foreground context 3 Barsalou, L.W. 49 Bellah, R.N. et al 67; Habits of the Heart 67 Bernstein, B. 132 biologists 27–8 biology 27, 55–6 Bloome, D.: and Green, J. 98n Bourdieu, P. 136 brain development 56–7 Brown, J. 37 butterflies (Heliconius) 27–8 Carroll, L.: Jabberwocky 101, 102 case studies: Jane 25–7, 29; Sandra 136–48, 146 see also interviews catalyst 111, 112 child(ren): African-American 106; rearing model 81–2; views about light 44–5; word acquisition 41–2 see also teenagers class see social class clauses 99–100, 149–53, 157–8 coda 112 code: restricted 132; switching 87 coffee 50, 80, 81 cognitive statements 124, 126–7 cohesive devices 159–61 collocational patterns 29, 30 committee meetings 11, 12 communication: grammar in 9, 149–61 complement 33 compound nouns 30 conflict 113 conjunctions 160 connection building 86, 94, 133–4