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Metadiscourse refers to writers' discourse about their discourse—their directions for how readers should read, react to, and evaluate what they have written about the subject matter. In this study the authors divided metadiscourse into textual metadiscourse (text markers and interpretive markers) and interpersonal metadiscourse (hedges, certainty markers, attributors, attitude markers, and commentary). The purpose was to investigate cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse in the United States and Finland by asking whether U.S. and Finnish writers use the same amounts and types and whether gender makes any difference. The analyses revealed that students in both countries used all categories and subcategories, but that there were some cultural and gender differences in the amounts and types used. Finnish students and male students used more metadiscourse than U.S. students and female students. Students in both countries used much more interpersonal than textual metadiscourse with Finnish males using the most and U.S. males the least. The study provides partial evidence for the universality of metadiscourse and suggests the need for more cross-cultural studies of its use and/or more attention to it in teaching composition.

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Two experiments investigated the relationship between cultural schemata and reading comprehension.Black and white eighth graders read a passage that dealt with an instance of "sounding" or "playing the dozens," a form of verbal ritual insult predominantly found in the black community. Black subjects tended to interpret the passage as being about verbal play, whereas white subjects tended to interpret it as being about physical aggression. Scores on theme-revealing disambiguations and intrusions and on an inference probe task showed a close relationship to the subjects' cultural background. The evidence shows that cultural schemata can influence how prose material is A tradition of research which can be traced to Bartlett (1932) has assessed the effect of beliefs on the learning and remembering of information in brief texts. A recent example of research of this type is a study by Read and Rosson (Note 1). They used a questionnaire to identify people who were either strongly for or strongly against nuclear power.Those identified were asked to read a passage about a fire at a nuclear power station. The results on a multiple choice test given immediately after the passage showed little influence on beliefs. However, when the test was delayed one or two weeks, people tended to distort the passage in a manner consistent with their beliefs. Subjects who favored nuclear power were able to reject antinuclear statements which had no basis in the passage, but they tended to accept spurious, pronuclear statements. Cultural Schemata and Reading Comprehension 3

The development of two children's responses to yes/no questions is studied longitudinally. It will be proposed that the children realize that they must verbalize, but do not understand the semantics of the question form or the affirmative and negative particles. Their answers are not appropriate by the conventions of adult speech. In this situation, each child develops his own system, a phenomenon to be called PRAGMATIC VARIATION. Head nodding and shaking show a pattern of development comparable to that of the verbal responses. The options available to children acquiring English are discussed.