A series of experiments was conducted in which a word or letter string initially appeared in parafoveal vision, followed by the subject's eye movement to the stimulus. During the saccade, the initially displayed stimulus was replaced by a word that the subject was asked to read. The results indicated that the types of prior parafoveal information studied facilitated the naming of the word. The effect was obtained when the subject made an eye movement and when the saccade was simulated. There was also evidence that attentional allocation was tied to the direction of the eye movement.

This paper considers the methodological challenges that 'post-modern' approaches to gender (Cameron 2005) pose for the field of language and gender. If we assume that gender cannot be 'read off' the identities of speakers, but rather is a social process by which individuals come to make cultural sense, then how do we best investigate this process? As Stokoe (2005) and Stokoe and Smithson (2002) have argued, it is problematic within such frameworks to conduct research that pre-categorizes individuals as women and men, since it is individuals' constitution as women or men that should be the issue under investigation. Indeed, for Butler (1990: 145), to understand 'identity as a practice . . . is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effects of a rule-bound discourse' (emphasis in original). This suggests that we attend to cultural norms of intelligibility (i.e. the 'rule-bound discourse') and their effects. Following Blommaert (2005) and Woolard (forthcoming), in this paper I investigate a speech event, a courtroom trial dealing with sexual assault, where understandings of social identities and categories (i.e. 'norms of intelligibility') are not only evident in the local talk of speakers and hearers, but also in the recontextualizations of this local talk by powerful institutional representatives (i.e. judges). By examining such recontextualizations of courtroom talk, gender is not 'read off' the identities of individuals (i.e. courtroom participants) but rather investigated as it appears in the cultural sense-making frameworks of judges. Moreover, given that judges are the ultimate interpreters of the linguistic representations of courtroom talk, this paper also demonstrates some of the social consequences associated with the performance of culturally intelligible and unintelligible gendered identities.

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A B S T R A C TThis article examines data drawn from a 2001 Ontario (Canada) provincial inquiry into the deaths of seven people as a result of water contamination in a small Ontario town. The examination focuses on question-answer sequences in which the premier of Ontario, Michael Harris, attempted to resist lawyers' attempts to control and restrict his responses. In particular, on the basis of the data it is argued that the power of cross-examining lawyers does not reside solely in their ability to ask controlling and restrictive questions of witnesses, but rather is crucially dependent on their ability to compel witnesses to produce straightforward, or "type-conforming," answers to these controlling and restrictive questions. The witness whose testimony is analyzed was not compelled to produce answers that logically conformed to the form of the lawyers' questions (i.e., "yes" or "no") and, as a result, often usurped control over the topical agenda of the proceedings. In this sense, the present work builds on Eades's conclusion that "we cannot rely on question form to discover how witnesses are controlled." (Courtroom discourse, conversation analysis, presupposition, question-answer sequences)* I N T R O D U C T I O NA recurring theme in the study of institutional discourse has been that of interactional asymmetry: Differential participation rights are assigned to interactants depending on their institutional roles, and these differential participation rights typically result in certain participants exercising greater conversational

In this article we consider the implications of the social construction of meaning for the possibility of language reform. Since meanings are socially determined and since the dominant culture is sexist, it is not surprising that women's meanings are often appropriated by that culture and that gender-based language reform is not always successful. Based on an analysis of attempts at gender-based language reform in Canada and in particular at York University, we consider relative success in terms of the support they have received in a given speech community. In so doing, we identify those factors which promote (e.g. being situated as part of a larger sociopolitical goal such as the achievement of employment equity) as opposed to those which hinder (e.g. being left to the discretion of individuals within an organization) language change.