The roles of dissent in the public sphere are explored. Specifically, I will explain the discussion about the proposal made by Kendall R. Phillips and G. Thomas Goodnight's critical response. Then, the three roles that Phillips identifies are scrutinized. For instance, the obstacle function to continue the work of public deliberation is important in making sociological arguments, the heuristic function to expand the knowledge of the public sphere is important in making technological arguments, and the corrective function to improve the procedure of deliberative practice is important in making political and ethical arguments. I will examine Chomsky's arguments to criticize the Bush administration after 9/11 as a paradigm case to illustrate the significance of public dissent. In conclusion, it is argued that the lack of reasonable disagreement in the public sphere inhibits the full functioning of the legitimate democratic states.

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This study is aimed at reading interpersonal meanings and judgments towards people and phenomena which are interwoven in texts, and revealing the writers' hidden intention by using Systemic Functional Grammar. The texts used in this study are sports articles featuring the Athens Olympic Games 2004, extracted from two different newspapers. The analysis shows distinctive differences between the two articles. One article includes very explicit judgment in both narration parts and indirect quotes. The other is less explicit. Finally, some suggestions are made for English classes at university courses that will enable students to better cope with lexis and grammar for understanding hidden meanings, and subtleties of expression even in the field of practical English.

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This paper argues the importance of humanistic critique through an analysis of Edward Said's critique of post-9.11 dualistic discourse in the United States. Dualistic discourse is problematic in terms of three points : 1) it leads distorted understanding of reality; 2) it leads to exclude the other; 3) it creates senseless conflicts.
We need alternative ways of understanding of reality in order to dissolve dualistic discourse. Humanistic critique shows the possibility to dissolve the dualistic discourse in that it reveals connections of the dualistic discourse and recasts these connections to create a sense of worldliness.

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This is a two-part study that examined the effectiveness of introducing an authentic movie into paragraph writing instructions and how well students can assess their own writing through process writing. The study was conducted at a college of nursing in Japan. The research design was based on the hypothesis that introducing movies which have clear story lines can help the students write various types of discourse modes such as narrative, description and cause and effect. Also the study focused on students' self-assessment skills and its significance in improving their writing skills. The findings of the study are; (1) 85 percent of the students showed an improvement in their writing skills (2) 77 percent of the students rated their own writing objectively, while others either over or underestimated them. Based on the data, we concluded that (a) introducing a movie which had clear story lines and medical themes helped the nursing students to write well structured paragraphs (b) To facilitate students' self-assessing skills, we need to introduce different approaches such as giving more frequent feedback and detailed handouts with vocabulary and phrases.

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