Over the last 2 decades, the nations that once comprised the Soviet Union have begun to play an increasingly important role in the global economy. As a result, today's technical and professional communicators could find themselves interacting with co-workers, colleagues, and clients in these nations. Being successful in such contexts, however,…

This paper argues that while organizational research includes a diverse array of naturalistic approaches, a gap exists in the organizational literature that can only be filled by the ethnography of communication (EC). The paper proposes that, instead of using speech to do qualitative research, speech itself should be studied as the topic of…

An article on interethnic communication by J. Martin, M. Hecht, and L. Larkey in "Communication Monographs" (1994) suggests some important issues for understanding the potential impact of culture on communication practices--researchers might examine such variations in communication in future research. "Culture" is an ambiguous…

This paper presents an in-depth look at semantics and how it has been and continues to be studied in mass communication. The paper notes that modern communication scholars have largely ignored the importance of semantics to mass media research. The paper examines the historical roots of semantics, noting that the 1930s saw the intellectual…

The purpose of this essay is to consider some of the practical implications of Martin Heideger's view that "Language is the house of Being," for the academic study of cultural transformation and intercultural communication. The paper describes the ontological basis of Heidegger's work, and the inquiry into Being, and contains sections on…

The questioning of hegemonic discourses has become an essential element in many feminist, afro-centric, and literary theories of discourse. Scholars in these areas have explicated various indictments of the phallocentric, eurocentric, and essentialist linguistic strategies defined and perpetuated by dominant population groups, and some have begun…

Describes conventional and nonconventional gestures, asserting they form an integrated system with language but on different levels, working together to produce a web of visuo-spatial expression surrounding linear speech products. Conventional gestures can be loosely bound temporally with speech but require across-context codes; nonconventional…

This paper explores the question of interpreting complex texts, particularly scripts and multimedia presentations. The paper first reviews the literature on natural discourse, noting that although interpreting spoken natural language seems rather straightforward, many scholars have discussed what is required to make sense of discourse. The paper…

The first part of this essay argues specifically that legal speech acts are not statements but question/answer constructions. The focus in this section is on the underlying interrogative structure of the legal decision. The second part of the paper touches on significant topics related to the concept of legal speech acts, including the philosophic…

While the debate over the role of metaphor in language, thought, and meaning is not new, in the past decade there has been a move among organizational scholars to use metaphors in critical research. This paper presents a review of one area of the existing literature on metaphor--that dealing primarily with the nonliteral view of metaphors within…

While language switching among multilinguals has been studied in a wide variety of contexts, few attempts have been made to generalize or to integrate findings into useful communication theory. Since language switching is an important part of personal as well as group identity and since issues surrounding language identity are often a focal point…

Introduces the concept of powerful/powerless talk for instructors interested in incorporating this construct in their classrooms. Provides a brief summary of powerful/powerless talk literature. Offers guidelines for introducing these research findings into the curriculum. (AEW)

This "communication lexicon," a new source of information in the field of language and area studies, describes how selected themes such as family, society, work, and entertainment are perceived and understood by members of the Mexican, Colombian, and United States cultures. It identifies broad trends of perceptions and evaluations…