Research is in progress on oral interactive discourse, that is, discourse produced by several participants working in collaboration. The intent of the research is to investigate how the discourse is organized at several different levels of structure (acts, sequences of acts, interactive structure, propositional content, and formal realizations).…

Current issues being addressed by argumentation theorists can be identified by examining their writings in The Journal of the American Forensic Association (JAFA). Traditionally, argument has been seen as an utterance or act, from a philosophy based logical "product" perspective. Many current theorists, however, see argument as a process…

The term "communicative competence" has been in currency for approximately 10 years and is generally used to refer to teaching strategies which substitute real-life situations and contexts for meaningless mechanical and structural exercises. In essence, it attempts to put content and contact into the speech act. However, early proponents…

Western notions of right and wrong have dominated consideration of ethical issues in various domestic and remote cultural environments. A review of eight generalizations put forth by rhetorician Richard Johannesen on the ethics of rhetoric indicates that many scholars in contemporary speech communication believe that for people in other cultures…

The roots of the interpersonal communication program at the University of Kansas (Lawrence) lay in the human relations training program initiated there in the late 1940's. Probably the major contribution of human relations to interpersonal communication was in its focus on experiential learning through laboratory training. In the fall of 1967, an…

Since Upshur's (1969) original paper describing a picture-description test of oral communication ability, four empirical studies have been completed in which variants of the tests have been used. From these studies considerable new information on the tests' reliability and validity has become available. Indications are that the reliability is…

Approximately 150 college students participated in a study that investigated the effects of self-concept, self-disclosure, and type of basic speech course on communication apprehension. The subjects were drawn from three basic speech course populations at two universities. They had been free to enroll in either a public speaking, interpersonal…

The seeds of mass communication research in broadcasting were extracurricular, not academic, inspired by experimental campus radio stations. Prior to the mid-1930s, radio research was scarce. Until World War II, radio speech was the most important topic, followed by articles on how to use radio for improving instruction. There are three…

Designed for both experienced and novice adult educators who want to improve their own communication and that of their students, this essay presents information on communicative competence and its importance for lifelong learning. First, communicative competence is defined as the ability of persons to be adaptive, flexible, and sensitive to the…

Arguing that a systems theory can be applied to the description and analysis of families and other close relationships, this paper first describes a method for coding verbal interaction that involves three steps: categorizing messages according to grammatical form and response mode, assigning control directions to those categories, and combining…

The research described in this paper concerns nurses' alleged use of an indirect communication style, "The Doctor-Nurse Game," to influence physicians to change an order believed to be inappropriate for the patient. The paper is organized to (1) point out the parallels of the inappropriate order situation with a larger class of…

A review of relevant research reveals the general characteristics of a test of oral communication performance, some specific characteristics of testing programs, and some directions that future performance testing should take. Characteristics of tests of oral communication performance are as follows: (1) students should be able to apply the skills…

Prompted by the dichotomy in mass communication research between active audience and passive audience, this paper (1) establishes and analyzes the theoretical components of the concepts of "activity" and "active audience," (2) traces the intellectual origins of the concepts and their implicit ideological agenda, and (3)…

The techniques for effective listening can be identified by the acronym PAT, which stands for three sets of techniques--physical, attitude, and thinking. Four kinds of physical techniques promote effective listening: appropriate eye contact and normal blinking rate, facial feedback, appropriate body language, and appropriate verbal feedback. Two…

The Committee on International Discussion and Debate (CIDD) and its contributions toward establishing a tradition of international team appearances in public debates are discussed in this paper. A brief history of the origin and development of the exchange debates is given. Highlights of Scott Noble's report to the Speech Communication Association…