A discussion of teaching culture through the use of films focuses on how German Cinema films can be used successfully as a required extracurricular activity in German second-language-instruction. This kind of extracurricular activity is seen as a two dimensional educational experience. From the students' point of view, everything about seeing a…

Many theoreticians have indicated that a major task of the nonpresumptive rhetor is to gain presumption, thereby shifting the burden of proof to the opposition. Rhetorically, Martin Luther King, Jr., sought to effect this shift in the burden of proof through the use of hierarchies of values. At the top of his value system was the love of God. The…

As an interesting development in recent literary criticism, reader response can enhance a composition class in many ways. Reader response, by incorporating both intellect and feeling into an aesthetic reaction to literature, restores the subjective aspect that some forms of criticism deny. Three main elements compose the repeated cycle of a…

By tracing and connecting significant shifts in Baptist political and theological rhetoric to trends within the larger culture, this rhetorical transformation can be seen as establishing and maintaining these groups as significant forces in American culture. Before 1800, Baptists were against infant baptism, regarding baptism as a matter of…

The honors program described in this language arts curriculum guide has three components: language study, literature, and composition. The first section of the guide describes the language study component, which deals with content areas, general objectives, and performance strategies. The second section discusses the combination of literature and…

The rhetorical appropriateness of two of Shirley Chisholm's persuasive speeches on women's liberation were assessed using Afrocentric criteria for speech criticism developed by Molefi K. Asante (1979). The speeches addressed the controversy of whether the women's liberation movement was appropriate for women of minority cultures in the United…

This paper is a practitioner response by an IT manager to a paper by Duncan Greaves entitled "A pedagogical and economic critique of student charges for Internet access", which appears in the same issue of "IJEDICT." Greaves' article proposes four mechanisms to solve this "public goods problem". The author explores…

A university level course in political communication can strive not only to teach the applicable communication and political theory involved, but also to provide "hands on" experience through the use of a simulated election campaign model. The model would include (1) data on the candidates involved; (2) information on the district…

The articles in this journal issue provide information on the study and teaching of folklore. Separate articles discuss the following topics: oral history; the teaching of folklore in Texas secondary schools and colleges, both as a separate discipline and as supporting enrichment material; a term project assignment in a college-level American…

Stressing the importance of choosing either a child-centered or a subject-centered orientation in developing a children's literature program, this paper discusses the characteristics of child-centered and subject-centered approaches to literature and then focuses on the dominant literary theories of structuralism and revisionism. Maintaining that…

A competency based learning approach as applied to public address instructional development can help to achieve the following goals: (1) to enable students to grasp the history of the period under study, (2) to enable students to develop and apply rhetorical criticism skills, (3) to provide students with a course format of high interest value, (4)…

Rhetorical criticism focusing on Norman Rockwell's paintings of the "Four Freedoms" provides reasons for the paintings' effectiveness within the context of Franklin Roosevelt's campaign to educate Americans about participation in World War II. The epideictic icons in Rockwell's paintings promoted identifications that constitute the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The nine titles deal with the following topics: (1) the theory and application of presumption in public debate; (2) the rhetoric of transcendentalism; (3) speechwriting in rhetorical criticism; (4) the conspiracy argument as…

The seven major articles in this journal issue are devoted to literature and to literary analysis. The articles deal with the following topics: (1) collapse and regeneration in Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," (2) freedom and identity in "Invisible Man," (3) the character of St. John Rivers in "Jane Eyre," (4) integrating poetry study and…

Although the acts of reading literature and writing are closely linked, literature study and composition instruction remain distinct pursuits within college English departments. Style seems to be an interest that unifies the two pursuits. The most common view of style equates it with acceptable rhetorical and grammatical conventions. A second view…