Explores the effects of nonverbal reactions of a talk show host and studio audience members to arguments presented by a talk show guest on a low-involvement topic. Suggests that positive audience or host reactions can enhance persuasive influence; however, if those cues are incongruent, persuasive influence may be negated. Addresses implications…

Investigates whether the obstacles expressed in refusal of a request influence sex differences in persistence after refusal. Examines four responses to rejection: the desire to persist with the request, and the use of persuasion cues, inquiries, and forgiving statements. Suggests that male and female undergraduate students enact similar persistent…

Compliments the author's son's public high school history teacher who gave him and his classmates an introduction to philosophic thought and a standard of excellence against which to measure the pop psychology of the day. Considers how arguing productively depends on one's grasp of language. Suggests to look to philosophy, history, and literature…

Describes how a teacher and researcher in Australia engaged students in chat-room discussion as a bridge between speaking and writing. Discusses the characteristics of formal written argumentation and recent theoretical reemphasis on its rhetorical and dialogical nature. Describes the classroom strategies devised to develop the students' ability…

Examines the challenges one basic writer, a deaf student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, confronted when she took on the role of public writer. Analyzes the student's attempt to enact change for the sake of uncovering the pedagogical implications that teachers of basic writing must consider when educating students to write for the public…

Focuses on how the United States Post Office reacted to the massive influx of political propaganda, primarily from the Soviet Union, immediately prior to and during World War II. Describes how the Post Office played an active role in stopping and burning some 50 tons of incoming material. (RS)

Seeks to determine the effect of argumentativeness and verbal aggression on the image of participants in the CBS news interview of George Bush by Dan Rather. Finds that both concepts have a significant relationship to communicator image. Reports that verbal aggressiveness negatively affected Bush's image but positively influenced Rather's. (MG)

Examines the effectiveness of direct mail communication strategies--inoculation (a strategy which promotes resistance to attitude and behavior change), inoculation-plus-reinforcement, and refutation messages--in combating the persuasiveness of political attack messages. Finds that inoculation is more effective than the refutation approach in…

Analyses concepts from speech act theory to clarify the most effective use of first and second person pronouns in two types of structures frequently found in professional communication: commissives and directives. (KEH)

Investigates whether social perceivers who have been trained to detect deception from behavioral cues are more accurate in judging social actors' veracity than untrained social perceivers. Finds that such training enhances social perceivers' detection deception accuracy, particularly for males judging trained communicator/deceivers. (SR)

Examines how children understand the argumentative function of the French connective meme (even). Two completion tasks, related to the argumentative properties of the morpheme, were used: 1) to infer the conclusion of an "even" sentence, and 2) to infer the argument position. (34 references) (Author/CB)

Explores some of the arguments that are popularly lodged against the use of counterplans in modern academic debate. Suggests that most of this criticism is not persuasive due to fundamental problems with the implicit views of the debate process and the role of the judge in that process. (MS)

Explores the usefulness of identifying the stasis of an argument, that is whether it concerns an issue of fact, definition, cause, value, or action. Argues that while science articles open and reopen questions of fact, classification, and cause, articles in literary criticism assume the value of their enterprise. (RAE)

Describes the use of cases in technical writing and ancient exercises of impersonation and "suasoria." Discusses similarities between the two, and argues that the historical tradition both validates and broadens the uses of this modern methodology. (RS)

Explores the masked intentions within Black Guyanese speakers' use of three related types of persuasive discourse, all of which contain elements of insincerity. Analysis of the use and interpretation of grannin, suurin, and koocharin reveal similarities with other genres found in significantly Black populations. (CB)