The rhetorical functions of history depend on the domain in which history is used, with no connotations of interpretive priority attaching to the social or the academic realm. The appropriation of history in support of social causes as radically opposed as socialism and fascism fuels the temptation to subsume history under ideology, with the…

The American birth control movement was born among radicals, mostly socialist women, early in the twentieth century. Although some information about birth control had circulated in medical journals, books and advertising in the nineteenth century, the passage in 1873 of a federal obscenity law known as the Comstock law resulted in the absence of…

Certainly reasons can be enumerated for the widespread use of handbooks and other "canned" materials in high school debate programs, but the quality of these resources and their actual use by debaters make them competitively negligible in value and counterproductive to the educational and competitive values that the forensic community…

The rhetoric program at the University of Iowa is an integrated skills program based on four assumptions: (1) writing and speaking are modes of communication, (2) writing and speaking are equally important, (3) writing and speaking can be taught together, and (4) the administration, relevant faculty, and teachers must believe that writing and…

A survey was conducted to examine the use of part-time forensic coaches. Ninety-nine four-year and 47 two-year colleges responded to the questionnaire. Of these, 45 four-year and 10 two-year programs indicated the use of part time coaches. A previous study had indicated that half of all part-time faculty were those who held full-time jobs in…

Designed to facilitate research on and the preparation and presentation of arguments for the national debate topic, this manual summarizes the present state of the judiciary and court reform issues. The volume begins with a collection of articles, statements, and reports that present a general background on the justice system and court reform.…

One way of giving students a sense of audience in their writing is to combine speech communication and written communication in the classroom. If students can be taught to write as they talk, they can perceive their audience to be real people rather than the amorphous "indefinite other" they typically write for in the traditional writing…

The letter of application should make use of message strategies that show the writer's awareness of the explicit needs of specific readers. However, very few students are able to write them, partially as a result of the audience analysis procedures that are suggested for student use. Students need a reader analysis procedure to help them learn…

An approach to composition, involving group efforts to formulate solutions to real-world problems, is described. (JH)

This paper explores the need to examine value systems in composition courses concerned with persuasive writing. Values are defined as beliefs used to evaluate or structure experience. When concepts and facts are related to daily life, as they are in persuasive writing, they either reinforce values already formed or necessitate a change in values.…

A total of 224 college students participated in a study of the relationships between dogmatism and authoritarianism and the characteristics of written discourse. Early in the semester each class completed a public opinion poll which included a combination of the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and the California F Scale. In a seemingly unrelated task…

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, a journalist and speaker, headed a back-to-Africa movement in the second half of the nineteenth century that was one of the first black rhetorical movements to meet the challenges of institutionalized racism in the United States. Turner was a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming first an elder…

Consciousness raising movements and charismatic Christian worship display an extraordinary degree of rhetorical similarity. This four-part paper outlines the likenesses of the two groups, indicates where they differ, and focuses on the social and political dimensions of consciousness raising. The first section lists the following similarities…

A study of President Ronald Reagan's speeches reveals not only a President intent on "identifying directly with the people," but a spokesman adept at the use of symbolic communication as well. Probably the most obvious symbol of the campaign for economic renewal is the term "Reaganomics" itself. Referentially, it has come to…

The place of argumentation within the speech communication curriculum is the focus of this article. The article provides a rationale for an upper-level college course in the deliberation and decision making process currently taught at the University of North Carolina, and relates that rationale to broader concerns of argumentation theory. Various…