The Health, Science, and the Environment section of this collection of conference presentations contains the following 10 papers: "Telling Stories about Superfund Sites" (Sharon Dunwoody and Robert J. Griffin); "Understanding Audience Reactions to AIDS Messages: An Adaptation of the Meaning-Based Model" (Sujatha Sosale);…

Composition teachers today are aware of the practice of differentiating between written and spoken language. The "basic writing" student often views written language as a nearly new language altogether. Therefore, it is increasingly important to recognize and codify not merely the disparity between speech and writing but also the…

This book addresses possible negative effects of children's viewing of inappropriate media content and how parents can respond. The discussion of children's responses to frightening mass media is based on the findings of controlled research but also includes real-life examples, many presented in a child's or parent's own words. Following an…

Advertising history is often treated within the context of journalism or mass communication history. The outline of a seminar course in advertising history presented in this paper offers an approach that discusses the social, cultural, and philosophical roots of advertising as well as the institution as it is known today. The focus of the course…

Designed to make the job of encouraging adolescents to read less of a challenge, this book provides descriptions of all of the approximately 150 examples of young adult literature that were selected "Young Adults' Choices" in the yearly voting by teenagers conducted from 1987 to 1992. Each entry in the book includes bibliographic…

This paper explores the feasibility of using focus groups to assess how scholastic publications can better meet high school student bodies' readership wishes and requirements. The paper relates high school journalism to implications of a bibliographic summary of focus group research and explication of one focus group research project dealing with…

This paper reviews some of the recent research relative to the thoughts and writings of the English art critic, Clive Bell, one of the leaders in British art criticism for the first part of the 20th century. Bell's conception of "art as significant form" is considered with specific reference to the following educators: (1) Roger Fry and…

Writing in Western culture requires mastery of both rhetorical theory and the expressive writing often promoted in composition studies, however great the conflict between them might be. The tension between these two poles can even be a source of excitement and motivation. Landmark composition studies such as those of James Britton and Janet Emig…

How do cable television subscribers differ from those who choose not to subscribe to cable? A study employed the uses and gratification paradigm to construct a questionnaire that solicited data from 600 television households in the Dayton, Ohio market. The sample was stratified to assure that one-third of the households had cable available but…

Media sociology in the early 1980s was "rediscovered" by sociologists and political scientists. It was a discipline whose time had arrived. In much of the work in the field at this time the level of analysis dealt with individuals working within organizations. Since that time, media sociology has gone through paradigm debates, expanded…

This paper recognizes that critics of the "plain language movement" point out that what is "plain" to one audience may mystify and confuse another. It adds that questions such as "Plain language for whom?" and "How can we know whether a text is written in plain language?" raise legitimate concerns about the…

A study investigated whether adolescents' schemas about contraceptive use would influence their perceptions that a soap opera couple used birth control during sex. The study also examined the effects of increasing explicitness of characters' conversations about contraceptives on viewers' perceptions of the couple's contraceptive use. Thirty-six…

To determine the extent of influence that a reader's perspective as a member of a specific audience has on the assessment of student writing, a study examined the holistic judgment and the positive and negative comments made by four different types of writing evaluators on 40 different letters, each of which was written to one of four audience…

Prepared by educators and researchers involved in argumentation and debate, the articles in this special journal issue are based upon the assumptions that presidential debates are important, are likely to continue, and are of unique interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of argument. The first two articles in the issue provide overviews…

Raymond Yeager, director of forensics and professor of speech at Bowling Green State University, has made a major contribution to the field of speech communication. He has been much appreciated as professor, mentor, and friend. Yeager, the personification of the "good man skilled in speaking," is a well-spoken gentleman of principle who…