Examines the rapidly growing role for technical communicators in the computer industry as members of the external design team. Describes the kinds of decisions they are responsible for with regard to all phases of product development--as user advocates, usability testers, screen designers, and online documentation specialists. (KEH)

Analyzes how John Dickinson's "Letter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" appropriates pastoral design and convention for rhetorical ends. Explores how literary idiom lends its force of expression to meet the needs of public controversy and how rhetorical judgment is both insubstantiated in the argument and is its chief mode of appeal. (KEH)

A wide variety of studies have offered glimpses of how learners put their second-language knowledge and skills to use during communication. It is shown that the same empirical findings can lead to very different conclusions. (49 references) (GLR)

Reviewed are previous studies that have examined adults' and children's ability to understand verbal directions. Differences in style and the implications of these differences for educating children are discussed. (CW)

Examines the fundamental cultural values and political attitudes of communications students at the beginning of their professional education. Compares profiles of students in advertising, print and broadcast journalism, telecommunications, and public relations. (MM)

Analyzes organizational communication about AIDS in the workplace, using the case of a highly publicized AIDS crisis in a large midwestern hospital. Discusses the case, the hospital's responses (included), and the current status of the organization. Highlights the need for a careful balance between patient confidentiality and employee protection.…

Focuses on the role of communication competencies in superiors' overall judgments about the performance of subordinates. Finds that superiors' perceptions of subordinates' specific communication competencies are related to the superiors' overall perceptions of subordinate performance. (MS)

Discusses the problems of communications models. Presents a channel-ratio model that focuses on problems arising from intercultural interactions and addresses some practical needs of business communicators. Describes assumptions of the model, its elements, and its dynamic operation. Gives examples of the model's application to verbal and nonverbal…

Focuses on how written records are created during calls to a Poison Control Center. Describes the relationship between writing and speaking in this bureaucratic context. Finds that keeping written records extends the length of call processing time, representing a barrier to handling new calls promptly. (MS)

Centers on third-party intervention in roommate conflicts. Examines how the gender and training of mediators affects both their control of interaction and perceptions of their performance. Reveals that female and male mediators are equally controlling, but females are perceived by disputants as less controlling than males. (SR)

Examines some of the rhetorical choices of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev which dramatize Soviet calls for nuclear weapons de-escalation. Speculates that Gorbachev's peace efforts are sincere, because they are motivated by twin crises of a failing economy and a threatened world community. (MS)

Argues that applied research has potential for making important theoretical contributions. Demonstrates the potential contribution of practical applications to theoretical development by discussing the procedures employed and difficulties encountered in developing and assessing Iowa's Program Against Smoking (I-PAS), an adolescent smoking…

Explores the consequences of using "masculine" versus "feminine" strategies in political commercials for female candidates. Reports that the "aggressive" strategy worked better than the "non-aggressive" strategy, and that the "career" strategy worked better than the "family" strategy. (MM)

Examines the impact of patients' characteristics on patterns of nonverbal communication exhibited in physician-patient interactions at a family practice clinic. Finds some general patterns of nonverbal behavioral differences, consistency, and adaptation characterizing the entire data set, and that patients' characteristics influenced patterns of…

Argues that generalizing to message populations by treating messages as a random variable is inappropriate for complex messages, and proposes meta-analytic techniques for investigating biases in message samples and other methodological factors that can limit generalizability of communication research. (MS)