Traditionally, the study of public address has meant the study of great speakers, focusing on individual speech texts, or the speaking careers of individual orators. So dominant was this traditional study of public address that, in its halcyon decades of the l930s, 1940s, and 1950s, it all but eliminated other approaches to rhetorical criticism.…

The increasingly popular view of the counseling process from an interactional perspective necessitates the development of new measurement instruments which are suitable to the study of the reciprocal interaction between people. The validity of the Relational Communication Coding System, an instrument which operationalizes the constructs of…

From the close of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth century, three aural technologies--the telephone, the phonograph, and the radio--were rapidly disseminated throughout the United States. These technologies brought to the population more aural information than it had ever experienced and created a new environment of…

Self-report measures of perceived communication competence used properly can help build understanding of communication behavior, but used as indications of communication performance can only retard such efforts. Not all uses of such instruments are either legitimate or appropriate--for example, using self-report measures to determine an…

To determine how integration in informal communication networks may mediate job stress and burnout, data were collected from two public elementary schools in the South at two points in time, with a three-week interval between collections. Questionnaires were completed by teachers at the beginning of a staff meeting. An individual's integration in…

Mary Cunningham, a Harvard Business School graduate in 1979, received more than 30 job offers from major financial corporations. She accepted a positition as the executive assistant to the Chairman of the Board of Bendix Corporation. By October 1980, she had been promoted twice and held the position of vice president of strategic planning.…

A self-administered communication proficiency and training survey was completed by 122 female professionals and 80 of their direct supervisors in a study that investigated the perceptions supervisors have of their female employees' communication proficiency. The questionnaire for the female professionals asked for assessment of their present level…

Noting that the bulk of intercultural teaching and research has taken the culture-general approach to the exclusion of a culture-specific focus, this paper (1) argues that the distinction between the two approaches is artificial and unnecessary, and (2) develops a framework for intercultural communication that incorporates a culture-specific focus…

A study was conducted to determine (1) what active forensic coaches currently perceive to be the purpose of forensic participation courses, (2) the difficulties they have had in reaching their course goals, and (3) what they think the purpose of the courses should be. Data were collected from coaches at 130 schools with active forensic programs.…

Two hundred forty-five students in a basic speech making course were tested both before and after the course by the Rhetorical Sensitivity Scale (RHETSEN) and by their reactions to three hypothetical speech situations, to determine: (1) whether their rhetorical sensitivity scores would change after completion of such a course, and (2) whether…

Forty-two community colleges and one four-year college responded to a survey requesting information about theatre programs. The colleges ranged in size from a low of 395 students to a high of 30,000. The results of the survey indicated that theatre courses were required of communication majors at only one college, and were electives at the…

The dichotomy between the "critical" schools of thought and research practice and the more dominant "empirical" school in the field of communication creates a ferment similar to that described by G. Gerbner in 1983 concerning academic problems in mass communication because of different research perspectives. When addressing the…

A study applied an associative coding model to discern how emotions experienced during television commercials affect the strength and content of viewer memory for the commercials. Subjects, 25 males and 49 females enrolled at a large midwestern university, tested the model. Emotion was indexed by having viewers continuously turn a dial as they…

Noting that few scholars have examined specifically how technology is affecting basic communication processes, students in interpersonal, small group, and advanced presentational forms classes studied the systems model of interpersonal communication. The systems model described by P. Emmert and W.C. Donaghy includes the following components:…

Focusing particularly on communication as a discipline, this paper is a review and synthesis of literature about scholarly communication in the social sciences. Drawing from literature about ferment in the communication discipline, from information science, the sociology of knowledge, and the philosophy of social science, the paper argues that…