Critiques an article by Ian Angus and John Lannamann on the fragmentation of the communication field ("Questioning the Institutional Boundaries of U. S. Communication Research: An Epistemological Inquiry," v38 n3). Argues that any medium, including the body, can be conceptualized as a system of symbol creation, recognition, and…

Describes some on-campus and off-campus marketing strategies used to promote a university communication training course. Includes a course syllabus and two memoranda related to the course's development. (MM)

Presents a sequential model describing routine telephone openings. Tests a model against tape recorded and transcribed data in naturally occurring telephone openings. Finds a distinct minority of telephone openings proceed precisely as the model might predict, but that routines do provide templates against which emergent usages are marked. (MS)

Examines the symbolic power of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and explains why it arouses such intense public reaction. Argues that the Memorial's symbolic power derives from its distinctive and unconventional design, that denies visitors interpretation of its meaning through the social resources upon which they customarily rely. (MS)

This preliminary study examined effects of word visibility and prime association factors on visual spoken word recognition in lipreading, using a related/unrelated prime-target paradigm with 20 hearing adults. In related prime-target pairings, more targets with a high than low prime association were identified. In unrelated prime-target pairings,…

Introduces DACUM (a process designed to help colleges develop, update, or evaluate a curriculum or training program) and its resulting national database. Describes how DACUM can be used to justify the study of communication in most academic curricula, to guide speech communication curriculum planning and defining of the basic course, and to…

Ten toddlers produced tokens of phonologically individualized words over 12 experimental sessions. Productions in later sessions were significantly shorter in vowel and overall duration than in the early sessions. Familiarity seemed to influence duration of early productions of novel words, and these findings are discussed as evidence of…

Describes how the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona faced elimination and survived by using a wide range of response options and by providing objective data in response to "faulty logic and spurious analysis." (SR)

Describes the new issues-oriented curriculum in the University of North Dakota's School of Communication, which focuses on community, information, and technology. Appends the new mission statements and goals for student learning. (SR)

Discusses, under four headings, some recent performance work occurring in many performance studies classrooms: storymaking, replication of life performance, performance art, and improvisations. Describes briefly some key critical concerns associated with these performance events and considers implications of doing such performances in the…

Discusses ways speech communication instructors can use the film "Thelma and Louise" in an upper-division rhetorical criticism class to illustrate three different critical approaches: pentadic, feminist, and ideological criticism. (SR)

Looks at two sets of complementary experimental data to consider whether listeners can determine the age of a speaker from hearing a voice sample. The experiments conducted involved speech samples from natural conversations; parallel studies were done in the United States, using native speakers and situations and native speakers as experimental…

Analyzes why it is important to establish professional advisory councils for communication programs. Discusses their implementation and maintenance. (SR)

Reports on a study of variation of the perfective in Inner-Sydney (Australia) English. The study is based on the speech of 40 inner-city infromants who were long-term residents of the area. (Contains 19 references.) (JL)

Finds that performance visualization is more effective in reducing communication anxiety, state communication anxiety, negative thoughts, and rigidity for people who can create vivid mental images than for those whose images are less vivid. (SR)