Replicates a 1972 survey of students, educators, and Public Relations Society of America members regarding who the public relations counselor really serves. Finds that, in 1992, most respondents thought primary responsibility was to the client, then to the client's relevant publics, then to self, then to society, and finally to media. Compares…

Argues for reframing and reforging the relationship between text and context. Argues that the silences that modernity's tribute to text invites are grotesque, untenable, and fundamentally anti-intellectual. (SR)

Explores the way the doctrines of would-be academic humanists intersect with the political world of struggle and scarcity. Argues that the academy has become consumed by a debilitating doctrine: the textualizing of politics, where attitude is all, where everything is preliminary and little ever gets done. (SR)

This study compared the ratings of 19 adolescents when listening to recordings of the speech of eight children with cerebral palsy and eight normal-speaking children. For all 22 adjective pairs, the normal speakers were rated significantly more positively. (Author/DB)

Presents the COPS form (Content, Organization, Planning, and Style) for critically analyzing and grading oral presentations. Includes an example of a COPS form. Discusses each dimension analyzed. Describes strengths and weaknesses of the form. Suggests that the form is very effective for improving communication skills in sociology courses. (DK)

Traces the evolution of the enduring rhetorical genre of apologia from the Greek period to the present. Argues that apologia has undergone significant changes in form because its function has changed throughout history, producing five "subgenres." Examines implications for the continued feasibility of apologia, as well as the critical…

Questions the theoretical justification for the standard of intrinsic justification. Challenges the applicability of phenomenological constructs to academic debate, demonstrates that "essences" cannot be readily located in debate resolutions, and illustrates that proponents of intrinsic justification have not adequately operationalized…

Reads Ernest Wrage's landmark essay "Public Address: A Study in Social and Intellectual History" at the conjuncture of two contemporary problematics: the tension in rhetorical scholarship between "textual criticism" and "critical rhetoric"; and the intersection of rhetorical analysis and contemporary cultural studies.…

Presents a history of the American Forensic Association regarding its splintering within the forensic community. Discusses the incorporation of the National Individual Events Tournament (NIET). Considers how the NIET Committee has encouraged research projects related to forensic pedagogy as well as other issues related to forensics. (NH)

Investigated the effects of of distance on perception of unimodal visual speech and congruent and incongruent forms of the syllables /ba/, /bi/, /ga/, and /gi/. Identification of unimodal visual speech was unaffected by increasing distance to 10m, but was impaired at 20 and 30m. (Author/VWL)

Examines the problem posed to ethnographic research on speech communication by the traditional distinction between text and context as figure versus ground, or as hierarchical organization of focal events, or as phenomena within which those events are embedded. An ethnographic perspective on discourse within which text and context form an…

Analyzed three main types of English dative constructions--the double-object dative, the "to" dative, and the "for" dative--in the spontaneous speech of seven children aged 1.6-5 years. Results provide a starting point for determining the underlying representations for the different kinds of dative constructions and for explicating how children…

Discusses the new "public debate" movement, taking shape because of dissatisfaction with the current dominant philosophy of intercollegiate debate. Assesses the "public" style of the advocate, the mandated broadness of the argument, the role of evidence in the argument, and emphasis on oral communication. Posits that the…

Discusses the characterization of the meaning of the Russian perfective-imperfective opposition and concludes that these characterizations fail. The article maintains that aspects are temporal relations between the time at which some situation obtains and the time for which an assertion is made by the utterance that describes the situation. (33…

Provides a framework of key issues surrounding the non-standard orthographic representation of non-standard language varieties. The following topics are addressed: the selective nature of orthographic choice; relational an contrastive meaning of orthographic conventions; interplay of sameness and difference in use of orthography to make claims on…