Analyzes John Randolph's use of "ad hominem" arguments, in an excerpt from the Yazoo Claims debate in 1805, in light of Douglas Walton's research into the "ad hominem." Claims the arguments employed by Randolph confirm Walton's contention that the "ad hominem" is not inherently fallacious, but is a defensible form of…

Traces aspects of the evolution of interest in ethical issues by the National Communication Association (NCA), the effort to develop a Professional Code, and the development of the Credo for Ethical Communication adopted by the NCA Legislative Council November 6, 1999. Includes a copy of the Credo. (NH)

Research has identified a number of dimensions along which speakers modify referring expressions. The study discussed here aimed to determine and describe the actual relationship existing between these production characteristics and corresponding measures of listener comprehension. (Author/VWL)

Studies of normal and disordered articulatory movement often rely on the use of short, simple speech tasks. However, the severity of speech disorders can be observed to vary markedly with task. Understanding task-related variations in articulatory kinematic behavior may allow for an improved understanding of normal and disordered speech motor…

Although word stress has been hailed as a powerful speech-segmentation cue, the results of 5 cross-modal fragment priming experiments revealed limitations to stress-based segmentation. Specifically, the stress pattern of auditory primes failed to have any effect on the lexical decision latencies to related visual targets. A determining factor was…

Human listeners can keep track of statistical regularities among temporally adjacent elements in both speech and musical streams. However, for speech streams, when statistical regularities occur among nonadjacent elements, only certain types of patterns are acquired. Here, using musical tone sequences, the authors investigate nonadjacent learning.…

The paper investigates whether there is a shared perception of speaking proficiency among raters from different English speaking countries. More specifically, this study examines whether there is a significant difference among English language learning (ELL) teachers, residing in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA when rating speech samples of…

Objective: To engage in the process of formulating compelling persuasive arguments. Type of speech: Persuasive. Point value: Incorporated into participation points. Requirements: (a) References: 0; (b) Length: 1-2 minutes; (c) Visual aid: No; (d) Outline: No; (e) Prerequisite reading: Chapter 19 (DeVito, 2003); (f) Additional requirements: None.…

What type of mental representation underlies the gestures that accompany speech? We used a dual-task paradigm to compare the demands gesturing makes on visuospatial and verbal working memories. Participants in one group remembered a string of letters (verbal working memory group) and those in a second group remembered a visual grid pattern…

This article reviews experiments completed over the past decade at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and the State University of New York at Geneseo concerning speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC) and synthesizes the empirical evidence concerning the acoustical and perceptual characteristics of speech in SC.…

Older persons (N = 159) were surveyed for their impressions of and experiences with elderspeak from friends, same-age family members, younger family members, familiar service workers, and unfamiliar service workers. Two dimensions, "warmth" and "superiority," emerged in the judgments of elderspeak from all five speaker types. Respondents perceived…

This paper analyzes prosodic variables in a corpus of eighteen oral presentations made by students of Technical English, all of whom were native speakers of Swedish. The focus is on the extent to which speakers were able to use their voices in a lively manner, and the hypothesis tested is that speakers who had high pitch variation as they spoke…

This paper provides a sequence of specific techniques and examples for implementing theatre voice training and technology in teaching ESL/EFL oral skills. A layered approach is proposed based on information processing theory in which the focus of learner attention is shifted in stages from the physiological to the linguistic and then to the…

This paper explores interpreting in three-generational Italian-English bilingual families as a complex language brokering activity. Recent studies approach non-professional interpreting as language brokering in which bilinguals (often children) interpret for non-bilinguals (adults) in institutional settings (Hall 2004; Valdes 2003). These studies…

The article is based on a national survey in Norway of the linguistic situation of deaf children. Parents, teachers, and children were asked to make judgments on topics related to the children's' language milieu at home and at school by means of detailed questions using two response methods: a language inventory and rating scales. The inventory is…