Despite literally tens of thousands of rounds of debate competition over a number of years, little insight into argumentation theory has resulted. Debate as practiced by college debating teams has become a laboratory for perfecting itself. Permitting the divergence of debate from argumentation forfeits an ideal opportunity to study argumentation.…

Semiotics addresses the question of how people derive meaning from a text, and meaning stems from considering phenomena as signs and from looking at the relationships among these signs. Thus, a semiological analysis of the television series "Cheers" reveals that the title suggests happiness, good spirits, and companionship. The show…

The judging philosophy statements of most of the judges at the 1987 National Cross Examination Debate Association Tournament are contained in this booklet. A short form on each judge details how long they have been judging and how many rounds of debate on the topic of the tournament they had previously judged. A longer form asks for information…

Student input into grading in the basic speech communication course can be accomplished through a peer evaluation system. Three student evaluators are assigned for every student speech. Speeches are given a quality score by the peer evaluators and by the instructor. Rating errors are minimized by assigning peer evaluators so that no…

Western philosophy has not had much to say about listening or receptive communication until fairly recently, and listening research has tended either to follow the trends of the speech communication field or to be directed by speech science or the pragmatics of the working world. A study examines the process of understanding and interpretation…

Neither of the two major forensics associations uses an ideal point system for the team sweepstakes award at debate tournaments. The National Forensics Association (NFA) awards points for preliminary round ballots and uses a 3-tiered system of team awards based on entry size. They restrict preliminary round sweepstakes points by capping the total…

A case study examined the political campaign consultants' role as rhetor by analyzing consultant Robert Squier's strategy for Mike Sturdivant's 1983 Mississippi gubernatorial campaign. The examination compared Squier's ideal model (a "single vision" strategy) with a second model drawn from empirical data. Squier's strategy for the…

A study investigated the speaking habits of the general public from the Albany, Schenectady, and Troy (New York) area in the spring and fall of 1984. Student interviewers completed interviews with 478 residents 18 years or older to find out how many times the respondent had given speeches in the past two years and under what circumstances. The…

Recent models of metadiscourse proposed by Joseph M. Williams and William J. Vande Kopple are collections of disparate structures instead of principled systems--they do not contain rules to explain the interdependencies of their categories. Metadiscourse should be redefined as a category within the larger context of speech act theory.…

This paper explores a philosophical framework for using the ballots which a contestant receives as part of one's participation in a forensic tournament. The central thesis of this theoretical article suggests that coaches need to prepare their students for the criticism they will encounter on judge ballots. The argument is made for establishing…

A study investigated the intonational patterns used by women and men at the ends of utterances for the purpose of managing discourse. The research sought to describe how intonation helps to signal that a speaker is through speaking and desires a response or reaction from the listener, or that the speaker is not through with a turn and wishes to…

This bibliography on qualitative research methods in speech communication contains 213 entries grouped into three categories: (1) books; (2) speech communication journal articles; and (3) social science journal articles and sections in books. (SR)

In his analysis of Cicero's "Philippics," Cecil Wooten (1983) describes the strategy the Roman advocate used in a rhetorical situation of national crisis as a contest of black and white, the struggle of good against evil; at stake is the very existence of the civilization that he is defending. Choices offered in crisis situations can be…

This study investigates the applicability of the speech act theory to written discourse, specifically that of the press. A survey of Searle's taxonomy leads to the suggestion that the constituent statements of most newspaper articles belong to the class of illocutionary acts he calls "representatives." In consideration of the basic characteristic…

A study was conducted to provide a comparative analysis of the 1984 presidential primary and general election debates, specifically in terms of the formats imposed upon them and the emergent candidate verbal behaviors. Ten Democratic nationally televised primary debates and three bipartisan nationally televised General Election debates were…