Academic debate may be regarded as an educational game since it includes the adversary quest for favorable decisions from a neutral judge within an artificial context defined by myriad rules and traditions. In academic debate, the requisite fairness is provided by such game rules as time limitations, speaker order, uniform resolutions, critic…

The study involving four teachers, two tutors, and ten preschool hearing impaired children investigated both the linguistic relationship between adult and child utterances and the teaching strategies involved in the process of interacting. A literature review focuses on three major areas--language interaction between adults and normally hearing…

A phenomenological approach was used in a study of three assessment strategies for the evaluation of journals written by speech communication students: (1) analytic assessment strategy; (2) primary trait assessment strategy; and (3) holistic assessment strategy. Completed question-and-answer packets, consisting of 8 to 12 diaries each, written by…

The Pro/Con Campus Debate and Community Forum program at The Ohio State University serves the educational mission of the department of communication and contributes to the intellectual life of the student body and the larger community by emphasizing the needs of the audience. Eschewing jargon and rhetorical tricks, the program encourages the…

Self-disclosure may be viewed through the framework of the role-taking processes by which we come to know ourselves and to be known to others. Because individuals ground utterances contextually, in anticipation of another's responses and according to the prescriptions of the situation itself, self-disclosure is more likely to be flexibly scripted…

Noting that scholars have too willingly accepted Plato's assumption that one could not successfully be both an actor and a rhapsode (reciter or singer of epic poetry), this paper suggests that placing the "mixed style" of the rhapsode's performance art within the context of the Homeric sensibility and the cultural shift into literacy…

A theory of group interaction with a focus on the trajectories of relevant variables as they change over time is developed in this paper. The four major components of the group interaction process (communication, conflict, involvement, and centralization) are presented and conceptually defined, and the nature of their interdependence is discussed.…

Following a brief discussion of the works of the philosopher Jacques Maritain, who viewed the educational process as the art of helping individuals to realize the nature of that which is inherent in them, this paper analyzes the implications of Maritain's views for the discipline of speech communication. The paper suggests that education in speech…

This paper, part of a larger study, focuses on a single linguistic device, the "machine-gun question," which was used by three of six participants in a Thanksgiving dinner conversation. This conversational device is characteristic of a style that seems to grow out of the need to have others approve of one's wants. It is a style…

The ten articles in this special journal issue focus on social movements. Specifically, the articles discuss the following topics: (1) the study of social movements; (2) the meaning of "social movement"; (3) a skeptical view of movement studies; (4) coming to terms with movement studies; (5) defining social movements by their rhetorical…

Communication specialists, or communicologists, have several problems to overcome before their contributions to the study of gerontology can receive the recognition they deserve. Communicologists, for example, need to define their discipline and expertise more clearly and succinctly. In order to be credible to gerontologists and other…

A comprehensive understanding of stage fright will better enable teachers and researchers to select the most appropriate "cure" and to determine those cases in which speech training will help reduce stage fright or other states of communication apprehension. Attempts to understand stage fright have focused on three psychological theories…

Defining "attitudes" as a structure or organization of beliefs, this paper advances a formal theory of the relationship between attitudes, other belief configurations, and overt behavior. The theory presented assumes that an attitude about a given topic consists of three major dimensions of belief orientation (favorability/unfavorability),…

A three-part study of the forms of rhetorical criticism is offered. Part one reviews the nature of genre criticism, enumerates several concepts of form and the types of genre criticism they produce, and discusses the implications of this relationship between form and genre. Part two is an essay on the methodological implications of form-grounded…

This paper provides a review of some basic general semantic principles and then applies them to the area of prenatal classes and labor room practices. It first presents an overview of the principle that language is not a neutral factor in human perceptions but an active, reactive force. Next, it looks at the relationship between language and…