Joseph Cyprien Nadal's "Dictionnaire d'Eloquence Sacree" is an outstanding work because of Nadal's thorough treatment of all the elements young speakers should know as they embark on a platform career. The most important of these elements are invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery. In addition, the book discusses five duties…

In the context of linguistic theories of politeness, it is possible to consider the concept of a continuum of politeness that includes degrees of speaker egocentricity. It is proposed that directives in Brazilian Portuguese follow a hierarchy of politeness forms based on a theory of pragmatic markedness: that the more marked for politeness a…

Prepared and designed to provide general information in the administration of speech activities in the Nebraska schools, this manual offers rules and regulations for speech events, high school debate, and one act plays. The section on speech events includes information about general regulations, the scope of competition, district contests, the…

There is a tendency for debaters and judges to view a single quote or opinion as conclusive evidence proving a point. But evidence can only point toward a conclusion; it cannot prove a conclusion conclusively. Experts may offer their opinions (sometimes as fact) but these opinions are only educated guesses. This is not to say that evidence from…

Noting that since democratization of communication is part of the broad social process, and that any given form of democratic communication is the result of a dialectical tension between the social factors tending toward concentration of social power and contrary factors tending toward redistribution of that power, this paper argues that it is…

A study compared learning disabled (LD) adolescents with oral expressive problems to non-learning-disabled (NLD) adolescents on a formal operations task, with emphasis on a comparison between non-verbal performance and verbal explanations of the task. This paper reports part of the study, a comparison of two high school freshman subjects. The task…

Communicative adaptability differs from both P. Backlund's and J. M. Wiemann's definitions of communicative competence by stressing the importance of the communicator's ability to perceive contextual constraints and to adapt his or her interaction goals and behavior accordingly. Communicative adaptability produces more satisfactory answers to the…

The prime function of human communication is to enable people to survive their environment. The special function of an argument is to adjust the environment to satisfy felt needs. Whether argument takes the cognitive form of thought, the textual form of an essay, or the interpersonal form of a conversation, it serves this general function.…

Fourier analysis, a common technique in engineering, breaks down a complex wave form into its simple sine wave components. Communication researchers have recently suggested that this technique may provide an index of the rhythm of conversation, since vocalizing and pausing produce a complex wave form pattern of alternation between two speakers. To…

The use by interviewers of a deliberate, prearranged, and consistent overall structure, comprising warm-up, level check, probes, and wind-up, can strengthen the content validity of interview tests. Moreover, the flexibility necessary for elicitation is increased if an established battery of well-structured tasks exists for candidates to perform.…

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of audiotaped counterattitudinal messages (messages counter to a person's irrational beliefs that are designed to help change negative attitudes) on communication apprehension. One hundred and fifty undergraduate speech communication students divided into control and experimental groups listened to…

It is suggested that the literature on communicative competence, replete with various formulations, mirrors the diversity of language outlined by Martin Joos in his essay "The Five Clocks." Three concepts of communicative competence are reviewed, in historical perspective. The first, promoted by Norm Chomsky, distinguished linguistic…

Cognitive psychology's most useful contribution to dramatic theory is the concept of schemata, or the mental structures that make up part of the perceptual cycle. In regard to an audience-oriented dramatic theory, this suggests that analysis of a script ought to identify the sorts of schemata that are to be aroused in the audience's minds and the…

Interpersonal behavior has been observed in a number of studies, and yet the two relational issues of control and affiliation are commonly reflected in all of them. Relational control includes such behaviors as dominance, assertiveness, retiring, and following, while relational affiliation includes involvement, acceptance, friendliness, and…

Focusing on public speaking as a major instructional tool for teachers, this paper contains suggestions for more effective lecturing. In the introduction, classroom communication is analyzed according to four moves: structuring, soliciting, responding, and reacting. The paper then discusses four problems in studying learning from meaningful verbal…