The purpose of the project described in this paper was to develop, publish, and disseminate a model set of oral communication competencies for West Virginia students in kindergarten through grade 12. The first section of the paper discusses the purpose of the project, which was prompted by the growth of the competency movement, and provides some…

Using a sample of college students assembled in groups of dyads representing all possible combinations of gender and race, this study sought to determine whether attributions made by conversational participants about each other are a function of the time patterns of their verbal interaction. It was found that the participants' pause and switching…

A total of 26 organizations and 33 departments of speech communication responded to questionnaires in a pilot study conducted to discern what large organizations expected from speech majors and from communications majors and to determine whether speech communication departments were meeting those expectations with their course offerings. The…

Emphasizing the need for sound logic in the decision making and policy making process, this paper equates the concept of rationality with the universal audience as a means of analyzing argument, evaluating rhetoric, and persuading audiences. The paper argues that the policy systems paradigm most approximates this objective within the context of…

Mothers' imitation of their infants during the first 3 days of life is examined in this study. Twenty-four newborn infants (12 males, 12 females) and their mothers participated in the study. On each of the first 3 days following delivery, mother-infant pairs were videotaped in a non-feeding interaction for approximately 5 minutes while the infants…

The 16 articles in this journal issue identify and assess change and constants in intercollegiate forensics during the decade of the 1970s. The articles give varying perspectives on the significance of the decade and the topics range from concern for tenure for the debate coach to the formats of argumentation theory within the debates themselves.…

Noting that language and politics both grow out of the underlying processes of social agreement and dispute, this paper analyzes the political language of the New Christian Right (NCR) movement as it is found in the national print media. Various sections of the paper discuss the following: (1) the background of the NCR, the characteristics of the…

Although Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan appealed to many of the same basic American values in the 1980 presidential campaign debate, there were some subtle but major differences in their value appeals. Other than attempting to convince his audience that his policies had been and would be successful and that Reagan's policies…

Identifying many of the goals and objectives of academic administrators can reveal the pervasive impact of speech communication on the potential effectiveness of administration in higher education. Such objectives include (1) disseminating information, (2) engaging in consultation, (3) reaching decisions, (4) discovering information, (5) obtaining…

This monograph contains a report of the field work stage of a research project, on the educational significance of the modern Australian oral tradition, which involved the collection of recordings of people telling tales, reminiscing, recalling personal events of significance, and recounting traditional Australian legends from non-Aboriginal…

The position taken in this paper is that the sentence adverb should be viewed not as an occurrence within a sentence but as a kind of illocutionary force marker of a speech art. Three points are argued in the paper: (1) that current linguistic analyses of sentence adverbs are inadequate even to the purposes of the analysts; (2) that treating…

Gestures of six young adults were transcribed from videotaped narrations. Iconic, or imitative, gestures were found to have a tendency to depict whole scenes, and to correlate positively with motions implied in accompanying verbs. Gestures were found to be marked for such contrasting grammatical features as agent and patient, and transitive and…

Fifteen English-speaking and fifteen French-speaking preschool children were each videotaped during two play sessions, one with a native and one with a non-native peer. Length of verbal utterances toward the non-native listener was significantly lower than toward the native listener, supporting the notion that native speakers adapt the amount of…

Research was conducted to study the speech in a sales transaction in a retail store under natural conditions. Fourteen sales transactions in a lighting fixture store were tape recorded, with the customer's knowledge, over a period of four days. Each talk was divided into three segments--speech preparatory, speech central, and speech final--and…

The purposes of this study were to examine (1) the extent to which three-year-old children converged noncontent speech to that of adults and (2) whether a talkativeness-reticence factor influenced the degree of convergence. Four three-year-old girls individually interacted with six to eight unfamiliar adults in free-play settings. From…