Suggests ways of gradually developing delivery skills in public speaking by students in business speech courses. (RL)

Explores the process of impression formation in initial interactions as a function of a person's communicative style. Develops a method for measurement of interactive or communicative style and describes a study designed to empirically assess relations between style, attractiveness, and effectiveness. (JMF)

Reports results of a survey on what practicing communication specialists do as well as what they perceive to be important skills for future communication specialists. Respondents' job descriptions indicate two types of communication specialists: journalists and trainers. Implications for academic preparation for each are included. (JMF)

A classroom assignment on how to deliver a detailed telephone message to a tape recorder. (JMF)

Describes instructional objectives, resources, and student projects for four units of a course on women and communication: (1) intrapersonal communication: socialization and self-concept; (2) interpersonal relations between the sexes; (3) females' communication in structured groups; and (4) public communication: female orators. (JMF)

Presents a theoretical account of how speakers interpret that which is taken for granted in messages. Discusses research concerning enthymemes, argument theory, indirect speech acts, conversational maxims, pragmatic implication and other areas. Provides a framework for a model of how speakers interpret unspoken portions of utterances. (JMF)

Results indicated that observers familiar with a communicator's truthful behavior were more accurate in detecting deception than those who were not familiar, and that accuracy increased as self-monitoring increased. (High self-monitors are individuals particularly sensitive to the expression and self-presentation of others in social situations.)…

An overview of studies on the role of talk in student learning. (RL)

Analysis of questionnaires completed by 195 teachers of deaf blind children indicated that speech, signs, gestures, and writing were the primary communication methods most frequently employed. Possible reasons for the teachers' disproportionate use of speech are considered. (CL)

Cultural deprivation has been found to affect the acquisition, development, and utilization of language for the child. The influences of environmental variables on language patterns are discussed as a series of conditioned responses reinforced in the developmental process. (Author)

Examines the use of rules-based communication during problematic situations, that is, the use of talk centering on the appropriateness of particular conduct in particular contexts. Discusses the use and implications of remediation, or rule application, and legislation, or rule creation, in problematic situations. (JMF)

Considers the problem of insuring that students acquire thoughtfulness, knowledge, and wisdom, as well as the skills and techniques of eloquent expression, in interpersonal and public communication. Examines historical roots of this problem in classical rhetorical theory; contemporary problems of the discipline; and needed areas of research and…

Explores the concept and uses of analogy from the rhetorical perspective, determining rhetorical functions which the analogy may serve and the adequacy with which those functions are performed. (JMF)

Calls for a reordering of values in the study of human communication in human organizations. Offers a preliminary discourse on a primitive theory of human communication as distinguished from an eclectic theory of organizational communication. Differences between the two types of theoretical approaches are suggested. (JMF)

Reports on an investigation of the surface forms used by mothers to direct their children's behavior, and of the ways in which these forms are modified as the children grow older and their comprehension of indirect speech acts increases. (AM)