This study elaborates the cultural categories of meanings used by seventh-graders at a junior high school to describe their teachers. It examines the common expressions students used in open-ended interviews to describe their teachers and their experience within these teachers' classes. A semantic structure that underlies the terms that students…

To explore how fifth grade students used their oral language in small group discussions to remake information, a study set up a series of small group tasks in the curriculum areas of social studies, current events, science, poetry, and mathematics for one class of 28 Canadian students. Students were randomly divided into seven groups of four…

This paper argues that in presidential politics new and highly sophisticated image-building techniques and the technological means for creating messages have proliferated during the past twenty years. The paper claims that the area where the most "image-building" is conducted is the television spot advertisement, but points out that…

Arguing for a feminist appropriation of the organizational culture approach to the study of complex formal organizations, this paper contends that, far from being an alternative approach that facilitates asking radically different questions about organizational life, the organizational culture approach's radical intentions are undermined by the…

A study was conducted to compare Brazilian men and women managers' preferences for using communication versus power-centered strategies when resolving employer/employee disputes. Subjects were 40 men and 40 women in middle and top-management positions. Each manager read a packet of four scripts describing various problems that a manager might have…

The success and safety of flight in actual instrument conditions is dependent upon the communicative competency of the individuals involved. The more obvious elements of communication involved include crew coordination and communication both verbal and nonverbal, aircraft and ground communication links, pilot interpretation of verbally and…

The result of interviews with 77 students on California state university campuses, this paper explores a set of guidelines designed to facilitate communication between white faculty and minority students. The paper is divided into three sections, each dealing with one of the three areas of the guidelines: classroom interaction, advising, and…

A study explored the extent to which affinity-seeking strategies are used in elementary and secondary school classrooms. Subjects, 311 elementary and secondary school teachers enrolled in classes related to communication instruction, completed a measurement instrument designed to evaluate their use of affinity-seeking strategies. Analysis of the…

Research on audience response to television suggests that viewers are actively involved, apply identifiable and consistent evaluative criteria, and have distinct ideas about the role of the medium in their lives. In light of this research, a study focused on 264 randomly selected sixth through tenth grade students in a Tennessee school system to…

A study examined the effect on grades and dropout rates of students' videotaping their first speech in a basic speech course. Subjects, 224 students at a northwest college, were tested for communication and for speech apprehension using McCroskey's Personal Report of Communication Apprehension. All students were offered an opportunity to videotape…

The specific aim of the present study is to examine children's metalinguistic awareness of one aspect of pragmatics: the request function. This function was selected for study because it is one of the earliest language functions to appear and because it has been the object of both theoretical and empirical research. Fourteen normal…

A family's metaphor, the frame of reference or perspective that is created and reflected through a family's use of figurative language, is a key to understanding the underlying values and realities of families. Constructivist theories of language view metaphor as essential to the creation of meaning. From this perspective, using metaphor as a…

A study was conducted to determine if the speech communication programs in Texas colleges and universities were providing the skills needed by industry. A survey of current business journals revealed seven skills needed by college graduates seeking employment in business: (1) public speaking skills, (2) knowledge of communication theory and flow…

Research literature shows that people with access to attitude-relevant information in memory are able to draw on relevant beliefs and prior experiences when analyzing a persuasive message. This suggests that people who can retrieve little attitude-relevant information should be less able to engage in systematic processing. Two experiments were…

As yet there is no comprehensive, systematic, demonstrably effective program for maximizing empathetic communication behaviors. What is needed are theories, concepts, and methods that would provide for such learning. One avenue of approach is to search for models and metaphors that would allow for an encompassing comprehension of empathy and…