Investigates questions of what the New London Group calls "multiliteracies." Looks carefully at various texts associated with the television show "Felicity" and considers what they have to say about contemporary popular literacies. Considers how "Felicity" acts as a kind of core sample, extracted from the broader soil…

Explores how adolescents process information in making decisions about risk behavior. Explains two developmental aspects of adolescent egocentrism: personal fable and imaginary audience, along with individual difference variables. Concludes the deep elaboration message was partially effective in changing message perceptions and adolescents'…

Examines the effectiveness of direct mail communication strategies--inoculation (a strategy which promotes resistance to attitude and behavior change), inoculation-plus-reinforcement, and refutation messages--in combating the persuasiveness of political attack messages. Finds that inoculation is more effective than the refutation approach in…

Examines six challenges that face teachers interested in developing alternative assessments of literacy: (1) clarifying goals; (2) clarifying audiences; (3) selecting and developing assessment techniques; (4) setting performance standards; (5) establishing methods of management; and (6) integrating assessment and instruction. (SR)

Explores the effects on other group members of positive and negative responses directed by one member of a discussion group to another. Finds significant differences between treatments for members' attitudes toward their group, but mixed support for the predicted sequence of treatment effects. Notes that the results differ notably from those…

Defines "hedging" as linguistic strategies that qualify categorical commitment to express possibility rather than certainty. Suggests that hedging is central to effective argument in scientific writing. Identifies the major forms, functions, and distribution of hedges in a corpus of 26 molecular biology research articles and describes…

Writers of correspondence course study guides should be aware of boundaries between oral and written language; differences between textbook and study guide prose; the need for direct address, informality, personalization, clarity, and simplicity; and the diverse tastes, learning styles, and levels of their audience. (SK)

Recalls how theater in the United States celebrated the Bicentennial by offering "Yankee Doodle" by Aurand Harris. Explains that although the characters were considered to be quite progressive, the absence of a larger female and minority contingent means that the target audience remains the white male. Concludes that it is important to…

Examines the visual attention of undergraduate students to the television screen. Finds that varying relatedness of episodes, for which strategic inertial processes should vary in strength, produces a corresponding difference in inertia of looks crossing boundaries. Suggests that results previously interpreted as reflecting nonstrategic processes…

Proposes that writing teachers are in need of a set of principles that would be useful in the teaching of argument or persuasive writing. Argues that behind the pedagogy of most existing approaches to argument lies a set of assumptions concerning audience, authorial intention, and evaluation that are ultimately damaging to the writing enterprise.…

Describes a writing assignment in a business communication class in which students, in previously designated study groups, discover for themselves the complex interaction between a writer and an audience by becoming the president, vice president, and manager of operations of a company, and solve a problem that they can handle only through memos.…

Presents findings of a study of viewers' ability to detect changes in conducting beat patterns. Reports that music education majors were significantly better able to detect tempo decreases than increases and better able than nonmajors to detect decreases. Indicates that nonmajors were better able than majors to identify tempo increases. (SG)

Outlines five steps to simplify business writing: (1) identify the kind of communication required; (2) analyze the audience; (3) understand the function of the communication; (4) choose the best organizational pattern; and (5) use the most efficient input medium. Claims that business writing can be easy and enjoyable if students follow these…

Addresses trends in ethnographic studies of media audiences. Asserts that, although rethinking of ethnography is necessary, it has the potential to paralyze research and continue building an abstract theoretical narcissism. States that the future of cultural audience studies lies with attempts to improve ethnographic practice. Argues that feminist…

Describes a technical writing assignment in which students write two different papers on the same topic--one directed toward a lay or executive audience, and the other toward an operator or technician audience. (SR)