Organized action need not depend on group consensus. Karl Weick's theory argues that only minimal shared understanding is needed and that common ends and shared meanings may be outcomes of organized action, not prerequisites. This paper reveals four communication mechanisms that generate and sustain equifinal meaning (multiple routes to a single…

S. Jackson and S. Jacobs' article entitled "Generalizing about Messages" represents an important methodological innovation in communication research. The article urges procedural change by recommending the use of multiple-message designs because of a weakness in single-message designs; it recommends analyzing message-replication data…

Investigates the evolution of specific lexical and syntactical clues and the recurrence of various semantic fields in mothers' spontaneous speech to their infants. Content of mothers' speech was related to age in newborn to 10-month-old children. (Author/RH)

More than a decade after the provocative writings of French feminist writers Julie Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, and Monique Wittig first appeared, the exploration of sexual and gender differences continues to draw controversy. Their work has been considered mostly in regard to literature, philosophy, and feminist theory, but their…

Recurring claims of the poor relationship of computer adoption and organizational productivity may be of interest to communication scientists who study computer mediated communication (CMC). Cognitive science researchers advocate the same solution to this problem as many communication scientists, i.e., formative research. Iterating design and user…

Subjective comments from veteran news reporters, media critics, and the public give the impression that bad or negative news is becoming a major problem in this country. This impression raises major questions concerning how much is really known about bad news, including whether the media present an accurate or distorted picture of reality in…

A study examined the strategies used in 11 "get-out-the-vote" (GOTV) 1982 direct mail campaign letters, which were mailed on behalf of Republican candidates in two gubernatorial, one congressional, and one U.S. Senate race. All letters were mailed from four states with different political climates: Illinois, Minnesota, California, and…

Adopting the position, expressed by A. P. Bochner in his critique of small group communication research, that placing measurement in a secondary role increases the danger of accepting the claims of experiments with excessive error, this paper examines nine current quantitative small-group communication studies. Using a schema developed by J. F.…

Communicative adjustments of nonhandicapped preschool children addressing developmentally delayed companions were evaluated for their effectiveness and appropriateness. Behavior-request episodes in which initial failure had occurred were analyzed, and sequences of interactions were tracked within episodes until some form of resolution was…

Strategic communication scholars agree that planning is critical to human action. An investigation tested plan modification aspects of cognitive planning theory. Two experiments tested whether success and failure of a plan served as predictors of plan modification and whether individuals can accurately predict whether and how they will modify a…

Noting that the chance to utilize a new paradigm is an opportunity that rarely presents itself, this paper suggests that chaos theory and communication can be combined to help understand human communication. The paper begins by examining the complexity of human communication--that is, the internal and external factors that affect the complexity of…

This paper examines some of the various findings contained in the current literature on humor in the workplace. In recent years, the communicative role of humor in the workplace has received attention--particularly in management-related publications. Consequently, the paper explores the emergence of humor as a management tool and the advantages…

The current rapid economic development in mainland China strongly demands that the world understand the People's Republic of China's (PRC) negotiating behaviors to ensure a successful business transaction. This study examined the PRC business negotiating behaviors by interviewing 16 Hong Kong businesspersons who have experiences in doing business…

A study revisited the question of the causes of interpersonal equivocation, arguing that, although the previous research of Bavelas and associates has shown conclusively that interpersonal communicators in avoidance-avoidance binds equivocate to avoid the bind's dilemma, researchers have largely ignored other conceivable antecedents of…

A study examined the longstanding theory of the Bavelas group which suggests that the only consistent cause of interpersonal equivocation is avoidance-avoidance conflict (AAC). The study also aimed to uncover a psycholinguistic profile of equivocation, especially in the form of paralinguistic cues such as disfluencies. Subjects, 18 college…