When the newly appointed professor of medicine at the University of Rinteln, Johann Peter Lotichius (1598-1669), delivered an oration entitled "Oratio super fatalibus hoc tempore academiarum in Germania periculis" ("Oration on the pernicious dangers to the universities of contemporary Germany") at said university in February…

A textbook author reflects on the ethical and ideological choices she made in her quest to create a history book that would be relevant to demographically diverse high school students.

This manuscript describes an approach to critical qualitative data analysis that combines (1) Carspecken's critical qualitative methodological framework with (2) the conceptual resources of critical discourse analysis (CDA), as framed by Fairclough and colleagues. Carspecken's methodological theory illuminates the connection between sociopolitical…

For over 30 years, instructional communication scholars have investigated the relationships between instructors' communicative behaviors and students' affective/cognitive learning, as well as student classroom motivation. More specifically, perceived teacher immediacy is positively related to student learning and motivation. Albert Mehrabian first…

Parody and related forms of political humor are essential resources for sustaining democratic public culture. They do so by exposing the limits of public speech, transforming discursive demands into virtual images, setting those images before a carnivalesque audience, and celebrating social leveling while decentering all discourses within the…

For generations, critics have dismissed James Forman's "Black Manifesto" as a rhetorical failure. Such judgments tend to focus on the prophetic and retributive registers of the speech and fail to account for the full range of its ironic structuration. By examining the complex interchange of prophetic, retributive, and tragic registers through…

Although the concepts of style and delivery occupy a significant portion of any public speaking class, students often fail to make use of stylistic devices or delivery techniques while writing and presenting their speeches. This activity invites students to critically analyze a public speech and then present the critique using their own voice…

Objective: To select a charitable organization to receive the class monetary donation. Type of speech: Persuasive. Point value: 100 points, which is 20% of course grade. Requirements: (a) References: 5; (b) Length: 5-7 minutes; (c) Visual aid: Yes; (d) Outline: Yes; (e) Prerequisite reading: Chapter 15 (Lucas, 2001), Chapter 7 (McKerrow, Gronbeck,…

In the 1880s, William James argued that individuals do make a difference in history, and that the study of influential people is a defensible academic pursuit. The literature on leadership today raises three distinct challenges to his position: (a) that everyone is a leader, (b) that no one is a leader, and (c) that leadership is self-leadership.…

Analyzes a 1976 House of Representatives' debate in light of classical writings on the problem of defining and using "power" for rhetorical ends. Outlines the classical solution of powerful diction, brevity, and figures of speech for intensifying the impact of already compelling argument and applies these to the contemporary analysis.…

A course on women in public speaking, developed at the University of Cincinnati, focuses on the rhetoric of selected women who have been involved in various movements and causes in the United States in the twentieth century. Women studied include educator Mary McLeod Bethune, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, suffragette Carrie Chapman Catt, Helen…