One of the most creative, active, purposeful and successful efforts of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), active from 1935 to 1939, was the Children's Theatre. Plays for production were selected on the basis of educational and cultural value, with special attention on sufficient realism to help children's awareness of self and place in the world.…

This paper reviews the newly emergent trend of audience-centered debate paradigms, such as the narrative and the issues-agenda paradigms, in light of an informal logic perspective on the argumentum ad populum fallacy. The paper demonstrates the complexity involved in the evaluation of ad populum arguments as well as the care which must be taken in…

A study focused on predictors of people's learning from public service announcements (PSAs) seen on television. Telephone interviews were conducted with 480 adults randomly selected from residents in Dane County, Wisconsin, in October 1987. Typical demographic information was obtained: sex, age, income, occupation and education. Commercial slogans…

To help business writers and writing teachers think more specifically about problems of writing collaboration, a study examined and analyzed a group writing project in the Auldouest Insurance Company (pseudonym) Department of Corporate Communication. The collaborative writing of the two page executive letter of the company's annual report involved…

This paper argues that western instructors of public speaking courses, along with those in the forensics community, can benefit from the insights offered by the eastern tradition. Examining the Indian religious text, the "Bhagavad Gita," reveals insights that can change the way message construction, audience empathy, and speaker…

This paper is part of a larger project which explored the impact of writing across institutional boundaries via e-mail on freshman students enrolled in several schools and universities located in Tennessee--Bryan College, Columbia State Community College, and Middle Tennessee State University. The paper explains that in addition to their regular…

The popular romance novel overlaps other genres in that it shares characteristics of mysteries, thrillers, erotica, adventure, etc.; however, it can be differentiated from those genres by the fact that the central story is not the mystery or adventure but rather the romance between the hero and heroine. The Romance Writers of America organization…

While its educational goals were yet to be defined, the aims of the radio in the early 1920s included the social goal of cultural pluralism; the economic goal of profiteering; the military goal of communicating, training, and surveillance; and, the political goal of propaganda and morale building. In the end, like previous technological advances,…

Contending that public broadcasting has great potential to invigorate national discourses and to function as an agent of social change; at the beginning of the 21st century, many public television licensees are united solely by a core programming schedule and the need to raise funds at least four times a year. The paper traces the history of…

Anne Fisher, a pioneer in British education, was one of the few females in the 18th century to publish a significant grammatical work, one that was used widely in classrooms. This paper highlights Anne Fisher's historic achievement and argues from the discipline of the history of rhetoric that the two verbal disciplines of rhetoric and grammar are…

Reprints the inaugural address of the 1986 president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Examines issues in English instruction such as emphasizing facts over reasoning; developing a sense of audience; mechanics; dialects; and literature instruction. (RS)

This paper documents the beginnings of an effort to increase the diversity of technical communication in the Pacific Northwest. An ad hoc committee of technical communicators came together for this purpose because they believe that greater diversity will help technical communicators better understand and reach audiences from a wide variety of…

A study examined the effectiveness of the Children's Television Act of 1990 in altering the marketplace for informational and educational children's programming on commercial broadcast television. Producers and distributors of nationally available series that commercial broadcasters were using in 1993 to meet the requirements of the Act were…

Zitkala-Sa, a 19th century Native American woman who won second place in an 1896 Midwestern oratorical contest, resembles many students who daily cross borders--geographical, economic, linguistic, and cultural--balancing on a tightrope of assured losses and uncertain gains. Known as Gertrude Simmons before and Gertrude Bonnin after her marriage,…

A stylistic device that has been used by many authors over the years is to alternate the point of view between two or more characters. Authors of young adult novels choose this technique of multiple narrative voices for a variety of reasons. Multiple voices offer a challenge to many young adult readers because the point of view is much more…