James Kinneavy's "Theory of Discourse," already being used as the model for the writing assignments in the curriculum at St. Joseph's College, can also be used as the model for listening and speaking assignments. This proposed project would incorporate the following four-step procedure: (1) determining what is necessary in preparing…

The area of rhetorical criticism has rarely been perceived as having a valid or useful role in the high school speech curriculum. However, a rationale for the inclusion of rhetorical criticism in high school speech instruction may be found in the accepted goals of speech instruction, because the failure to teach students the skills of rhetorical…

Prompted by the issue of whether participation in forensics programs has some tangible beneficial effects on the participants, this paper examines how such participation might influence the participant's processing of information. The paper first presents a rationale for examining the forensics participant as an information processor, citing…

A study was conducted to elicit the responses of five college students to their involvement with a single poem over a period of three weeks to determine if such involvement led to a greater appreciation and understanding of the poem. Each student began with a silent reading of the poem, moved to a study of it based only on silent readings, then…

A study was conducted to replicate and extend an earlier investigation of the persuasive effects of extended, intense concluding sex and death metaphors by using a more controlled design and by mixing metaphors. Fifty-eight high school students completed pretests assessing their attitudes toward a speech topic (legalization of marijuana). Two…

The scope, functions, significance, and implications of "Yuben," an early twentieth century Japanese magazine on oratory, are examined in this case study in intercultural rhetoric. The first section of the paper provides information about the magazine's genesis, including a discussion about its originator, Noma Seiji. The second section…

Evaluated were language production deficits in 32 learning disabled (LD) adolescents. Ss were administered a battery of subtests containing tasks sensitive to language production difficulties in cognition, convergent and divergent production of semantic units, word retrieval, and retrieval of syntactic structures. Results indicated that speech…

Argument can be defined as a process whereby people reason their way from one set of problematic ideas to the choice of another. This definition implies three primary dimensions; argument is problematic, it is based on the perceptions and choices of people, and its rationality is grounded in a variable logic of more or less rather than a…

Storytelling is a shared experience between the teller and the listeners. The two basic concerns of the storyteller are to choose good stories and to make the telling interesting and exciting. Selection of a story should be based on the criteria of good plot and characters, an authentic setting, appropriate dialog, and appeal to the listerners'…

The transsexual has numerous problems in the area of voice and diction. Some are subjective, such as quality, while others are objective and measurable, such as intensity, but all lend themselves to speech therapy. The speech clinician can help with problems involving pitch, quality, resonance articulation, vocabulary, and inflection. The absence…

This list of films for use in a basic college speech communication course has been drawn from films available through the universities of Michigan, Michigan State, and Iowa. These collections were selected because of reasonable rental rates, their midwestern availability, and the comparative fullness of the collections. Many of the films are old…

Presents personal interviews with Dr. William Lee Miller, a former speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson's 1956 campaign for President; Dr. Robert Turner, a former speechwriter for presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy; and Mrs. Dorothy Collins, a speechwriter for several key administrators at a major midwestern university. (JK)

The difficulties and differences of the Hebrew speech of nine children (ages 7 through 11) with severe hearing impairments were compared with the speech of seven children (ages 4-8) without hearing impairments. Each child was asked to name the objects in 20 colored pictures. From the 20 objects, words were selected which included the five main…

Debaters have several poor word-choice and word-formation habits that detract from their ethos as advocates as well as from the clarity of their arguments. In many instances, debaters, to their competitive and educational detriment, employ habitual phrases, questionable redefinitions, and poorly coined new words. Many currently popular debate…

Given that elderly adults depend more heavily on their ability to communicate as independent activity becomes more restricted, their ability to alter the supersegmental component of the message becomes crucial. A study investigated the ability of older speakers to alter their speaking rate and to determine the strategies used to accomplish rate…