Compares three theories examining the role of communication in producing and coping with subjective uncertainty. Notes that uncertainty reduction theory offers axioms and derived theorems that describe communicative and noncommunicative causes and consequences of uncertainty. Compares meanings of "uncertainty" in the three theories as…

Predicted that listeners' perceptions of a speaker's status would influence their judgments of high- and low-diversity messages. (KS)

The purpose of these studies was to determine if a speaker using relatively restricted language would be judged more negatively by middle class listeners than a speaker using relatively elaborated language. The subjects for the first experiment were sixty-three volunteers from an indergraduate speech class. Two versions of a message were recorded…

This paper contains a discussion concerning some of the variables which threaten external validity and inferences about communicative behavior made by researchers and teachers. Communication researchers have begun to explore potentially artifactual sources of variance in judgments of evaluations of communicative behavior. Some studies have shown…

Thirty male and twenty female students were used to investigate the strategies of topic management. In pairs, they were told that the male (or female) would like to become friends with the female (or male), and were assigned a dialogue which created a positive or a negative context. Then the subject assigned as the initiator was given one of three…

To explore the impact of the environment on perceptions of compliance gaining situations, 97 university students were asked to recall and describe situations in which they had had to persuade someone to do something. Their descriptions of compliance gaining situations were then evaluated for similarity by three additional groups of students. The…

To explain some of the problems and questions concerning the study of communicative competence, this paper discusses observations that motivate activity in the area and several issues generated by the observations, and suggests implications of the issues raised. The observations discussed first are that humans manage to get things done…

Focusing on communicative competence as a major concept in speech communication, the author discusses the implications for theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical activities. Theoretical concerns generated by this focus are: characterization of the knowledge which comprises communicative competence, description of rules for appropriate…