Communication scholars have recently focused attention on songs as artifacts of popular culture. Current literature implies that the contexts of music communication are defined by the relationships that songs establish between artists and their audience: persuasive, expressive, and commercial. As the commercialization of music is an inherently…

Rather than relegating Aristotle's "Rhetoric" to history of rhetoric courses, where it is regarded with only an antiquarian interest, it can be used as a practical text for introductory public speaking courses. The advantages would be threefold: (1) its emphasis is essentially on rhetoric as a speaking art rather than an art of…

An evaluation of four seventeenth and eighteenth century essays on optics revealed early trends in the evolution of scientific articles. The later articles showed a growing tendency to (1) separate practice from pure knowledge, (2) organize information around problems of knowledge and theory rather than around chronological events, (3) emphasize…

The emergence of a modern or "new" rhetoric has been characterized by its attempt both to recover and reexamine the concepts of classical rhetoric and to define itself against that classical tradition. The distinctions that are persistently drawn between classical and modern rhetoric fall under four related heads: images of man and…

The jeremiad, a sermonic rhetorical form, played a significant role in the American Revolution. As a successful social movement, the Revolution generated a language that portrayed its interpretation of reality. This was achieved in part through the use of significant forms that served to provide a link between the past and future and to foster a…

Based on the premise that the examination of primordial and universal genres of utterance illuminates universal principles of speaking and meaning, this paper examines the Anglo-Saxon boast, a common form of speaking among Germanic warrior societies during the early middle ages. It tells how Old English literature provides evidence from which the…

The focus of the contributions to this journal issue is communication theory and research. Following an introductory article that deals with the need for quality control in the criticism of communication research, eight articles offer discussions of the following topics: the nature of criticism in rhetorical and communicative studies, some issues…

Senator Robert LaFollette's speech to the United States Senate on "Free Speech and the Right of Congress to Declare the Objects of War," given October 6, 1917, epitomized his opposition to the war and the Wilson administration's largely successful moves to suppress public criticism of the war. In the speech he asserted his position on…

At the fourth annual Cal-State Hayward Conference in Rhetorical Criticism, 25 upper division and graduate students from 17 western colleges and universities presented papers on rhetorical theory, history, and criticism. Panels of faculty members from the same colleges and universities, acting as editor-critics, rated five of these papers as…

This study attempted to determine whether it is more effective for a speaker to cite sources of authority for any assertions he makes within a speech or whether he should simply assimilate the assertions into the text without citation. The subjects for the experiment (145 students in a basic college speech communications course) listened to two…

Any discussion of the dimensions of contemporary political campaigning would not be complete without some consideration of heckling; for heckling, or the questioning of a speaker while he is in the act of speaking, has become a salient element on the political scene. In attempting to diminish the heckler's impact, the speaker usually appeals to…

The increasing occupation of journals with the subject of political persuasion is briefly surveyed. A set of principles which might be utilized to reconceive an inventional theory are proposed, and means through which these principles may be applied in studies of political persuasion are suggested. The decision to shift from a speaker/message…

Writing parodies of advertising slogans can sensitize students to the emotional appeals of those slogans.

We should train our students to apply the tools of literary analysis to political language.

Describes a writing assignment to help students develop the capacity to anticipate and deal with the counter arguments of a skeptical reading audience, in which classmates offer rebuttals to student position papers. A sample peer review form is included. (HTH)