This paper explores an alternative way of studying journalism in the classroom by focusing on contemporary journalists' ironic treatment of morality. The paper examines the performative character of the language of news, when the words investigative journalists use are of interest not so much for what they say but for what they do. The paper…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the role of public discourse in the soil conservation movement from 1865 to 1935; (2) Dwight D. Eisenhower's public imagery of the Soviet Union and Communist China as presented in…

Most freshman composition textbooks promote one discourse structure, usually stressing early placement of the points of an essay. This can lock rapidly changing writers into composing according to only one format. In addition, adhering to a prescribed structure rather than focusing on meaning too often causes structure--not meaning--to control the…

To investigate the influence of group settings on the receiver's perception of an inducement to rhetorical transactions, 45 undergraduates in a basic speech communication course were asked to rank from most important to least important a group of items that might help survivors of an arctic plane crash. After completing individual rankings,…

Noting that the television movie "The Day After" (aired November 20, 1983) is probably the most important of the films generating discussion about the issue of nuclear war, this paper describes a study that examined the rhetorical vision of nuclear war depicted in the film and the ways in which that vision corresponds to the images held…

This paper argues that in presidential politics new and highly sophisticated image-building techniques and the technological means for creating messages have proliferated during the past twenty years. The paper claims that the area where the most "image-building" is conducted is the television spot advertisement, but points out that…

Many theoreticians have indicated that a major task of the nonpresumptive rhetor is to gain presumption, thereby shifting the burden of proof to the opposition. Rhetorically, Martin Luther King, Jr., sought to effect this shift in the burden of proof through the use of hierarchies of values. At the top of his value system was the love of God. The…

By tracing and connecting significant shifts in Baptist political and theological rhetoric to trends within the larger culture, this rhetorical transformation can be seen as establishing and maintaining these groups as significant forces in American culture. Before 1800, Baptists were against infant baptism, regarding baptism as a matter of…

The rhetorical appropriateness of two of Shirley Chisholm's persuasive speeches on women's liberation were assessed using Afrocentric criteria for speech criticism developed by Molefi K. Asante (1979). The speeches addressed the controversy of whether the women's liberation movement was appropriate for women of minority cultures in the United…

A university level course in political communication can strive not only to teach the applicable communication and political theory involved, but also to provide "hands on" experience through the use of a simulated election campaign model. The model would include (1) data on the candidates involved; (2) information on the district…

A competency based learning approach as applied to public address instructional development can help to achieve the following goals: (1) to enable students to grasp the history of the period under study, (2) to enable students to develop and apply rhetorical criticism skills, (3) to provide students with a course format of high interest value, (4)…

Rhetorical criticism focusing on Norman Rockwell's paintings of the "Four Freedoms" provides reasons for the paintings' effectiveness within the context of Franklin Roosevelt's campaign to educate Americans about participation in World War II. The epideictic icons in Rockwell's paintings promoted identifications that constitute the…

The historical rhetoric, mythic heroes, and values of the American Revolution have become the justification for many other contemporary "revolutions." Collective movements advocating states' independence, the abolition of slavery, women's rights, civil rights, and so on, have manipulated the concept of heroic equality as it is embodied…

Suggests that an interpretive view of communication, with philosophical assumptions about the nature of persons and communication, provides a perspective from which scholars study argumentation. Presents arguments supporting the value of the interpretive perspective, and answers criticisms by showing how those criticisms are grounded in…

Relies on grief literature to develop a heuristic model of patterned stages of national mourning. Applies the model to lend insight into print mediated accounts of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. (NKA)