Finds that competent communicators (high assertive, high responsive) communicated from needs for affection, pleasure, and inclusion more than noncompetent (low assertive, low responsive), submissive (low assertive, high responsive), and aggressive (high assertive, low responsive) individuals. Shows that aggressive types communicated more from…

Investigates the degree to which assertiveness and responsiveness predict the use/nonuse of affinity-seeking strategies in the context of relational repair. Finds that how participants perceived themselves and how they perceived others in terms of both assertiveness and responsiveness predicted the types of strategies used and not used. (SR)

Examines threats, suggestions, hints, and promises for politeness and expediency in gaining others' compliance. Tests predicted rank-orderings of politeness/expediency of threats, suggestions, etc., stemming from politeness-theory literature. Indicates hints, although inefficient, are not the most polite for gaining compliance; threats, although…

Focuses on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM). Evaluates the critical responses of communication scholars and others to the VVM. Suggests directions for research which would attempt to explain the social functions and ideological uses of this extraordinary site. (MS)

Replies to an article in "Human Communication Research" (v14, n4), "Item Desirability Effects in Compliance-Gaining Research: Seven Studies Documenting Artifacts" by Brant R. Burleson, Steven R. Wilson, Michael S. Waltman, Elizabeth M. Goering, Teresa K. Ely, and Bryan B. Whaley. (MS)

Examines accounting behavior in predicaments using a triangular accountability model. Finds that subjects made excuses and justifications to weaken the linkages among the three elements of the accountability triangle (identity, prescriptions, and the event); and that subjects showed a consistent preference for accounts related to a weakened link.…

Finds that compulsive communication has low positive relationships with assertiveness, willingness to communicate, self-perceived communication competence, and neuroticism; low negative relationships with introversion and communication apprehension; and moderately high negative correlation with self-reports of behavioral shyness. Suggests that…

Examines turnout of registered voters in a special vote-by-mail U.S. Senate election in which the Democratic candidate (Ron Wyden) pledged to stop using attack ads, and the Republican candidate (Gordon Smith) did not. Finds that only Republicans' participation fell, while Republicans, Independents, and Democrats who felt Wyden had lived up to his…

Delineates a metatheoretic rationale for a biologically based theory of verbal aggressiveness. Integrates neurobiological principles into the concept of verbal aggressiveness. Presents a working model, and addresses the implications of this theoretical position. (SR)

Investigates how employees perceived organizational "rules" in describing specific communication problems. Finds that stating clear policy would have helped head off 20% of the problems described; respondents mentioned many more unwritten than written means by which communication expectations were conveyed; and organizations with written…

Evaluates the framing concept and its utility for communication research in conflict resolution. Defines frames as communicative, rather than cognitive, constructions. Provides a theoretical framework for explicating the communicative framing process and its potential issues in conflict. Explores the effects of particular framing patterns on…

Variations in group co-construction of knowledge and the extent to which participants engaged in negotiating meaning were directly related to instruction. The authors examined social interaction resulting from controlled variation in instruction using a counter-balanced design in two professional development courses for teachers. Both courses were…

This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate the ways in which participants in an online asynchronous postgraduate reading group managed and negotiated their contributions within the discussion. Using the conversation analytic concerns with sequential organisation, adjacency pairs and topicality, this article shows the analytic insights…

Different speakers may pronounce the same sounds very differently, yet listeners have little difficulty perceiving speech accurately. Recent research suggests that listeners adjust their preexisting phonemic categories to accommodate speakers' pronunciations ("perceptual learning"). In some cases, these adjustments appear to reflect general…

A study applied artificial neural networks, trained with the back-propagation learning algorithm, to modelling phonemes extracted from the DARPA TIMIT multi-speaker, continuous speech data base. A number of proposed network architectures were applied to the phoneme classification task, ranging from the simple feedforward multilayer network to more…