Suggests business communication faculty will benefit from an understanding of three areas related to Institutional Review Board (IRB) review of class projects involving human subjects research: (1) whether their institution requires such class projects to be reviewed by the IRB; (2) how they can adapt classroom activities, materials, and…

Deals with the problematics that globalization poses for critical communication scholarship. Address how uneven patterns of global processes are enacted through cultural practices produced by the transnational flows of images and capital. Explores several areas of contemporary global growth with the overall objective of demonstrating the urgency…

Examines how evaluator sex, target responsibility and effort, and advice content influenced evaluations of advice given bluntly, with aggravating facework, or with mitigating facework. Notes advice was described as directed to a student upset about failing an exam. Finds that facework had a substantial main effect on evaluations of advice, with…

Responses from 168 of 267 university administrators surveyed indicated that 93% used e-mail daily; it was their preferred means of sending and receiving routine communications; 71% did not have formal e-mail usage policies; having a policy and providing e-mail usage training were correlated; they did not use e-mail for confidential, sensitive,…

Explores Jewish American identity from a communication theory of identity perspective. Analyzes six episodes of the television program "Northern Exposure" for their representation of Jewish American identity, and explains how the episodes were then shown to 26 Jewish Americans. Notes that the study focused on a communal representation of this…

Introduces a model of the roles of challenge and defense in everyday, informal arguments. Represents six basic types of challenge (acceptability, relevance, sufficiency, consistency, consecution, and completeness) and distinguishes between direct and indirect defense. Suggests that commitment rules in arguments tend to be conservative for the…

Explains I.A. Richards tenor-vehicle model of metaphor, which has seen extended use in communication scholarship. Reviews Richards' conception of the model and subsequent treatment of its components. Evaluates various patterns of appropriation and makes recommendations regarding future usage. (PM)

Considers how scientific texts are resistant to scrutiny by rhetorical critics because of the recalcitrance of nature, the exegetical equality of scientific communication, and the institutionally driven nature of scientific text production. Argues that none of these differences between scientific and public texts bars a rhetorical reading.…

Interviews newspaper reporters to show that journalists, like scientists, usually have hypotheses in mind in working a story. Finds, however, that unlike those of scientists, journalists' hypotheses were both explicit and implicit. (MG)

Examines narcissistic communication and the ways it is exhibited in everyday conversation. Identifies the following behavioral referents: boasting, refocusing the topic of conversation on the self, exaggerating hand and body movements, using a loud tone of voice, and "glazing over" when others speak. Suggests that conversational…

Reviews the history of the Public Relations Body of Knowledge Abstracts, a database of public relations research and literature. Describes the uses of the abstracts for research purposes, and reports assessments of new research directions as set forth by members of the Public Relations Society of America's permanent Body of Knowledge Board. (MM)

Analyzes a recent instance of focus group research applied to a public relations case (rather than a marketing case). Reviews the advantages and disadvantages of this qualitative method, and describes the case of a county department of mental health relying on focus group research to help plan a program aimed at reducing the stigma of mental…

Surveys employees of the Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania to examine why they read "Vital Signs," the employee newsletter. Finds that employees with a higher level of organizational integration often place more emphasis on reading the employee newsletter to survey system functions and the employee social network. (MM)

Examines the question of who have been the most important theorists in the communication field. Evaluates the relative importance of various theorists by counting the number of pages in the "International Encyclopedia of Communication" that mention each theorist. Provides a chronological list of the 120 theorists most often named in the…

Observes that three dominant perspectives on intentionality--the encoder, decoder, and interactional--emerge from communication literature. Explains that the encoder perspective links intent to conscious activity, whereas the decoder perspective associates intent with observable actions. Notes that the interactional perspective attempts to unite…