This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 11 titles deal with the following topics: (1) applying Burke's cluster-agon method to Betty Friedan's rhetoric; (2) the rhetoric of nonviolent action; (3) the president's wife as public communicator; (4) the identification and…

A survey was conducted to examine the relationship between instructor degree status (regular faculty versus graduate teaching assistants) and students' final course grades in basic public speaking courses. Analysis of data obtained from speech communication departmental records at Wichita State University revealed that during the six semester…

Designed for elementary, secondary, and college level teachers interested in teaching nonverbal communication, assessing nonverbal skills in the classroom, and incorporating nonverbal units in other courses, the references in this annotated bibliography range from overviews to specifically selected interest areas in nonverbal communication. The 25…

A literature review was conducted to discover what programs, philosophies, and methodologies are recommended on the college level for teaching oral Standard English (SE) to speakers of Vernacular Black English (VBE) and to suggest areas of research needs in oral SE training. Most of the speech communication courses in this area are part of…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the rhetoric of the Moral Majority, (2) epideictic rhetoric in the works of 16th cntury humanist John Colet, (3) rhetoric and the Equal Rights Amendment, (4)…

One of a regular series on the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications, this report covers the period of January 1-June 30, 1984. The 14 studies summarized in the report deal with the following topics: (1) sources of variability in early speech development, (2)…

A study examined 20 beginning college interpersonal or relational communication textbooks to determine the degree to which they dealt with any or all of 10 specific communication competencies. The 10 competencies, targeted from numerous other evaluation systems and scales, are as follows: (1) describing feelings, (2) initiating and maintaining…

The study described in this volume investigated the talk of thirteen-year-old boys and girls, recorded while they were working in small groups on tasks set by their teachers. Specifically, research focused on the interplay between cognitive and communicative functions of speech in contexts planned for learning. "The Children and Their Talk"…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 13 titles deal with the following topics: (1) a paradigm for the study of communicative style; (2) the rhetoric of conversion in Ohio's abolitionist campaign; (3) a generic approach to the rhetoric of the United States Supreme…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 18 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the rhetorical theory and practice of Walter Lippmann; (2) communication, "root-metaphor" orientation, and decision making; (3) teaching as rhetoric; (4) the conditions and…

To determine what interviewers perceived to be important factors in the interviewing process and whether the sex of the interviewer or type of organization he or she worked for influenced their perceptions of such factors, a questionnaire was administered to 42 personnel managers from randomly selected places of business and government offices.…

Seeking to identify intervention strategies that classroom teachers can use to develop healthy self-concepts in learners, this paper provides a review of communication research on self-concept and its pedagogical implications. The first section of the paper reviews research on selected salient influences on self-concept, including work on racial…

A multivariate study focused on external relationships between (a) demographic variables and (b) psychological sex roles and communication apprehension variables. It also investigated differences among psychological sex types and biological sex types with respect to social desirability, speech apprehension, and listening apprehension at the junior…

In an experiment studying the relationship between reciprocity and compensation in dyadic communication, 96 male college students were videotaped during hypothetical problem solving situations. An attitude scale was used to manipulate subjects' impressions of mutual similarity. Time was used to test development in the dependent variables…

It was hypothesized that the quality of superior-subordinate communication relationships, self-esteem, clothing consciousness, impulsiveness, and intellectual interest would account for a significant portion of variance in a multiple regression equation of female subordinates' system involvement. This hypothesis was tested with data from 164…