A total of 224 college students participated in a study of the relationships between dogmatism and authoritarianism and the characteristics of written discourse. Early in the semester each class completed a public opinion poll which included a combination of the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and the California F Scale. In a seemingly unrelated task assigned later in the semester, students were asked to write a two-page message to a hostile audience on a topic about which they felt strongly. Three thematic, two logical, and three stylistic content analyses were carried out on the compositions. Analyses of results for the 148 students for whom complete data were available indicated that dogmatism and authoritarianism were related but discriminable entities. Authoritarianism was not reflected in the various measures of aspects of written discourse, while dogmatism, although highly correlated with authoritarianism, was related to communicative behavior. When persuading others, the low scorers sought more factual judgments, made more assertions, and asked more questions than did the high scorers. In addition, high and low scorers tended to use more qualifiers than did moderate scorers. (AA)