Effects of test format on listener response

A report of the evaluation of various test forms commonly employed in speech reception measurement with a view toward determination of non‐chance response set.     

John Morley and the Irish question: Chart‐prayer‐dream

Attempts to circumscribe “the Burkean method” of rhetorical criticism can be frustrating. Critics more profitably might use Burke as an example and a prod, appropriating—as was done in this study—whichever of Burke's concepts, methods, and metaphors seem applicable to a given rhetorical event. Burke's “chart‐prayer‐dream” trilogy, together with his understanding of “strategies,” was employed to examine Morley's “Home Rule” speech before the Oxford Union in 1888. Morley's reply to Randolph Churchill abandoned propositional argument in favor of reviv‐alistic‐exhortation early in the speech; his strategies of form, argument, labelling, style, and mimesis are best understood as those of the High Priest seeking a confessional and an act of expiation from his auditors.     

Public speaking students’ perceptions of cheating

While cheating has been studied in a variety of academic fields little to no research has been done in the field of communication studies and more specifically in the basic public speaking classroom. This may be due in part to a false sense of security public speaking instructors feel when they observe and evaluate a student as he or she stands and delivers a speech. Instructors may assume that since the student delivers the speech the student also researched and wrote the speech. However, the results of this study indicate that students self‐report cheating on speeches and do not seem to have a clear‐cut idea about what constitutes cheating in a public speaking class.     

Evaluation of the speech dialect attitudinal scale

Listener groups employed the Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale (SDAS) to rate speakers in a variety of situations. These involved: (A) foreign accent, (B) regional dialect, (C) speech pathology, (D) broadcast news reporting, and (E) use of obscene language. Reliability of ratings was consistently high, with a median of .98. Evidence of construct validity was provided by the factor structures of SDAS item scores. Except in the case of the speech pathology experiment, the factor analyses yielded a remarkably consistent three‐factor structure: Socio‐Intellectual Status, Aesthetic Quality, and Dynamism. In each case, analyses of variance and covariance of SDAS scores discriminated among speakers differentiated by linguistic variation, further supporting the validity of SDAS data.     

Central states speech association members as of July 1, 1966

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if maximum articulatory rate of children with articulatory disorders differed significantly from that of normal‐speaking peers. If differences exist between groups, then additional research is indicated to determine whether improving maximum articulatory rate will result in more acceptable articulation.     

Against the tyranny of musical form: glitch music,affect, and the sound of digital malfunction

This essay provides a model of how to critically read non-representational sound by attending carefully to its material elements. It presents a novel conceptualization of glitch music, an experimental medium of digital art comprised of the unpleasant sounds of technology malfunctioning. The analysis examines the representative songs of glitch artists Oval and their sonic articulation of the regenerative possibilities of failure. Although Oval largely considers conventional musical form to be tyrannical, its sound art simulates traditional musical elements such as rhythm, phrasing, and instrumentation, and transforms them into their respective glitch equivalents of metrical dissonance, repeated sound textures, and timbral experimentation, thereby altering digital malfunctions of sound into a sensual affective experience. Although music is theorized elsewhere to be persuasive because of its mobilization of emotions within the listener, the glitch art of Oval is suasory because it generates affective intensities that operate at an intercorporeal level of matter-energy. The songs of Oval update the modern directive of the Futurist sound movement to train the listener to accept a life surrounded by the sound of digital technology.     

Vowel quality before and after an operation for an occluded nasal passage

Anxiety experienced while in a public speaking situation (speech anxiety) is discussed within the framework of Trait‐State Anxiety Theory. Speech anxiety may be considered a dispositional variable designed to measure individual differences in speech anxiety proneness (Speech A‐Trait) or a measure of anxiety experienced during a particular speech (Speech A‐State). Physiological and behavioral measures of speech anxiety are typically viewed as A‐State measures. Self‐report indices may be considered either state or trait anxiety measures depending on the context in which the measures were obtained. The development of a scale to measure both Speech A‐State and Speech A‐Trait, including initial normative, reliability, and validity data, is reported.     

Communication patterns,sex, and length of verbalization in speech of four‐year‐old children

The mean length of verbalization of 56 four‐year‐old Head Start children was measured in four communication patterns—dyad, triad, small group, and role‐playing triad. The children produced more speech in the small group than in the dyad. Differences between other patterns were not significant. Similar results were obtained when repetitions of words and phrases were eliminated. Females produced, more speech than males in all communication patterns.     

Instruction in radio and television in twenty‐five selected universities

The mushroom growth of radio and television instruction taking place since the end of World War II has left in its wake a patch‐work guilt of academic programs in colleges and universities from coast to coast. The importance of trying to answer the question ‘Where are we going?”; indicates a need for realistic stock‐taking and thorough curriculum evaluation.

In keeping with its policy of seeking to advance the field of knowledge as to education for broadcasting, the Journal presents a special report on the current state of the curriculum which, it is hoped, will prove of value to all those interested in education for broadcasting.     

Language attitudes: An analysis of teacher differences

Based upon a (Q‐type factor analysis, teachers were grouped according to their patterns of rating videotaped speech samples of Black, Anglo, and Mexican‐American children. As in prior research, ratings reflected global judgments of confidence‐eagerness and ethnicity‐nonstandardness. General corroboration xvas found among speech ratings, teachers’ stereotype ratings of different ethnic groups, and the teachers’ academic expectations of children representing such groups. Results held a number of implications regarding the linguistic attitudes of teachers.     

The history of public address in an age of information

This essay develops the thesis that to study public address in an age of information is to take into account (1) the mass and diversity of public communication events and (2) the dominant intellectual version of information in speech‐communication     

Three ifs and a maybe: Mari Matsuda's approach to restricting hate‐speech

This essay examines the issue of “hate speech,” racial, sexual, and ethnic‐based expressions of hate, on the college campus. Many commentators have called for colleges and universities to create polices to prohibit such expression. Others have noted that First Amendment rights protect such expression. This essay discusses both positions, and offers a third perspective designed to protect expression without dismissing the damage caused by hate speech.     

A survey of native American serious drama from 1900 to 1918 1

This article seeks to isolate factors associated with effective and ineffective campaign speeches made by Adlai E. Stevenson in 1956. To distinguish effective from ineffective speeches, the author solicited the judgments of 105 campaign associates, Democratic and Republican politicians, journalists, and students of public address. Eighty‐seven replies were received and sixty‐four were sufficiently complete for analysis. There was high agreement that six speeches were effective and six ineffective.

Factors associated with effectiveness (their opposites with ineffectiveness) included the following: single issue discussed; relatively uncontroversial subject; constructive material emphasized and refutation de‐emphasized; responsive and sympathetic audience; speaker spent great deal of time editing and revising but little on basic draft; revisions were to clarify and identify with audience rather than to qualify remarks; emphasis on solutions rather than problems; introductions contained humor, irony, and satire; presence of direct ethical appeals; emphasis on values rather than needs; frequent alterations in text during delivery.

The author also found several factors common to both effective and ineffective speeches. These included, among others: foreign or domestic issue; size of audience and size of auditorium; length of speech of introduction; length of program prior to speech; logical organization; poor use of summaries and transitions.     

Social noise and segmented rhythms: News,entertainment, and celebrity in the crusade for animal rights

Building out from a case study of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), this essay offers a cultural account of popular social protest in the narrowcast era. Founded in 1980, PETA has grown into the world's largest and highest profile animal rights group. I trace the evolution of the group's public relations efforts and describe them via vocabularies of sound— as creating social noise and generating popular rhythms. Through the mid‐1980s, PETA made public noise primarily by orchestrating news‐based controversies, but by 1987 they were increasingly turning to narrowcast and broad circulation music and entertainment media as a way to spread the word to outsiders and ritually express the beliefs of the group. I argue that these cultures of entertainment and celebrity provided structured rhythms of affection that took the cause further than the more discordant sounds of news‐based controversy.     

News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism

The “topless radio”; phenomenon was briefly widespread— and controversy about such formats continues to appear. This article reviews two important FCC decisions, Sonderling (WGLD‐FM), and Pacifica (WBAI‐FM), to discern and describe FCC policy trends and attempts to define just what obscenity and indecency is and what standards for broadcasting should exist. Dr. Feldman is on the speech faculty at Denison University (Ohio), while Dr. Tickton teaches mass communication and speech at, respectively, Norfolk State College and Old Dominion University, both in Virginia.     

Attitude similarity,relational history,and attraction: The mediating effects of kinesic and vocal behaviors

Perhaps the most well‐known finding in the study of interpersonal relations is that attitude similarity leads to attraction. Recent research has found that the similarity‐attraction effect is diminished after informal social interaction. The mediating effects of verbal and nonverbal behaviors in attenuating or strengthening the effects of similarity on attraction have not themselves been studied. The present experiment tests the similarity‐attraction relationship in a conversational setting while investigating the effects of kinesic and vocal behaviors as mediators. Forty dyads, with similar and different attitudes who were newly acquainted or well known to one another, participated in 30 minute, non‐directed conversations. Their conversations were videotaped and coded for several vocal and kinesic indicators of involvement. After taping, subjects filled out attraction and satisfaction measures. Analyses revealed that attitude similarity affected attraction and satisfaction, even after an intervening interaction. Attitude similarity affected posture and orientation as well as similarity in gaze and adaptors; relationship stage affected vocalizations and discrepancies between partners’ speech rate and posture behaviors. Finally, it was found that senders’ smiling, speech rate, and postural orientation explained variance in partner attraction and satisfaction beyond that due to initial attitude similarity‐dissimilarity; certain measures of behavioral similarity accounted for attraction and satisfaction outcomes, reducing the effects of attitude similarity.     

The phonology of new England English

This article, based on the speech of over a thousand New Englanders, mostly college students, is an inquiry into the normal usages of present‐day pronunciation in the six New England states. It has two main purposes: (1) to determine the predominant forms in words of divided usage, and (2) to determine the geographical areas in which the predominance of certain forms differs from the predominance in other areas within the region. It offers, incidentally, an opportunity to compare present‐day usages with the traditional usages of a changing New England.