Correlates of verbally aggressive communication in adolescents

This investigation identifies demographic, media, and social correlates of verbally aggressive communication in adolescence. Mail surveys were completed and returned by 2,300 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15. These adolescents were asked about the prevalence of verbal and physical aggression, the context in which it occurred, demographics, and the interpersonal and media influences in their lives. The results indicate that verbal aggression is widespread, that committing and experiencing verbal aggression is largely reciprocal, that there is a strong relationship between committing verbal and physical aggression, and that peer social influence and listening to violently oriented music are mildly related to verbal aggression in adolescents. These findings suggest more resources should be allocated to teaching adolescents to understand and control verbal aggression. Further, they provide important answers to many prevention and intervention programmatic questions, including context, content, and targeting concerns. Since the negative consequences of verbal aggression are severe and long lasting, decreasing this destructive communication behavior should significantly improve the lives of many adolescents. These and other practical implications are expanded upon and discussed.     

Among the eminent,the aspiring,and the young: A short history of new world writing

New World Writing, a magazine founded by New American Library in 1952, quickly became an important vehicle for liberal intellectual and literary thought. In addition to providing an outlet for new writing, the magazine became an important acquisitions tool for NAL. Throughout its lifetime, New World Writing remained a showcase for many of the finest writers of the 1950s, including Christopher Isherwood, Louis Auchincloss, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Jack Kerouac, and Gore Vidal. He is the author of Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacksand Heavy Traffic and High Culture: The New American Library as Literary Gatekeeper. He is working on a study of American literary agents     

Archival theory in Italy today

Archival theory in Italy has a long tradition, going back as far as the second half of the nineteenth century, and with roots in the 17th and 18th centuries. Central theme in the theory is themetodo storico, the principle of provenance, for the first time expressed in the late 19th century by Bonaini and Bongi. In the following decades archivists like Casanova and Cencetti were among the leading authors. Elio Lodolini assigned himself the task to synthesize ideas and notions, within a clear distinctions between records (registratura) and archives. One of the overall characteristics of the rich Italian literature is the stressing of the cultural value of archives. I have twice treated before the theme of archival theory in Italy from the fifties up to the nineties. The first time on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of theScuola speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari dell'Università degli Studi “La Sapienza” di Roma in 1989, when there was an international round table on archival science in the State Archives of Rome. My essay,Italian archival science today, has been published in the proceedings of the meeting (cfr. Donato Tamblé,L'archivistica in Italia oggi, inStudi sull'archivistica, by Roma: Elio Lodolini, 1992). Some years later, in 1993, I published a book on contemporary Italian archival theory (Donato Tamblé,La teoria archivistica italiana contemporanea (1950–1990). Profilo storico-critico (Roma, 1993) which was the sequel to the volume of Elio Lodolini on Italian archival history — (Lineamenti di storia dell'archivistica italiana (Roma, 1991). The purpose of my book was that of locating and identifying the scientific object of archival science as it developed and was clarified in the thinking and in the lucubration of the contemporary Italian Archivists.     

Adolescent Stress and Management Strategies: Some Lessons for Schooling and Society

The research discussed in the present paper, set out to find how a sample of Singaporean adolescents perceived and managed different sources of stress. The sample totalled 212 pre-university students with equal numbers of boys and girls, and a mean age of 17 years 5 months. The students attended a number of junior colleges in the republic, with the sample ethnicity reflecting national proportions. Measures of stress included Behaviour Profile, Life Events, School Stress Factors, Home-School Stress Conditions and Stress Symptoms. All measures were administered as questionnaires.

The results showed that several features of Type A behaviour emerged and that school examinations, job aspirations, school work and homework were the principal stressors. Fear of the unexpected, exhaustion and lack of concentration were the most quoted stress symptoms. Science students appeared to be more stressed than arts students.

Among the main management strategies employed by these adolescents at home, were listening to music, reading and exercise, while stress in school was managed through self control, self-sufficiency and sharing problems with peers. In the main, most students seemed to be able to cope by adapting to stressful situations as they arose at a particular time.

Some of the more important implications of the above findings are discussed in the context of schooling in Singapore and in the wider context of society.     

Book reviews

^cAbd al‐Malik b. Habib. Kitāb al‐Ta'rij (La historia). Edición y estudio por Jorge Aguadé. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1991 (Fuentes Arabico‐Hispanas, 1). 163 + 224 pp. [Arabic title: Kltāb al‐Ta'tikh]

Kedar, Benjamin Z., ed. The Horns of Hattin. Jerusalem and London: Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, Israel Exploration Society and Variorum 1992. 368 pp., 12 plates; $74.75 (cloth).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992. xi +101 pp., $22.00 (cloth).

Cameron, Averil and Conrad, Lawrence I., eds. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Papers in the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam). Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1992. xiv + 428pp., 12 plates; $29.25 (cloth).

Vereno, Ingolf. Studien zum ältesten alchemistischen Schrifttum. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992 (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 155). 414pp.

Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993. xv + 288pp., $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper).

Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. 281 pp., $19.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994. xv + 295pp., $34.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al‐Hallāj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated and edited by Herbert Mason. Abridged edition, Bollingen Series XCVIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xxxi + 293pp.

Viguera Molins, Maria Jesús. El Islam en Aragón. Saragossa: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1995 (Colección “Mariano de Pano y Ruata”, 9), 174 pp., 182 ills. in colour, maps, diagrams, charts etc No price stated.