Communication

Taking into account: [a] the traditional mother; [b] cultural pressures/expectations; [c] religion; and [d] distinct communication differences in native vs. north American diaspora – the role of mothers when discussing sex with their daughters in Caribbean cultures has a multifaceted set of communication challenges that continue to face mothers and daughters today. When they do communicate, the conversation is predominantly about abstinence and in some cases, condom use completely excluding information about STDS and methods of birth control. The cultural and religious pressures that mothers adhere to may thwart the decision to give their daughters an informative safe sex talk. To truly have effective mother-daughter sexual communication, mothers need to craft educative safe sex messages and communicate that with their daughters. Failure to do so will only increase the likelihood of daughters engaging in risky sexual behavior.

In response to assertions championing the absence of meaning and significance in language originating from Jacques Derrida's linguistic concepts of deconstruction, George Steiner and John Sheriff provide analyses of language that assert the opposite. Through an emphasis on subjectivities and subjective experience in the world, both find meaning to be bonded to subjective volition and the connectivities between subjects and language systems. For Steiner, this emphasis comes in the form of asserting the presence of others and the responsibilities we have to them, while Sheriff depicts how the semiotics of Charles Peirce make meaning-making subjective and communal. I argue, therefore, that in contrast to conceptions of language that challenge the presence of meaning in language, a structure of language as conceived through Charles Peirce's semiotics and George Steiner's vision of language asserts a dependability of language and the presence of meaning based on principles of connection and communion.

Communication scholars are in disagreement over the presence of online public speaking courses in higher education. Despite limited research on the Online Public Speaking model, it is quickly replacing the traditional public speaking model in American colleges and universities. This study used Burkean Cluster-Agon Analysis to uncover core concepts from four contemporary public speaking textbooks used in various classroom models (traditional, online and hybrid). Concepts were then compared with traditional core concepts of early speech communication to determine if technology has influenced contemporary core concepts. Results determined that contemporary core concepts from three of the four public speaking textbooks reflected traditional core concepts of early speech communication. The fourth textbook revealed similar contemporary core concepts with expanded definitions to technologically mediated speech situations.

This research addresses the question of whether individuals or groups induce deeper message processing of persuasive messages. An interaction between group entitativity and whether the group is an ingroup or an outgroup is predicted, where ingroups low on entitativity and outgroups high on entitativity are expected to induce deeper message processing. Entitativity measures the extent an aggregate of people is seen as a group (D. T. Campbell, 1958). Previous research shows contradictory results. S. G. Harkins and R. E. Petty (1987) have shown that high entitativity causes more message focus than low entitativity. R. J. Rydell and A. R. McConnell (2005) have shown that low entitativity causes more message focus than high entitativity. Hypotheses were not supported by the data. Post hoc analyses suggest that motivation to process persons and messages was greatest in the high entitativity ingroup condition. Predictions were revised by adding motivation as a variable.