This study presents an examination and analysis of John F. Kennedy's rhetoric in the 1960 presidential primary. First, a survey is made of Kennedy's political background prior to the West Virginia primary. Kennedy's early congressional and senatorial campaigns are discussed, along with his fortunately unsuccessful bid for the 1956 Democratic vice-presidential nomination. Kennedy's decision to run for the presidency in 1960 and preparations for his campaign are also examined. The study then explores the background of the West Virginia primary. The link between West Virginia's socio-economic status and the state's 1960 political structure is investigated. Because of the critical importance of the religious issue in the primary campaign, West Virginia's religious profile is described. / The study reviews the progress and setbacks of Kennedy's West Virginia campaign and discusses problems that arose and how they were handled. Attention is focused on Kennedy's treatment of the religious issue, his most formidable West Virginia hurdle. A description of Kennedy's three brief tours of West Virginia is given together with an account of his campaign organization and his supporters. Kennedy's immediate opponent, Hubert Humphrey, and his campaign receive brief attention. Kennedy's other opponents both in and out of the state are also discussed. Kennedy's campaign techniques, including television appearances and advertising, receive attention. / The study then focuses on Kennedy's West Virginia speeches. It examines his ethical (ethos), emotional (pathos), and logical (logos) proofs/appeals according to Aristotelian and contemporary rhetorical theory. The study analyzes Kennedy's development of six major speech themes relevant to West Virginia: religion, West Virginia's economic problems, West Virginia's potential, the federal government's neglect of West Virginia, Humphrey's unsuitability as a presidential candidate, and Kennedy's viability as a presidential candidate. / Kennedy's audible and visual delivery in the West Virginia primary (as elsewhere) also come under investigation. His mode of delivery, general appearance, bodily action, and voice are examined, together with problems of presentation and how he overcame them. Finally, the study reviews Kennedy's style in the West Virginia primary. It inspects the popular concept of style as image building. Kennedy's language is examined for the traditional classical elements of correctness, clearness, appropriateness, and embellishment. In addition the Fry formula and graph for readability/listenability is applied to twelve of Kennedy's prepared West Virginia speeches for which delivery is verified, and the results are examined for significance. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-09, Section: A, page: 3778. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

This study was designed as an investigation of the speeches of known charismatic leaders to see if the elements stated in House's "A 1976 Theory of Charisma" were indeed present and evident in their speeches. The purpose of this thesis was to identify and to develop objective methods which could be used in investigating the theory and to apply those techniques to the speeches of charismatic leaders. This was done through a series of content analytic methods. / Ten American charismatic leaders (1930-1980) were chosen by a select group of raters. Two speeches by each of the charismatic leaders were examined. Each speech was analyzed for evidence of specific charismatic behaviors, goal articulation, role modeling, personal image building, demonstration of confidence, high expectations for followers, and motive arousal behaviors. / The traits and specific behaviors that House theorized would be found in charismatic leaders were generally evident in the speeches analyzed; however, the study suggests that religious leaders possess different characteristics and displayed behaviors different from other types of charismatic leaders. / Power and achievement were not as prevalent in the speeches of the religious leaders as in the other leaders, and they did not display as positive a concept of their followers as did other types of leaders. Yet a strong belief in the moral righteousness of their belief seemed more of a necessity for them. Future studies should explore the differences between the religious charismatic leaders and charismatic leaders in other fields such as military or politics. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-09, Section: A, page: 3780. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

Fidelity has traditionally been defined as congruence between transmitted and received signals, and has long been a concern of communication scholars and educators. In the present study, the definition was expanded to include the effectiveness of a message according to the source's purpose or intent. The intent assigned to sources was to nonverbally reward a partner during a conversation. Thus, fidelity was a function of how rewarding a source intended to be relative to how much satisfaction a partner experienced. / Previous research in the fidelity of nonverbal communication has focused on encoding and decoding of emotions. The research indicates that nonverbal communication of emotion does occur; females are better decoders and perhaps better encoders than males; and a variety of situational and modal factors influence encoding and decoding of emotions. / Encoding and decoding research has generally ignored other messages which may be communicated nonverbally, and it has ignored the transaction that occurs in communication events. The research has also overlooked the relationship between the sources and receivers of nonverbal messages. According to the developmental approach to interpersonal communication, the depth of a relationship influences the communication patterns. Nonverbal communication should also vary according to the relationship of the participants: friends should communicate more effectively than strangers. / Thus, the purpose of the present investigation was to determine the effects of sex and friendship on the fidelity of communicating rewarding nonverbal messages. Dyads composed of friends and females were predicted to display greater fidelity of nonverbal communication than dyads of males and strangers. / Fidelity was operationalized two ways. The Product Score represented an overall dimension of fidelity. It was based on the absolute difference between how rewarding the source intended to be and how satisfied the receiver felt after a conversation. The Process Score represented an ongoing dimension of fidelity, and was based on audience analysis procedures. / The experiment was conducted in a laboratory setting. The unit of analysis was the dyad; it was composed of a Sender (instructed to transmit rewarding nonverbal messages) and a Receiver of the same sex. Senders were drawn from students in a nonverbal communication class; Receivers were friends of Senders or strangers. Twenty-nine dyads contained strangers; 42 contained friends. Thirty-five dyads were male; 36 were female. / Data were analyzed using two-way analysis of variance, with sex and friendship as the main effects. The Product and Process Scores both resulted in a trend supporting the prediction regarding sex differences, with p values ranging from .05 to .10. Several exploratory analyses were also performed. Fidelity was correlated with how natural subjects felt and perceived their partners to feel. When the Receiver's perception of how natural the Sender felt was covaried using ancova, a trend supporting the friendship difference was revealed using the Process Score as the dependent variable. / Although none of the hypotheses was confirmed, the results provided some support for the predictions. Sex appears to be more important than friendship, although lack of naturalness and the artificiality of the procedures appeared to have confounded the effect of friendship. The dependent variables were uncorrelated, but both appear worthy of continued research. / Future research should continue to examine the effects of sex and friendship, it should pursue theoretical and empirical understanding of fidelity, and it should utilize other populations of subjects and nonverbal messages. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-11, Section: A, page: 4539. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

The effects of selected extra-evidential factors on the decision-making of mock jurors were investigated. The propositions of Equity Theory were employed as a conceptual framework for understanding the dynamics of the judicial process. / The present research was designed to replicate and extend the findings of the prototype mock juror study conducted by Landy and Aronson (1966). The experimental procedures employed by Landy and Aronson were adapted for use in the current research. In addition to the traditional predictions regarding the impact of the participants' relative character attractiveness, the present study investigated the impact of mock jurors' Just World Belief on their sentencing behavior. It was hypothesized that mock jurors reporting high Just World Belief would sentence defendants to longer prison terms than jurors with low Just World Belief. / The results of the data analyses provided partial support for the Landy and Aronson hypotheses and failed to support the predictions regarding Just World Belief. The absence of the effect of the defendant's character attractiveness on the sentencing behavior of mock jurors was attributed to the intervention of the potentially confounding variable of defendant suffering. / Comparison of the sentencing patterns of the high and low Just World Belief jurors suggested that high believers may base their sentencing decisions, in part, on the attributes of the victim, and low believers may base their sentencing decisions, in part, on the attributes of the defendant. / Finally, an extension of the equity theory formula was proposed. It was suggested that future research focus upon the verification of the elements and relationships described in the extension formula. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-10, Section: A, page: 4201. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Traditionally, organization theorists and researchers have held to the idea that the intrinsic and extrinsic forces that affect human motivation are independent and additive. The maximum motivation to perform a task would occur, then, when both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are at their grea / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-01, Section: A, page: 0020. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Educators stress the importance of listening and attempt to train students to listen more efficiently. Researchers have investigated variables which influence listening and the effectiveness of listening training. The results of their research do not demonstrate clearly that listening efficiency can be improved by instruction, or that listening is separable from other cognitive skills. Other research suggests that listening to a lecture may consist of listening for details and listening to make inferences, two behaviors which are similar to the lower levels of cognitive processing suggested by an established educational taxonomy. / A review of the field of listening research suggests that listening is an ill-defined construct, with marginal validity. This study sought to find evidence of a distinguishable lecture-listening ability and to ask whether this ability contains component skills similar to the taxonomic levels of knowledge and comprehension. / Sixty-one college students listened to three lectures which differed somewhat in content, length, and number of points covered but were similar in other respects. The tests asked both knowledge and comprehension level questions. / It was predicted that test scores would correlate positively at a higher level ((GREATERTHEQ) .6) than cognitive measures generally correlate with each other, suggesting an underlying lecture-listening skill. It was also predicted that test items would cluster in a factor analysis by taxonomic level. / The obtained correlations among the tests were only (.2 to .3) and thus failed to provide evidence of listening as cognitive skill. However, the low test reliability and the violation of two assumptions of parametric statistics dictate that interpretation of these results must be tentative. The factor analysis results (first test only) were not clearly interpretable because of the small sample size. However, these results do suggest that lecture-listening behavior may be influenced more by the specific topics within a lecture rather than the type of cognitive processing required. / Recommendations for further study included replication using the video-tapes made during this study, the development of tests with greater reliability, and further investigation of the influence of the factors of length, message density and topic--heretofore unidentified as factors influencing listening behavior. / This study does not provide a clear answer to whether a lecture-listening ability exists nor whether components of lecture-listening behavior are similar to cognitive taxonomic levels. The results do cast doubt on the existence of such a listening ability. These results also suggest that listening behavior may be related to topics rather than taxonomic level. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 2827. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

The diversity of languages, cultures, creeds, and competing religions during the Church's rise to power contributed to the use of a visual form of communication to instruct, inspire, and solidify the Christian faith by reinforcing the spoken word. During the millennium between the fifth and fifteenth centuries this visual communication evolved into a highly complex pictorial system, promulgated by the artist to provide instruction in the teachings of the Church. By the fifteenth century this pictorial system known to the modern world as iconography attained a high degree of sophistication evidenced by its use in the Merode Altarpiece. / The purpose of this study therefore is (1) to identify those historical events influencing the evolution and use of the pictorial communication system employed by the artist to communicate the religious teachings of the Medieval Church; and (2) to suggest that an examination of this historical education by means of visual images might be of interest to teachers presently involved in the teaching of visual literacy. / The pictorial symbolism used by the Christians in the first three centuries became the visual communication system of the Church in the fourth century, promulgated by the artist according to a set of rules prescribed by the Church fathers and sanctioned by the Emperor. / Following the Iconoclastic controversy, the bishops in the council of 787 restored the veneration but not the worship of the icons ". . .as a legitimate expression of Christian piety and faith." More significantly for the Western Church fathers, the council sanctioned the use of the pictorial communication system as a teaching tool and placed the system under Church control. "It is for painters to execute; it is for the clergy to ordain the subjects and govern the procedure." / By combining the Platonic concept of the human soul with the Aristotelian treatment of the mnemonic token, the Church could teach those Christian concepts such as the Last Judgment, Paradise, the Resurrection, and the divinity of Christ by the pictorial symbol. Thus, the visual communication system became the useful tool with which the Latin Church reorganized western Europe. / St. Augustine refined Origen's systematic outline of theological doctrine into the educational philosophy of the Middle Ages by allegorical interpretation of the scriptures. This method allowed for the inclusion into the visual communication system of those pictorial symbols already familiar to the various tribes of conquerors by adapting new meanings. / It became a visual language to be used by western artists and poets alike for the next thousand years. It is the only known visual communication system that can be traced from its inception in the fourth century to its culmination in the fifteenth century. / The Merode Altarpiece, created at the beginning of the Rennaissance, stands as the epitome of the visual communication system of the Medieval Church. From its early beginnings in the catacombs of Rome, when the unknown artist first extended the invitation to step inside the representation of Jonah and the Whale, to the Merode of the fifteenth century in which the medieval viewer experienced the Beautific Vision, the pictorial communication system of the Medieval Church was the only common language uniting these "people of God." / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 2829. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

This investigation explored the rhetoric antecedent to the women's liberation movement in the United States chronologically between 1776-1850. The focus was on the nature and uses of the rhetoric during the early women's emancipation efforts. These were the elements of rhetorical analysis: (a) primary sources; (b) analysis of the sources; (c) analysis of supporting arguments used by the rhetors; (d) topics and themes of the rhetors; and (e) response to the rhetors. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries women were locked into certain roles in American society by political, economic, religious, and social customs. / Abigail Adams is the first rhetor assessed. Her letters to her friends and her husband, beginning in 1776, served as primary sources. Another pioneer for women's rights is Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Vindication expressed ideas that are as important today as in the eighteenth century. Among the early advocates of women's rights are Frances Wright and the Grimke sisters, Angelina and Sarah. Principal sources are Wrights's Course of Popular Lectures, Sarah's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and Angelina's Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism. / Later advocates included Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott. Fuller's Women in the Nineteenth Century, Stanton's "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions," and Mott's Discourse on Woman zero in on the grievances of women whose aspirations are blocks. The last two spokespersons analyzed were males: William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, and Douglass's The North Star opposed slavery and advocated women's rights. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-10, Section: A, page: 4198. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

This study looked at women's internal experience of graduate school. In particular, it focused on the experience of women returning full-time to graduate school after an extended time-out for careers and/or family. The questions examined were: (1) how do returning women "name and frame" their experience? (2) what, if any, is the relationship between the way the women "name and frame" their experience and their response to it? and, (3) what role does the researcher-as-interviewer play in the construction of the data? / Data were collected through a series of three ethnographic interviews with 12 returning women, ranging in age from 28 to 50. Two of the twelve women were single, two were widowed, seven were divorced and one was divorced and remarried. Eight of the women had children. / Analysis of the data showed that returning women, as a group, "named and framed" their experience in terms of change. Some women wanted to change self-image or self-concept while others wanted to acquire a new set of skills or credentials. Individually, the women "named and framed" their experiences in terms of an internalized "meaning-making map" acquired in the family of origin but modified through adult experiences. This "map" told them who they were and what kind of a life they could have. It gave their "talk" and behavior a consistency that could be recognized; it could make life easier or harder. A woman who felt she must "prove" herself, for example, found graduate school more difficult than a woman who wanted to "work smart." / The researcher-as-interviewer influenced the construction of data through her presence as well as through the kinds of questions she asked. The women understood and gave meaning to their experiences through the process of explaining them to the interviewer. The insights gained through this process of "shared talk" influenced future action and decisions. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-03, Section: A, page: 0681. / Major Professor: Theodore Clevenger, Jr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

Communication breakdowns are common in organizations and especially problematic for managers. Active study of these problems is reported by the popular press as well as by schools of business, psychology, education, and communication. To date, however, research has focussed on the macro perspective--communication networks and climates--and problems continue at the micro level, between individuals. Needed was (1) an understanding of the role and definition of interpersonal communication in management, and (2) better methods for improving managers' communication skills. / Interdisciplinary research suggested that the enduring, traditional view of management functions--plan, organize, direct and control--has hindered understanding. Newer research showed that managers rarely perform these functions, but spend most time in frenetic information gathering through interpersonal communication. Indeed, communication skills were shown to be consistently more important to management success than traditional skills. / An operational definition for interpersonal communication competence and a unifying theoretical foundation were established. The disappointing results of current communication skills training were discussed. Newer methods with encouraging results were reviewed, derived from Social Learning Theory. Videodisc technology was shown to be instructionally effective in conjunction with these newer methods. / An instructional Pilot Program was developed to apply literature review conclusions. It included a Pretraining Activity presented via interactive videodisc and a Seminar presented by an instructor. Subjects were split into control and treatment groups, and the Interpersonal Communication Competence (ICC) of both were evaluated before and after the Pilot Program. Only the treatment group experienced the training activities. / Overall, the Pilot Program successfully enabled the volunteer group to master training objectives. Ongoing self-improvement was fostered. Positive attitudes were documented and evaluation procedures and instruments proved effective. However, there were no significant differences between the groups' ICC scores from pretest to posttest. Post hoc analyses of the ICC instrument found it flawed and unacceptable for this type of research. Recommendations were made for extension of the current research and for ongoing study. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3548. / Major Professor: Theodore Clevenger, Jr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.