<p> We live in a frantic, fractured, ever-quickening, and violent world that is at the end of the era in which we will be able to talk with survivors of the <i>Shoah</i>. To date, there have been approximately 100,000 recorded interviews of Holocaust survivors. The vast majority of these interviews&mdash;such as the 52,000 done for Steven Spielberg's and USC Shoah Foundation Archive&mdash;have used traditional, single-session, and "neutral" methods of oral history interviewing to "capture" and "preserve" the legalistic, historical "testimonies" of survivors. The present study responds to this situation and unique moment in time by slowing down, listening, speaking repeatedly and intimately, forming interpersonal relationships, and storytelling with three Holocaust survivors in the Tampa Bay area: Salomon Wainberg, Manuel Goldberg, and Sonia Wasserberger. I do this in order to see those I work with as experiential authorities able to help me address the classic and post-modern issues of human meaning, connection, and value in the post-Holocaust world. I first contextualize this work within extant and related research in the field of communication. Then I situate this project in the broader intersections of work on the history of the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors. This is followed by an outline of the particular collaborative oral history and ethnographic theories and methods that influence this work. These contexts lead to three chapters, the ethnographic stories of each survivor I have worked with for the past three years. Each story focuses on: a) the oral history and ethnographic significance of sharing particularities of each survivor's experience through our dialogues together; b) broader insights and explorations of the central themes (compassion, identification, and affinity) that emerged from our interviews and relationships. The final chapter concludes by reflecting on and synthesizing the values and limitations of this project. As a whole, this dissertation cultivates and exemplifies: a) a unique understanding of humane and humanistic approaches to ethnographic methods in the fields of communication and oral history; b) compassion, identification, and affinity as important lenses and motives to consider in research with individuals (in particular individual survivors of mass atrocities); c) the historical value and need to continue developing diverse approaches to scholarship that centralize personal stories, dialogue, peace, wisdom, and work that represents marginalized experiences and experiences of marginalization in a violent, oppressive world. This dissertation is offered as a token of remembrance of the Holocaust and to those who shared their stories with me.</p>

The present paper reviewed the literature supporting and contradicting three theories of categorical perception in speech; the specialized speech processor theory, the cue duration theory, and the acoustic percept theory. Three experiments were then carried out to further investigate these theories. The first experiment compared subjects' perception of speech and three types of nonspeech stimuli (simple nonspeech, complex nonspeech, and reverse speech) and the effect of training on subjects' ability to discriminate these stimuli. The second experiment, dealt with a failure to replicate Pisoni (1977) using complex speech stimuli with the same parameters. The third experiment, compared speech and nonspeech perception in aphasic patients. Results failed to lend support to the specialized speech processing theory. Support for the cue duration theory and acoustic percept theory was mixed.

This dissertation analyzes patterns of communication strategy usage in the speech of 41 French immersion students in Toronto, Canada collected from informal student interviews with a native French speaker. The study contributes to a more complete understanding of communication strategies in French immersion by addressing such issues as the relative range and frequency of strategies; the interplay between strategies; the interaction between participants related to strategy usage; and the effect of extralinguistic factors on strategy usage (e.g. students' sex; age/grade; French language media exposure; time in a Francophone environment; stays with a Francophone family; home language). Strategies were coded and frequency counts obtained. The strategies identified included: L1-based (language switch and foreignization); L2-based (circumlocution, word coinage and approximation); sociopragmatic (appeal for assistance, message abandonment, and mime); and ambiguous/potentially L3-based strategies. While students use a range of strategies, the tendency is to rely on language switch. Rather than risk inaccuracy in the TL, students prefer to be economical and, assuming that the interviewer is bilingual, are confident that she will understand the strategy. Appeals for assistance from the interviewer are also frequent, demonstrating that the presence of an interlocutor plays an essential role in how students deal with lexical problems. The emergence of a strategy continuum provided support for the notion that some strategies are riskier than others by showing that frequency and perceived level of risk associated with that strategy is related to the amount of follow-up that a strategy receives. Follow-up strategies occur (i) for the purpose of correcting a prior usage; (ii) due to awareness of French/English translation difficulties; (iii) due to uncertainties about TL usage; and/or (iv) as means to treat the interview as a learning experience or to meet expectations of speaking French during the interview. Statistical analyses revealed that L1-based, sociopragmatic, and ambiguous/potential L3-based strategies are correlated with some of the social factors examined, including extracurricular exposure to French and age/grade, but not students' sex. It is concluded that in spite of the non-conventional lexical choices in students' TL messages, they are still comprehensible (i.e., meaningful) to the interlocutor and communication goals are achieved successfully.

During the last 20 years, a large body of research has accumulated demonstrating the positive impact of charismatic leadership on organizational effectiveness. However, with a couple of exceptions, (e.g., Barling, Weber, & Kelloway, 1996; Dvir, Eden, Avolio & Shamir, 1999), little research has focused on the development of charismatic leaders. Moreover, researchers have noted the importance of the language that charismatic leaders use in gaining follower commitment to their vision. This study contributes to previous research by investigating the effectiveness of training individuals to be charismatic in their communication style. Given the importance of language to effective leadership, this research is timely and important. This study consists of two phases. In Phase One, the effects of training on outcomes of learning, behavior and motivation was investigated. Forty-eight business students received charisma training, presentation training, or no training. In addition to measuring trainee knowledge and motivation, all participants prepared and gave a speech and the performance of all participants was videotaped. In the second phase of this study, undergraduates (N = 102) at another university watched one of these videotapes and performed a task based on the instructions given in the speech. The findings demonstrated the efficacy of the charismatic communication training. Those who received charismatic communication training performed better on a declarative knowledge test and exhibited more charismatic communication behaviors than those who received presentation skills training or no training. There was also support for the effectiveness of the charismatic communication training on follower performance and attitudes. Compared to the other experimental conditions, participants in the charisma condition performed better, adhered to the company vision more frequently, enjoyed the task more, and had higher perceptions of effective delivery and charismatic leadership. The effects of training on follower performance and attitudes were partially mediated by both nonverbal behaviors of body gestures and vocal fluency and content strategies of stories and analogies. Future research directions and practical implications are discussed.

This thesis investigated the gesture-speech relationship in pre-adolescent children who stutter in comparison to fluent controls. Significant differences were found in the speech and gesture characteristics of the narratives of the two groups on a cartoon retelling task. The children who stuttered produced less complex spoken language, fewer cartoon details. They produced fewer gestures per utterance spoken, and their gestures were less complex in form, structure and meaning. They accompanied less of their spoken narratives with gesture suggesting that gesture is produced with spoken language and does not compensate for disruptions of speech. As well, representational gestures produced in time with disfluent speech were disrupted or frozen at the precise moment of disfluency indicating that gesture and speech are closely tied in production as a single integrated system. The results of this thesis replicate those of McNeill (1986) and Scoble (1993) demonstrating the strength of the gesture-speech relationship in children and showing that stuttering affects both modalities of expression.

<p>In light of the increasingly complex sustainability problems facing local and global communities, and the need to improve the scientific basis for decision making, sustainability science elevates the role of research collaborations and communication among scientists and stakeholders in developing solutions. Although many universities are heeding the calls for collaborative research and are making progress on bringing diverse groups together to address sustainability issues, disconnections between the production of knowledge and its actual use in society persist. These persistent divisions indicate that we still have a great deal to learn about how to develop university-stakeholder partnerships that facilitate collaboration between the various actors in society. </p><p> Building successful, enduring research partnerships is essential for improving links between knowledge and action. The overarching question addressed in this dissertation is: <i>"In the quest to develop sustainable solutions, what factors may strengthen or hinder the development of robust stakeholder-university research partnerships?"</i> In answering this question, I interrogate the role of communication in partnership development, the influence of communication practices on stakeholder and researcher interactions, and ways that we can use interdisciplinary forms of and approaches to research to improve communication with partners. The goal of this research is to improve university and community capacity for collaborative, problem-focused research to address pressing societal problems. </p><p> Using quantitative and qualitative survey data from the <i>Maine Municipal Official Survey</i> and the <i>Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement Survey,</i> each chapter addresses the overarching research question in different ways. In the first and second chapters, I develop theoretically and empirically supported statistical models to identify a set of factors influencing officials' reported interest in developing a community-university research partnership and factors influencing officials' participation preferences in community-university research partnerships, respectively. The models strengthen the capacity for co-learning by providing data on interest and preference alignment between potential project partners, and they provide data on stakeholder preferences and experiences that may improve communication between partners and inform partnership interactions. The third chapter bridges interdisciplinary theories from social psychology and communication to deepen the conversation about justice in community-university research partnerships. The dissertation concludes with lessons learned about developing community-university research partnerships. </p>

<p> This study analyzes different demographic groups and the ability to understand a physician and how this contributes to feeling carefully listened to. There are four hypotheses being tested, each predicting a different group within each variable will feel the most carefully listened to. The Statistical Package for Social Services (SPSS) was used to analyze data from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS). The portion of the survey that focused on adults was utilized in this study. Data was analyzed using t-tests and ANOVA tests. The results of the study determined that the elderly, males, and participants that could understand their physician felt the most carefully listened to for each variable. As for race, Whites, African American, and participants that identified as more than one race felt more carefully listened to when compared to Asians and participants that identified as a race not specified. These finding only supported one hypothesis, participants that understood their physician would feel that most carefully listened to. Theses result are a valuable tool that can be used to being quality improvement efforts focused on patient centered communication.</p>

<p> Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System will require UAS to meet the standards expected of conventional manned aircraft, including interactions with air traffic controllers (ATCo). To study the effect UAS delays have on ATCo acceptance of UAS operations eight ATCos managed traffic scenarios with conventional manned aircraft and one UAS. To mimic the potential latencies of UAS operations 1.5 or 5 second delays were added to the UAS pilot's verbal and execution initiation responses. Delays were either constant or variable within each scenario. While ATCos were tolerant of UAS delays, the duration and consistency of verbal and execution delays did affect communications and ATCos' experiences managing traffic. Limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.</p>

<p> This dissertation describes an investigation of the practice of teaching argumentation in the undergraduate composition classroom in large part by examining a corpus consisting of 16 commonly used argumentation textbooks with publication dates from 2010 to 2014. The purpose of this project is to help advance the teaching of written argumentation by examining how it is defined, justified, and taught via textbooks, by ranking the textbooks on a 1-3 sliding scale according to how well the lesson plans within them are equipped to teach students how to write arguments according to what the authors and publishers describe as the ideal argument.</p><p> This study is conducted in two phases: The first is a process in which the textbooks are categorized into one of three types, or uses, of argumentation (academic/professional, advocacy, or exploration). The second phase is the evaluation of two chapters in each book to see how well the activities in them are developed as to help student learn to write the classified argument. The final chapter of this dissertation contains recommendations that can be adapted by future textbooks authors, editors, and publishers, recommendations that involve developing books that more clearly identify with one or more of the three categories making up this taxonomy, as well as adding sections that teach students to use a stasis-mapping formula to evaluate existing, as well as to create new, arguments.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study is to explore the rhetorical functions of references to God and the Bible in the first presidential inaugural addresses from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama. The Inaugural Address serves to reunite the nation after the division of an election. The language used in this address reflects the culture and identity of the nation it speaks to. Through a modern rhetorical analysis of the inaugural addresses from 1933-2009, this thesis aims to identify the trends in American religiosity, as can be seen through particular use of references to God and uses of biblical metaphor as a rhetorical and persuasive tool in the inaugural address.</p>