Digital Commons Network^™

Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity seeks to explain to undergraduate students how to craft a proper attack and defense in argumentation and debate, persuasion, or political communication courses. The activity teaches students 1) the parts of a basic argument structure and 2) how to construct a rebuttal using a basic argument structure. Students will argue against their true political typology by selecting an opposing typology from the Pew Research Typology Quiz. Broadly, this exercise is designed to encourage students to engage in dialogues with people who disagree with their political positionality. Specifically, the activity accomplishes this by teaching students the value of basic …

Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Drawing objects and concepts, such as cats, trees, love, democracy, and family, is probably the last activity students expect to do in a communication course. Although this sounds like an introductory art activity, creating visual representations provides a nuanced understanding of the encoding and decoding processes. Encoding and decoding are the most hidden and often the most unfamiliar and complex fundamental components of communication for students to comprehend. By engaging in this activity, students translate their decoding process into drawings, which serve as personal artifacts representative of their encoding and decoding. Students come to better conceptualize this cognitive process with …

“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity demonstrates communication competence and allows students to observe, assess, and ultimately utilize the model of communication competence to engage with other people successfully. To understand how to engage in communication competence, students must recognize that appropriateness and effectiveness are crucial aspects of their communication. Through the communication competence model, students examine how to achieve effectiveness in their communication by setting goals for specific contexts; they also consider to what extent their goals are achievable given the particular situation. Using a 2014 MTV Video Music Award example, students can analyze why Miley Cyrus allowed a homeless man to accept …

Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Despite numerous quantitative assessments of teaching interventions that have helped mitigate public speaking anxiety (PSA), this common barrier to public speaking persists. In addition, quantitative measures may not be appropriate for all instructional goals, especially with students from across a variety of cultures. To enrich educators’ capacity to help diverse bodies of students overcome the challenges presented by PSA, this qualitative study asked students to “Please describe yourself as a public speaker” at the beginning and the end of a freshman-level, general education public speaking class. Thematic analysis identified a two-dimensional pattern within student responses (N = 51) (a …

Front Matter

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.

Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.

Reconnecting With The Truth: Conspiracies, Perspective Taking, And Misinformation, Scott Sellnow-Richmond, Mili Pinski

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

“I’ve done my research.” Misinformation has become a prevalent topic in communication courses, particularly those focused on argumentation, public speaking, or even interpersonal and family communication. Students thus benefit from adapting public speaking-focused assignments to illuminate how to understand - and thus combat- disinformation in their own lives. This assignment works toward this goal in two stages, allowing students to argue not just against misinformation and conspiracies, but also to argue for them as an act of empathy and understanding. The applied nature of this exercise also empowers instructors with a way to concretely address this issue in the classroom. …

Differentiating Between Irony And Sarcasm: An Illustration Of Sarcasm’S Negative Impact On Audiences, Brent Kice

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

The following in-class activity helps students differentiate between ironic and sarcastic messages. In turn, students will recognize the negative impact of sarcastic messaging identified by Dynel (2013) and Averbeck (2013) in an effort for students to improve their own messages when attempting to persuade audiences.

“People Don’T Always Show Up The Way You Want Them To”: Utilizing The Hunger Games To Differentiate Between Persuasion, Coercion, Propaganda, And Manipulation, Nancy Bressler

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

The ability to define and conceptualize persuasion and its nuances without engaging in coercion, propaganda, and/or manipulation can be difficult for students at first. This activity centralizes the fine points among these persuasive concepts. Students also recognize the role of their audience in the persuasive messages that they create. Rather than only having a conversation about the common characteristics of these terms and how they differ, students can observe them within the fictional movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (Lawrence, 2014). After discussing these ideas with their classmates, students then apply what they have learned by creating persuasive messages …

“Number Of Nonverbal Delivery Techniques”: Innovative Approaches To Gestures, Movement, And Vocal Delivery, Nancy Bressler

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Through this activity, students consider to what extent gestures, movement, and vocal inflection affect a speech. Using the same speech content as the rest of their group, each student is provided a prompt requiring them to adapt their speech delivery differently. Through these differences, students can better understand how to incorporate nonverbal speech delivery that is natural, balanced, communicates emotion, and effectively communicates the message of the speech. Students discover the importance of nonverbal delivery while using an entertaining speech they may have seen in a television show. Overall, students learn how planned versus natural speech delivery can alter nonverbal …

Listen Up!: Measuring And Mitigating College Students’ Most Commonly-Reported Listening Challenges, Karla Hunter, Erin Lionberger, Ashley Phillips, Kaitlyn Luebbert, Andrea N. Briggs

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This study updates the existing literature on listening education in two ways: 1) by providing an assessment of an effective listening education intervention and 2) by identifying what college students' self-assessment and reflection revealed as their most common barriers to listening and the actions that helped mitigate those challenges. Through content analysis, five graduate student coders analyzed six consecutive pre-Covid-19 semesters of student submissions to a Listening Log Self-Assessment assignment in an online interpersonal communication course (n = 186). This experiential activity was designed to motivate students' metacognitions to elicit accurate self-appraisals based on reflections of students' current listening encounters …

Front Matter

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.

Does Family Communication Orientation Relate To How We Use Time? A Preliminary Study On Family Communication Patterns And People’S Perspective On Time, C. Leigh Nelson, Eric M. Fife

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

A web survey study of 853 respondents examined whether family communication patterns predicted people’s orientation to time. Conversation orientation was negatively and significantly related with a past negative perspective on time and was positively and significantly related to past positive, present hedonistic, and future orientation perspectives on time. Conformity orientation was positively and significantly related to past negative, present hedonistic, and present fatalistic perspectives on time but was negatively and significantly related to a past positive perspective on time. Multiple linear regression results indicated that both conversation orientation and conformity orientation were significant predictors of various time orientations.

Critical Thinking As A Pedagogical Approach: Using Critical/Cultural Studies To Analyze Music Videos, Lukas John Pelliccio, Timothy Brown

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Teaching undergraduate students how to critically analyze a text is an important experience. However, it is not easy to do this because readings are often dense, and the process of writing and presenting a critique can be challenging for some students. In light of this, we have developed an assignment where students critically analyze music videos for their ideologies. In the assignment, students select three specific overt or latent content pieces from a music video and explain how those manifestations influence a particular ideology in a paper. Then they are asked to show the music video to their peers and …

Intergroup Dialogue As Praxis For Engaging The Intercultural World, Jennifer E. Potter, Erin L. Berry-Mccrea

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a formalized program that centers dialogue among students in the classroom. The IGD program uses Martin Buber’s (1970) concept of dialogue, and this semester-long project situates dialogue as a useful addition to an Intercultural Communication course. Bringing components of a formal dialogue program into the classroom as a part of a course allows students to engage with difficult topics, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability, among others, in a way that helps students process and better understand perspectives different from their own. This essay provides specific opportunities for meaningful dialogue and concludes an …

Building Resilience: An Exercise To Create Network Structures And Assess Resilience With Marshmallows And Spaghetti Noodles Or Lego® Pieces, Seungyoon Lee, Bailey C. Benedict

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Scholars, practitioners, and society at large are becoming increasingly interested in how resilience works (Coutu, 2002). This activity gives students the opportunity to build a network structure and assess its resilience, while learning the concepts and calculation steps of basic network metrics including density, reachability, and centralization. The article provides guidelines for preparing necessary materials (e.g., marshmallows and spaghetti noodles or LEGO^® pieces), detailed procedures and worksheet for the activity, and debriefing questions for connecting the experiences from the activity with real world examples of communication networks and resilience.

The Grid: A Long-Form Exercise In Forensic Peer Coaching, C. Austin Mcdonald Ii, Andrew Boge

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

As directors of forensics grapple with thoughts of burnout or exiting the activity (Carmack & Holm, 2013), peer coaching practices may offer ways of relieving the well-documented coaching burden (Gill, 1990; Keefe, 1991; McDonald, 2001; Rogers & Rennels, 2008). We offer a long-form individual events team exercise called “The Grid” which aims to foster a culture of peer coaching, to reduce the need for coaches, and to encourage students to take ownership of their forensic event development.




The authors give full credit of The Grid's core ideas to the Gustavus Adolphus College forensics teams under the direction of Cadi Kadlecek …

Art Intervention Amid A Pandemic: A Pentadic Analysis Of The Vermillion Street Piano, Bailey Quanbeck

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

The Vermillion Street Piano was an art intervention introduced to the community of Vermillion, South Dakota during the COVID-19 pandemic. By applying Burke’s (1945/1962) pentad to this artifact and analyzing the scene-act ratio, I argue that the materialistic (i.e., scenic) constraints surrounding the piano meaningfully shaped and motivated the community experiences facilitated by the instrument. As street art situated in an outdoor, unsupervised location, the piano invited creative engagement from the community while suffering damages. The scenic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic both augmented the therapeutic experiences offered through this art piece and presented risks for community members seeking interaction. …

Finding Common Ground: Analyzing Thomas A. Daschle’S Senate Leadership Speeches As A Model For Bipartisanship, Rebecca A. Kuehl, Olivia R. Knippling

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

The 2016 U.S. presidential election highlighted the contentiousness of U.S. politics. As rhetorical scholars invested in establishing common ground in U.S. politics, we analyzed the leadership speeches of Senator Thomas A. Daschle. Daschle is worthy of study because he is the only person in U.S. history to have served as both Senate majority and minority leader. Our research question is: How did Senator Thomas A. Daschle use his leadership speeches to work across the political aisle? This study uses the method of close textual analysis to analyze 23 of Daschle’s leadership speeches. We suggest Daschle offers a model of bipartisanship. …

Civilian And Veteran Perceptions Of Communicated Stigma About Veterans With Ptsd, Rikki Roscoe, Jenn Anderson

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Mental health problems are considered some of the most common and disabling medical conditions that affect military service members. Veterans with PTSD need mental health services but are often reluctant to seek them due to perceived stigma. In this study, we used Smith’s (2007) stigma communication framework to analyze veterans’ and civilians’ perceptions of combat-related PTSD. Findings from our study indicate that, although participants were exposed to stigma communication about veterans with PTSD, most stigmatizing labels were considered inaccurate. Further, participants perceived that discourse about veterans infrequently implied that veterans were personally responsible for developing and overcoming PTSD. These findings …

Unspoken Rules: Using The Game Of Mao To Teach Sensemaking And Cultural Approaches To Communication, Nina O'Brien, Cynthia Wang

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This interactive classroom activity invites students to interrogate their common sense and taken-for-granted communication practices and assumptions. In the course of playing a “concealed rules” game, students enact the ritual view of communication and the process of sensemaking. The activity provides an experiential model for clarifying complex themes as well as for actively constructing student understanding of the theories. The activity directly challenges norms of classroom communication and interaction and promotes thoughtful and engaged classroom discussion and reflection. Instructors are provided clear instructions, recommended student readings and sample discussion questions. The activity and debrief usually require about one hour of …

Immigration Encounter: Relevance Of Emotions In Communication, Chrystal Helmcke, Renee Bourdeaux, William Mari

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Students desire meaningful ways to dissect and explore confusing and challenging concepts. Chief among these in our world today are the multifaceted issues and exceptionally complex discourses involved in immigration. The guided visualization in this G.I.F.T. may be used to demonstrate emotions, the five cannons of rhetoric, intercultural communication, proofs of persuasion, or theories within the critical or phenomenological traditions. This guided visualization also adapts well to a blended classroom (with students onsite and offsite) since the instructor leads students through the visualization. Through this activity, students will describe the emotions that underpin communication about immigration, interpret how emotions influence …

Travel Analysis Portfolio: Applying Theories Of Cross-Cultural Communication To The Task Of Personal Travel Planning, Kelly L. Mckay-Semmler

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Intercultural encounters are increasingly common occurrences in our professional and personal lives, thus an awareness and working knowledge of cultural differences is important to competent communication. In this semester-long activity, students learn and apply theories and concepts about cross-cultural variation to an in-depth case analysis of a specific culture of their choosing. Individual components of the assignment progressively parallel course content, providing students multiple opportunities to actively apply their growing knowledge base to a specific cultural context. This lesson plan provides instructors with an overview of the semester-long activity from beginning to end, sample project components, reference information for up-to-date …

Exploring Expectancy Violations Theory And Proxemics With The Impractical Jokers, Andie Malterud, Ashley Phillips, Kaitlyn Voges

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Proxemics and expectancy violations theory (EVT) are the groundwork for understanding interpersonal and nonverbal communication. Previous research has indicated students retain information long-term when humor and videos that form memorable messages are incorporated into the classroom. The activity discussed in this GIFT uses the popular comedy show, Impractical Jokers, to help students apply abstract concepts to real-life examples. Several discussion questions are suggested to help students critically analyze the videos and recognize proxemics and EVT. The second set of discussion questions asks students to consider their expectations, how their expectations are formed, why some individuals have different expectations, and why …

An Analysis Of Unvaccinated College Students’ Hpv And Hpv Vaccine Knowledge And Preferred Information Source, Keith Richards, Hannah Priest Catalano, Katherine Hyatt Hawkins

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Receiving accurate human papillomavirus (HPV)/HPV vaccination information from a trusted source coupled with adequate HPV/HPV vaccination knowledge may increase college students’ likelihood to be vaccinated. This elicitation study, grounded in the information construct of the information–motivation–behavioral skills model, used a nonexperimental design with a convenience sample of 114 unvaccinated college students to assess HPV and HPV vaccine knowledge, desire for more information, and preferred source of HPV vaccine information. The sample answered slightly over half (58%) of questions related to knowledge of HPV correctly, 63% of the questions related to HPV vaccine knowledge correctly, and one-third (36%) wanted more information …

Adorno In The Digital Age: Consumerism, Ideology, And Participation In The Beatles: Rock Band, Scott Haden Church

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This essay presents an analysis of the ideologies in the online trailer to the virtual musical performance video game The Beatles: Rock Band. This analysis presents a contribution to the scholarly conversation by using Theodor W. Adorno’s theories, a novel and underutilized heuristic for analyzing video games. The trailer to The Beatles: Rock Band (Harmonix, 2009) promotes the ideology of consumerism through its mythologized depiction of the Beatles. The interactivity of video games may combat Adorno’s condemnation of the culture industry, allowing resistance to its hegemony via the performed de(con)struction of the text.

Camoface: Performances Of Ruralism In Duck Dynasty, Jason Jordan

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

In recent years, portrayals of the supposedly “real” exploits of rural persons in the United States have proliferated across the mediasphere. This paper examines the first season of the television show Duck Dynasty as an exemplar of this genre of entertainment. Using the concepts of ruralism, rurality, and rusticity the particular performances of rural life evidenced within the show are traced out. Ultimately, I argue that these performances of the rural constitute a strategic rhetoric that seeks to control what counts as authentic rurality. I term these sorts of strategic performances of rural authenticity as “camoface.”

Communicating Diversity: Writing And Reflections About Diversity In Organizational Settings, Andrea L. Meluch

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Diversity includes the differences among various personal and social identities that individuals carry into their professional lives and is an important element of organizational work (Allen, 1994, 2011). As students are expected to be competent communicators in diverse workplaces, this activity provides students with the opportunity to design and appraise diversity statements in an organizational setting. Specially, students share their personal experiences of diversity in college settings and craft a statement to capture diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instructors interested in this 45-minute activity will be provided with instructions on guiding a lecture, small group writing assignment, and class discussion related …

Name That Place: Reconsidering Diversity And Globalization Through The Architecture Of Ethnic Enclaves, Tim Michaels

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Introducing students to a conversation about the disbursement of cultures through globalization is often difficult to approach. In this single-class activity, globalization is introduced through a virtual game which is focused on ethnic enclaves, the small immigrant neighborhoods that retain much of the immigrants’ original culture despite existing within a dominant one. Students will reconsider their intercultural communication, diversity awareness, and understanding about the effects of globalization and cultural assimilation by assessing stereotypes that emerge from the architecture of ethnic enclaves. By challenging students to identify the location of several ethnic enclaves through pictures, without the broader geographic context, a …

Heroically Protecting Our Arguments: Using Superheroes To Teach Inductive And Deductive Reasoning, Christopher J.E. Anderson, Emily A. Mueller, Alana C. Schneider

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Abstract

Barkl, Porter, and Ginns, (2012) explain the importance of reasoning as it relates to fluid intelligence and an individual’s capacity to broaden their understanding of knowledge. With the difficulty many students find in recognizing examples of reasoning, this teaching activity uses student descriptions of superheroes to teach inductive and deductive reasoning skills. Educators are provided with the instructions to conduct a 50-minute lesson to explain these skills, allow students to form and recognize their own examples of inductive and deductive reasoning, and variations on how to conduct this assignment in both the physical and online classroom environments.