Communication Commons^™

The Theatrical Innovations Of Charles Laughton, Gary Joseph Jones

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In most journalistic studies the film career of Charles Laughton overshadows his theatrical activities to the extent that the reader is hardly aware of the importance of his theatrical innovations to the theater of our time. The more commercial side of Laughton’s career was publicized while his artistic efforts, as characterized by the innovations, were frequently forgotten. More people remember him as the man who played Captain Bligh in the movies than as the man who worked with Bertolt Brecht, created the First Drama Quartette and developed a new American art form, Readers’ Theatre.

The rationale of this study is …

The Relation Of Eye-Contact To Retention Of Information In A Public Speaking Situation, William Weathers

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

If the purpose of speaking to others is communication, then the purpose of teaching public speaking must be to aid in the learning of those speech skills which will facilitate effective communication. In striving to achieve this goal, every opportunity must be taken to emphasize areas of development which are particularly important. Ideally, such areas should be those involving precepts long held in places of importance by the tradition of the speech discipline and verified through scientific examination. As Clarence T. Simon has written: During its long life speech has accumulated diverse beliefs and assumptions; many of them from speculative …

Corporate Warfare Or Corporate Kinship? The Effects Of Military & Familial Metaphors On Japanese & American Organizational Culture, Joan Flora

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study was undertaken to determine the dominant cultural metaphors at work in American and Japanese organizational culture, to examine the ways in which each society interprets these metaphors, and to assess the importance of the metaphors relative to intercultural communication. Using a combination of qualitative content analysis, rhetorical criticism, contextual analysis, and non-participant observation, two of the most dominant metaphors in both cultures, business-as-war and business-as-family, were discovered and examined. The research data comes from a variety of books, scholarly and popular articles, pamphlets, unpublished papers, films, and miscellaneous documents. These materials cover many disciplines: communication, history, popular culture, …