The Southern Communication Journal 

About: The Southern Communication Journal is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Rhetorical question & Rhetoric. It has an ISSN identifier of 1041-794X. Over the lifetime, 852 publications have been published receiving 10366 citations.

The idea of rhetoric in the rhetoric of science

Abstract: A striking but insufficiently examined feature of the current revival of interest in rhetoric is its positioning primarily as a hermeneutic metadiscourse rather than as a substantive discourse practice. When one invokes metadiscourse to account for a discursive practice, what one hopes to achieve is minimally a “redescription” of the latter. Rhetoric has entered the orbit of general hermeneutics. This essay, divided into three parts, examines the cultural identity of rhetoric, the interpretive turn and rhetorical criticism, the politics of repression and recognition, the rhetoric of science as a discursive formation, communitarian and epistemic strategies, and the inventional strategy and humanist paradigm. The works of Michael Leff Allan G. Gross, John Angus Campbell, and Lawrence J. Prelli are critiqued.

Applying a social meaning model to relational message interpretations of conversational involvement: Comparing observer and participant perspectives

Abstract: This investigation explored observer interpretations of relational messages associated with nonverbal conversational involvement and cross‐validated observer interpretations with those provided by participants. Observers each rated five 2‐minute videotaped segments from interactions in which untrained confederates greatly increased or decreased involvement. High involvement, and the specific nonverbal cue complexes associated with it, conveyed greater intimacy (immediacy, affection, receptivity, trust, and depth), composure/relaxation, equality/similarity, dominance, and formality than low involvement. Observers showed high consistency among themselves in their interpretations and some correspondence with participants, a finding which offers qualified support for a social meaning model (i.e., that there are consensually recognized meanings for behavior). However, participants showed a positivity bias, assigning more favorable interpretations on average than did observers.

Dialogue as tensional, ethical practice

Abstract: One effect of this decade's explosive growth of works on dialogue has been a broadening of the term to encompass, in some books and articles, all human meaning‐making. We argue that there are disadvantages to this broadening, that descriptive approaches to dialogue can be usefully distinguished from prescriptive ones, and that prescriptive approaches are especially potent for communication theorists and practitioners. We appropriate three elements of the Aristotelian distinction between poiesis and praxis to develop a prescriptive understanding of dialogue as tensional, situationally‐accomplished, and inherently ethical. We then focus on one venue of dialogic practice—the classroom—and illustrate some ways in which what we take to be the central tension of dialogue, letting the other happen to me while holding my own ground, is made manifest in this context. We also briefly sketch the operation of two additional tensions, those between univocality‐and‐mul‐tivocality, and theory‐and‐practice. We believe th...

Predicting Receptiveness to Advice: Characteristics of the Problem, the Advice-Giver, and the Recipient

Abstract: Research on advice in supportive interactions indicates that receptiveness to advice (the extent to which advice is wanted) has a strong influence on how advice is evaluated. The current study examined situational and trait predictors of advice receptiveness, including characteristics of the advice-giver (expertise, closeness to the recipient, history of influence on the recipient's behavior), characteristics of the problem for which the advice is received (problem seriousness, responsibility for the problem), and characteristics of the advice recipient (sex, expressivity, instrumentality). Participants (N = 280) completed questionnaires reporting on a recent instance of receiving advice with regard to a personal problem. Results indicated that closeness had the strongest impact on receptiveness to advice, followed by expertise and expressivity. Women were more receptive to advice than men but the difference was small and mediated by expressivity.

The centrality of culture

Abstract: Culture has been neglected by researchers of intercultural communication. During the last decade, there have been scattered investigations of world regions and countries, and only Japan and the U.S. have been investigated in depth through multiple communication studies. Africa, S.E. Asia, Latin America, and Europe have been virtually ignored by intercultural researchers. Intracultural communication is described as a new research and teaching direction for the 90s.