Finds that as cashiers displayed more courtesy, customers provided more positive evaluations of service and were ultimately more likely to recommend the store and shop at the store if other stores are closer; but that courteous service did not predict customer helpfulness, and explained relatively little variation overall in outcome variables. (SR)

Proposes a general analytical framework called centering resonance analysis (CRA), a text analysis method suited to studying communication like reports, letters, memos, emails, and transcribed conversations. Illustrates its validity in analyzing conversations in a meeting, comparison to human readings of interview texts, and uncovering structure…

Advances practices for designing, analyzing, and reporting communication research. Focuses on improving researchers' abilities to cumulate results across studies and improving the utility of the individual study. Concludes by summarizing the set of propositions advocated. (SG)

Provides a taxonomy of dyadic speech events in everyday relating through a series of four studies. Identifies 29 speech events through a variety of multimethod procedures, including unstructured and structured diary records, judgment sorting tasks, and semantic-differential rating scales. Suggests that everyday relating is dominated by six kinds…

Discusses replication factors for communication experiments. Gives research findings regarding the treatment of sampled replications as fixed effects. Considers objections to treating replications as random. Suggests the empowerment of studies through modest increases in the number of replications. (HB)

Examines under what conditions undergraduate students perceive racist speech as harmful. Studies how attribution of harm was influenced by group membership, message severity and explicitness, and medium of presentation. Finds interaction between group membership and message explicitness. Reveals out-group evaluators attributed direct racist…

Presents a language approach to outgroup homogeneity and discrimination between gender groups. Finds outgroup discrimination was confined to female respondents; outgroup discrimination resulted more from repetition of biased statements than from differential abstraction; and discrimination was strongest for topics for which the most distinctive…

Findings indicate that lapses in conversation occur when one of the participants uses responses which fail to advance the topic. Analysis of the postlapse data indicates that subsequent to a lapse, the most probable strategy is for one of the participants to pose a question which the partner is obligated to answer. (PD)

Provides an examination of management and employee values as influential for organizational rule formation. Demonstrates that management values are directly related to employee values but indirectly influence the evolution of organization rules. Supports a view of rule emergence based on management and employee values. (HB)

Finds that differential treatment from a supervisor to his or her subordinates influences coworker communication by leading coworkers to talk about the differential treatment itself, and influencing the nature of communication relationships among the coworkers. Indicates that fairness perceptions are often socially constructed by work group…

Suggests that claims of sex differences in interruption behavior should not be uncritically accepted. Examines frequency of interruption in fourth-grade, ninth-grade, and college students. Finds that males did not interrupt females any more than females interrupted males. (RS)

Presents a theoretical account of how speakers interpret that which is taken for granted in messages. Discusses research concerning enthymemes, argument theory, indirect speech acts, conversational maxims, pragmatic implication and other areas. Provides a framework for a model of how speakers interpret unspoken portions of utterances. (JMF)

Investigates conversational characteristics (discourse features, illocutionary force and style parameters) of mothers of two-year-old twins and mothers of two-year-old singletons with older siblings. Finds significant differences in conversational characteristics, and between twins' and singletons' language scores on measures of language…

Examines the effects of message and program sensation value, sensation seeking, and drug use on visual attention to televised antidrug public service announcements among 18- to 22-year-olds. Indicates that program sensation value and sensation seeking are important factors in televised drug abuse prevention messages. (HB)

Examines the persuasive message behaviors of truthful and deceptive communicators. Finds significant differences in the types of persuasive messages generated: truthful persuaders compose messages involving positive and negative sanctions; deceptive persuaders compose messages based on rationale or explanation. (KEH)