Highlights the most important topics, issues, questions, and debates affecting the field of communication in the 21st Century.

The most accessible and up-to-date dictionary of its kind, this wide-ranging A-Z covers both interpersonal and mass communication, in all their myriad forms, encompassing advertising, digital culture, journalism, new media, telecommunications, and visual culture, among many other topics. This new edition includes over 200 new complete entries and revises hundreds of others, as well as including hundreds of new cross-references. The biographical appendix has also been fully cross-referenced to the rest of the text. This dictionary is an indispensable guide for undergraduate students on degree courses in media or communication studies, and also for those taking related subjects such as film studies, visual culture, and cultural studies.

The first book of its kind to offer a unique functions approach to managerial communication, Managerial Communication explores what the communication managers actually do in business across the planning, organizing, leading, and controlling functions. Focusing on theory and application that will help managers and future managers understand the practices of management communication, this book combines ideas from industry experts, popular culture, news events, and academic articles and books written by leading scholars. All of the levels of communication (intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, organizational, and intercultural) play a role in managerial communication and are discussed thoroughly. The top, middle, and frontline communications in which managers engage are also addressed. Expounding on theories of communication, the authors relate them to the theories of management—such as crisis management, impression management, equity theory, and effective presentation skills. These are the skills that are invaluable to management.

Critical Pragmatics develops three ideas: language is a way of doing things with words; meanings of phrases and contents of utterances derive ultimately from human intentions; and language combines with other factors to allow humans to achieve communicative goals. In this book, Kepa Korta and John Perry explain why critical pragmatics provides a coherent picture of how parts of language study fit together within the broader picture of human thought and action. They focus on issues about singular reference, that is, talk about particular things, places or people, which have played a central role in the philosophy of language for more than a century. They argue that attention to the 'reflexive' or 'utterance-bound' contents of utterances sheds new light on these old problems. Their important study proposes a new approach to pragmatics and should be of wide interest to philosophers of language and linguists.

Common sense tells us that verbal communication should be a central concern both for the study of communication and for the study of language. Language is the most pervasive means of communication in human societies, especially if we consider the huge gamut of communication phenomena where spoken and written language combines with other modalities, such as gestures or pictures. Most communication researchers have to deal with issues of language use in their work. Classic methods in communication research - from content analysis to interviews and questionnaires, not to mention the obvious cases of rhetorical analysis and discourse analysis - presuppose the understanding of the meaning of spontaneous or elicited verbal productions. Despite its pervasiveness, verbal communication does not currently define one cohesive and distinct subfield within the communication discipline. The Handbook of Verbal Communication seeks to address this gap. In doing so, it draws not only on the communication discipline, but also on the rich interdisciplinary research on language and communication that developed over the last fifty years as linguistics interacted with the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. The interaction of linguistic research with the social sciences has produced a plethora of approaches to the study of meanings in social context - from conversation analysis to critical discourse analysis, while cognitive research on verbal communication, carried out in cognitive pragmatics as well as in cognitive linguistics, has offered insights into the interaction between language, inference and persuasion and into cognitive processes such as framing or metaphorical mapping. The Handbook of Verbal Communication volume takes into account these two traditions selecting those issues and themes that are most relevant for communication scholars. It addresses background matters such as the evolution of human verbal communication and the relationship between verbal and non-verbal means of communication and offers a an extensive discussion of the explicit and implicit meanings of verbal messages, with a focus on emotive and figurative meanings. Conversation and fundamental types of discourse, such as argument and narrative, are presented in-depth, as is the key notion of discourse genre. The nature of writing systems as well as the interaction of spoken or written language with non-verbal modalities are devoted ample attention. Different contexts of language use are considered, from the mass media and the new media to the organizational contexts. Cultural and linguistic diversity is addressed, with a focus on phenomena such as multilingual communication and translation. A key feature of the volume is the coverage of verbal communication quality. Quality is examined both from a cognitive and from a social perspective. It covers topics that range from to the cognitive processes underlying deceptive communication to the methods that can be used to assess the quality of texts in an organizational context.

English Language & Communication Skills has been designed to cover the current module content of English Language as a foundation course in the university. Never should there be a greater need to write and speak better than when students enter college. The book aims to help students improve on both written and spoken English.It offers instructions on the four language skills which are writing, reading, listening and speaking. In addition, some basic aspects of grammar, sentence construction and vocabulary are dealt with. The book is divided into four parts with a section on spellings and some practice exercises with answers. Its simple and friendly style will help students develop confidence in writing, reading and public speaking.

Communication research is evolving and changing in a world of online journals, open-access, and new ways of obtaining data and conducting experiments via the Internet. Although there are generic encyclopedias describing basic social science research methodologies in general, until now there has been no comprehensive A-to-Z reference work exploring methods specific to communication and media studies. Our entries, authored by key figures in the field, focus on special considerations when applied specifically to communication research, accompanied by engaging examples from the literature of communication, journalism, and media studies. Entries cover every step of the research process, from the creative development of research topics and questions to literature reviews, selection of best methods (whether quantitative, qualitative, or mixed) for analyzing research results and publishing research findings, whether in traditional media or via new media outlets. In addition to expected entries covering the basics of theories and methods traditionally used in communication research, other entries discuss important trends influencing the future of that research, including contemporary practical issues students will face in communication professions, the influences of globalization on research, use of new recording technologies in fieldwork, and the challenges and opportunities related to studying online multi-media environments. Email, texting, cellphone video, and blogging are shown not only as topics of research but also as means of collecting and analyzing data. Still other entries delve into considerations of accountability, copyright, confidentiality, data ownership and security, privacy, and other aspects of conducting an ethical research program. Features: 652 signed entries are contained in an authoritative work spanning four volumes available in choice of electronic or print formats. Although organized A-to-Z, front matter includes a Reader’s Guide grouping entries thematically to help students interested in a specific aspect of communication research to more easily locate directly related entries. Back matter includes a Chronology of the development of the field of communication research; a Resource Guide to classic books, journals, and associations; a Glossary introducing the terminology of the field; and a detailed Index. Entries conclude with References/Further Readings and Cross-References to related entries to guide students further in their research journeys. The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and Cross-References combine to provide robust search-and-browse in the e-version.