You learn the strangest things in the strangest places. Although I try to keep up with nonverbal communication, an article in a recent Dear Abby column taught me something I didn’t know about–the Divorce Ring. Apparently some women, after divorce…

Here is an example of ghostwriting taken to the (perhaps) most unethical extreme one might imagine. If true–even partly–we’re all in big trouble.http://tcbdevito.blogspot.com

In searching for new cartoons for an upcoming revision, I was struck by the number of cartoons stereotyping men and making them look stupid, boorish, or incredibly selfish. One cartoon that made this especially clear was a New Yorker cartoon where 2 wo…

Here’s a brief Q&A on some of the questions public speakers need to consider, like: Should I write out my speech? and Should I use PowerPoint? and some good answers, some by Communication Prof Steven Beebe and some from Linda Blackman who runs an execu…

Here’s a clever piece on public speaking for politicians or anyone else.http://tcbdevito.blogspot.com

I wrote this note on apologizing as I was revising my interpersonal text and thought it might be useful in class, perhaps as a topic for discussion, perhaps as a preview to formulating or analyzing apologies.The ApologyIn its most basic form, an apolog…

If you looked very carefully and I mean veeeeerrrry carefully, you may have seen a book on “How I Met Your Mother”—Britney Spears and others were reading it—titled The Power of Me by DeVito. Just to clarify: it isn’t me—and a quick check at…

To Users of EEPS 3/eMy apologies. On pages 135 and 136, I have a PowerPoint slide-show speech illustration. The explanations in the first column—speech title, the thesis of the speech, etc.—were positioned incorrectly. Please ignore these. This wil…

Ten Nonverbal Messages and AttractivenessHere are ten nonverbal messages that help communicate your attractiveness and ten that will likely create the opposite effect. I’m drawing here on lots of different nonverbal researchers, for example, Peter An…

Just in case you missed this–tho’ it’s unlikely, given the press on this speech–here’s a link to the full text speech.http://tcbdevito.blogspot.com

So, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer gave a speech of “apology” for paying for sex (reportedly, $4300) with a call girl. Funny thing was, he really didn’t apologize. The media are calling this a speech of apology because he apologized to his famil…

I just heard from Sherry Morreale that an article she wrote with Judy Pearson will appear in the next issue of Communication Education. The reason I mention this is that this article focuses on the role of communication skills as central to success, bo…

At NCA meetings and especially in the Basic Course meetings, the topic of plagiarism comes up frequently and is viewed as one of the great problems in education generally and in public speaking in particular. And then I see David Greenberg’s article,…

Agenda-setting theory holds that our perception of the importance of various issues can be explained by the way in which the media treat the issues; those items given great emphasis and exposure by the media are those that the public will perceive as i…

This article reports on the persuasiveness of simple mimicry; if you mimic another individual’s nonverbal behavior, you’re likely to be more persuasive than if you didn’t mimic. In addition, mimicry seems to increase pro-social behavior even for those…

Some years ago, one of the most interesting concepts advanced was that of the impostor [or imposter] phenomenon—which, briefly, refers to the psychological syndrome in which one feels like a failure and a fake in spite of outward appearances of succe…

For a variety of reasons—some religious, some social, some economic, some interpersonal, and perhaps some based on an analysis of costs and benefits—people feel that relationships should last and that it’s bad when they end. And so you often resp…

Here’s an interesting article from yesterday’s New York Times. It should provide a neat bridge between the public speaking course and the election rhetoric. It also contains some interesting observations from communication profs Kathleen Hall Jamieson …