Keywords

College students, Debates and debating, Persuasion (Rhetoric), Public speaking

Abstract

Argumentativeness, or the predisposition “to advocate positions on controversial issues and to attack verbally the positions which other people take on these issues” (Infante & Rancer, 1982, p.72), has been associated with a number of positive outcomes. Research among student populations indicates that compared to people who are low in argumentativeness, people high in argumentativeness display higher ability to learn, higher self esteem, greater ability to creatively manage conflict, and higher ability to see both sides of a situation (Barden & Petty, 2008; McPherson Frantz & Seburn, 2003; Rancer, Whitecap, Kosberg, & Avtgis, 1997). Promoting argumentativeness among college students should prepare students to effectively handle conflict and enhance their overall communicative competence, thus setting students up for increased success in life (Rancer et al., 1997). Although much research exists on increasing argumentativeness, none could be found that specifically looked at content in the college level public speaking course in relation to increasing argumentativeness. Specifically, this researcher sought to determine whether instruction in Elaboration Likelihood Model as part of the persuasion unit in a college public speaking course increases student argumentativeness more than instruction in Toulmin’s model of reasoning/argument. Students in seven public speaking courses at a large Southeastern college were asked to complete the Argumentativeness Survey by Infante and Rancer (1982) after receiving instruction in either Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion or Toulmin’s model iii of reasoning/argument. Overall results did not indicate any difference between scores for students that received instruction in the two different content areas

Notes

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Graduation Date

2010

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Miller, Ann

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Nicholson School of Communication

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0003407

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0003407

Language

English

Release Date

December 2010

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences, Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic

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Communication Commons

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