Journal of Language and Social Psychology

This study examined how sexually harassing messages harm. Based on theories of sexual harassment and message effects, message contents and perceptions of message features were related to indices of distress. Sixty-six messages were collected and then sorted to acquire similarity data, which was then cluster analyzed to derive content themes. A separate set of participants were exposed to randomized sequences of the messages in written form to provide their perceptions of each and predict the extent to which each would activate affects and elicit psychosomatic symptoms. One-way ANOVA results across the content themes showed that the hostile/aggressive category produced the highest levels of distress. In addition, regression results showed that message perceptions accounted for significant amounts of variance in the affects and psychosomatic symptoms measures. Results are discussed in terms of advancing work on message effects through inclusion of sets of message perceptions.

Fear appeal, as a tactic of persuasion, has been studied mostly from an experimental and nondiscursive perspective. The aim of this study is to examine the use of fear appeal in a natural discursive setting of fundamentalist rhetoric. More specifically, the authors examine the interactional problems facing Jewish fundamentalist preachers who try to manipulate fear. In addition, the authors identify several discursive strategies that aim to solve these problems. The general conclusions point to the power of a discursive perspective for examining fear appeal and its sophisticated use in rhetoric and present a new vision for the study of discourse and psychology.

With adolescents commonly depicted by adults as communication ignorant and inept, the need to find out what young people actually understand by, and know about, communication is discussed in this article. In this vein, two pieces of research that have investigated "communication awareness" in adolescence are reviewed, and ideas for further research in the area are offered.

Adolescents' relationships with parents are examined in this article. The perspective taken here is in terms of communication negotiations centering around three main dialectical forces at work in the parent-adolescent relationship. These forces are autonomy versus connection, privacy versus open boundaries, and an interindividual versus intergroup dimension. It is suggested that conceptualizing parent-adolescent communication as dynamic and processual across the short and long term may be more useful than focusing on the parent-as-agent or issuing recipes for successful communication with adolescents.

Adults in authority (teachers, employers, police officers, doctors, benefits officers, etc.) have been found to view adolescents as lacking in communication skills and even the motivation to communicate with them. Adolescents themselves, on the other hand, highlight issues of power and a lack of respect in causing problems in their communication with these adults. This review suggests that mutually antagonistic representations might feed into the interaction between the two groups; recommends more fine-grained research on such interaction; and argues that initiative to improve young people's "communication skills" may serve as part of an individual-blaming agenda.

Examples of recent research into adolescent risk behaviors from a variety of disciplines and methodologies, denoting the range of researchers interested in this area and whose interest in communication and language articulates and exemplifies the extent of the field, are surveyed in this article.

It is argued in this article that to develop richer models and more effective pedagogical tools, studies exploring the relationship between mass media and young people need to foreground media use in the context of young peoples' daily lives, as well as in the context of more broad social and political issues that shape how specific media forms are constructed, deployed, and taken up by young people. Focusing primarily on major trends of the media effects tradition, the dominant paradigm among social scientists, this article surveys and assesses four key themes of effects research concerning adolescents: heavy media consumption, media violence, sexuality, and media and young women. Recent research developments concerning young people and new or digital media forms also are considered, and arguments about media and youth culture from a political economy perspective are reviewed briefly.

In an overview of some of the central issues concerning the impact and effects of new technology in adolescence, this article questions the reality of the "net generation" before considering the interplay of new and old technologies, the internet as both communication and lifestyle resource, and newer technologies like text messaging and webcams.

How people meet and master certain challenges in adolescence may have a lasting impact on the remainder of their lives. Intergroup theories of communication offer a unique perspective to aid in the understanding of the complex psychological and communicative dynamics of adolescent interactions. It is suggested that viewing adolescent behavior from an intergroup perspective may permit a better understanding of their communication styles and indicate ways to alleviate problematic talk and miscommunication that are frequently pervasive for this age group.

This article focuses on the use of linguistic resources from the perspective of the creation and maintenance of adolescent groups and categories, and specifically on the use of aspects of verbal style in the creation and maintenance of distinctiveness. It explores the use of a variety of types of linguistic resources, phonological and grammatical variation, lexical innovation, language crossing, and interactive style. It shows how oppositions with which the group defines itself generally also serve as organizing principles within the group, accounting not only for intergroup but for intragroup differences in language use.

Research about argumentational unfairness has focused primarily on the cognitive evaluation of argumentational rule violations, applying written argumentational scenarios, and structured answering format. This study investigates cognitive, emotional, and verbal responses to unfair contributions (nonrational vs. noncooperative speech acts) using an open-ended answering format in various presentation modalities (written, auditory, and role-play). No differences appeared between reactions to nonrational versus noncooperative contributions or between the different presentation modalities. The results replicate previous findings and provide support for the validity of attributional models in unfair everyday discourse, as well as for the position that argumentative behavior is rule governed by reciprocal expectancies.