Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: To understand Thucydides one needs to consider the profound relationship between the author's narration and the speeches of characters. This paper examines that relationship in the first speech of King Archidamus and its subsequent implications.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Infant-directed speech (ID) has specific prosodic characteristics that are distinct from adult-directed speech (AD). A slower speech rate is one such characteristic, and has often been assumed/claimed to be a universal property of ID.
In English, ID speech has been found to have shorter utterances and longer pauses than AD. Even after pauses are removed, the number of syllables uttered per unit of time has been found to be fewer in ID than AD. When function words and content words are separated, slower speech rates have been found only in content words. To test whether slower speech rate is a universal characteristic of ID, it is necessary to analyze ID from different languages. To date, however, data from other languages is limited. In this paper, we present data from Japanese ID. Japanese provides useful contrast to English since Japanese mothers’ interaction with their infants and their ID speech have been reported to show distinct characteristics from American mothers.

Method: 22 Japanese mothers were brought to the laboratory, and their speech to their 18-24 month-old infants and to an adult experimenter was recorded. Approximately 40 minutes of recordings from each mother, totaling about 14 hours, were phonetically transcribed. From these data, (1) duration of utterances (defined as continuous speech separated by at least 200 msec of pauses), (2) duration of pauses, (3) number of syllables per second excluding pauses, were calculated.

Key Results: The duration of ID utterances was significantly shorter than AD utterances, and ID speech contained significantly more frequent and longer pauses than AD. These are consistent with English ID speech. The number of syllables per unit time was, however, no fewer in ID than AD. Approximately half of the 22 mothers had faster speech rate in AD, while the other half had a faster speech rate in ID. Morphological analysis of the data showed that ID contained significantly fewer case particles or other function words than AD. Thus, it was not the frequent occurrence of function words (with shorter syllables) in the ID speech that contributed to the faster speech rate.

Conclusions: Like other languages, ID speech in Japanese had shorter utterances and more pauses. But the actual speech rate of Japanese mothers, viz., how fast each syllable is articulated, was not any slower in ID than AD. The present data shows that the slower speech rate is NOT a universal characteristic of ID speech.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper proposes to trace and problematize the ascendancy of the content and viewpoint neutrality principle as the core of free speech doctrine in American constitutional law. The paper scrutinizes the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) where the majority opinion equated the discriminatory expression of the Klan to communist speech without deliberating about the different conceptual issues raised by the racial dimensions of the case. Specifically, the paper advances a critique of the content and viewpoint neutral approach, arguing that an ahistorical and acontextual approach to free speech doctrine is non-neutral. It leads to an untenable form of ethical relativism anathema to fundamental constitutional principles and the liberal ideals of maximizing liberty and promoting tolerance. The current understanding of free speech doctrine hinders distinctions between dissident speech and harmful hate speech or pornography. In an age when the Pentagon monitors dissenters and employers fire employees for their political beliefs, a clear conceptual distinction between dissident speech and hate speech or pornography is crucial. At the same time that the threat to government regulation of dissent has increased, the harm from hate speech and pornography has not dissipated. Without a clear line delineating dissent from hate speech or pornography, law augments the power of government to silence critique or defends the harmful speech of those seeking to marginalize historically oppressed groups. The paper maps where the conflation between racist speech and dissident speech occurs and provides criteria to distinguish between the two.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper proposes to trace and problematize the ascendancy of the content and viewpoint neutrality principle as the core of free speech doctrine in American constitutional law. The paper scrutinizes the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) where the majority opinion equated the discriminatory expression of the Klan to communist speech without deliberating about the different conceptual issues raised by the racial dimensions of the case. Specifically, the paper advances a critique of the content and viewpoint neutral approach, arguing that an ahistorical and acontextual approach to free speech doctrine is non-neutral. It leads to an untenable form of ethical relativism anathema to fundamental constitutional principles and the liberal ideals of maximizing liberty and promoting tolerance. The current understanding of free speech doctrine hinders distinctions between dissident speech and harmful hate speech or pornography. In an age when the Pentagon monitors dissenters and employers fire employees for their political beliefs, a clear conceptual distinction between dissident speech and hate speech or pornography is crucial. At the same time that the threat to government regulation of dissent has increased, the harm from hate speech and pornography has not dissipated. Without a clear line delineating dissent from hate speech or pornography, law augments the power of government to silence critique or defends the harmful speech of those seeking to marginalize historically oppressed groups. The paper maps where the conflation between racist speech and dissident speech occurs and provides criteria to distinguish between the two.

Publication Type: GIFTS
Abstract: For many novice speech writers, the task of selecting a topic may appear overwhelming. Most students are instructed that topics are “everywhere”; but when topics are too ubiquitous, they seem quite literally invisible to the novice eye. Abstract discussions about topics do little for students. This activity provides a concrete method for brainstorming topics by turning five everyday objects into at least 25 topics, making the task of choosing a topic accessible to the students.