Communication - August, 2004
from Jerry Baldasty, chair

[Download a Microsoft Word version of the August, 2004 "Communication"]

Publications

Jaworski, A. and Thurlow, C. (2004). Language, tourism and globalisation: Mapping new international identities. In S. H. Ng, C-Y, Chiu & C. Candlin (Eds), Language matters: Communication, identity, and culture (pp. 297-321). Hong Kong: City University Press.

The September Project

David Silver and a host of others have put together a remarkable and innovative project. Read about TSP and the program for Sept 11.

The Seattle Times reported, on July 12:

In the midst of the war on terrorism, and in the heat of a presidential campaign, The September Project has a simple goal: Start a national conversation about democracy, citizenship and patriotism. Libraries by the dozen are signing on, from a juvenile hall in California to a private school in Alabama, a countywide library system in Minnesota to a university in Texas.

The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 23) noted:

This year on September 11, David Silver hopes that communities can get together to talk about patriotism. But the conversation will probably be different from other recent discussions of the topic. Mr. Silver…is helping to organize the September Project, an endeavor designed to foster community discussions about freedom and democracy. The sites for these discussions will largely be libraries. More than 100 libraries, some of them at colleges, have already volunteered to play host to a discussion or exhibition related to the project.

"It's a response to the climate of silence that has seeped into this country, post-9/11," Mr. Silver says. "It's difficult to get a lot of information from the media and from the government, so we wanted to create safe spaces -- safe local spaces where we have free information."

Congratulations to David and to all who have worked so hard on this endeavor. It has attracted a good deal of support, too, including a recent $25,000 grant from the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities. Kathleen Woodward, director, of the Simpson Center, thanked David “for taking the initiative to coordinate what promises to be an exciting series of public events originating here at the University of Washington and an innovative model for engaging communities locally and nationally.”

Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association

PNNA has donated $4,900 to the Department to "to increase professional outreach and guest professionals on campus." Thanks to all of the faculty who helped when the PNNA team visited campus in December 2003.

People

Crispin Thurlow received the James J. Bradac Award for Outstanding Research by a Junior Scholar at the International Conference on Language & Social Psychology (ICLASP), Penn State University, July 2004. This award is made biennially for a journal article judged to have made the most highly significant advance in the field of language and social psychology and accepted for publication within five years of the author receiving a PhD. Crispin earned the award for his article ‘Naming the “outsider within”: Homophobic pejoratives and the verbal abuse of lesbian, gay and bisexual high-school pupils’ (Journal of Adolescence, 2001 & reprinted in Intercultural Communication: A global reader, Sage 2003). The ICLASP award comprises an invitation to present a keynote paper at the 2006 conference in Bonn, Germany, and a subvention of $300.

Communication graduate student Marcos Torres completed requirements for UW Graduate Certificate in Global Trade, Transportation and Logistics Studies. Graduate School Acting Dean Betty Feetham noted that this course of study provides “a better international perspective and a more thorough education with regard to understanding global commerce.”

Brenda Bell, one of our journalism instructors, won an Alternative Newsweekly Award for an article she wrote for the Texas Observer. Brenda won third place in the Arts Features category (for circulation over 50,000) for an article on Canadian writer Fred Bodsworth and the extinction of the Eskimo curlew. Columbia Journalism Review (July 12, 2004) also noted Brenda’s work, quoting her Texas Observer article on Al Gore. CJR noted that the media, in general, were negative when Gore (in April 2004) gave an impassioned attack on the Bush administration. CJR quotes Brenda:

Two things were striking about the reaction to Gore's speech. First, [the press reaction] was driven by spin (Was Gore nuts? Was he helping Kerry or hurting him?) instead of substance. There was little mention of the particulars of the sweeping indictment of the Bush administration's "incompetence" and its compromise of democracy at home and the United States' moral authority abroad.

Second, for all the fixation on tone, it was clear that none of the pundits actually witnessed much of Gore's [presentation]. The NYU speech, sponsored by MoveOn.org, resembled for the most part a professorial lecture, delivered with more restraint than obvious passion. The sound bites came in the middle, in a rhetorical crescendo familiar to anyone who's ever heard a stemwinding politician, or a Southern Baptist preacher. Gore didn't sound crazy -- unless righteous indignation is now a form of insanity.

In the country of William Jennings Bryan and Bob LaFollette, of Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone -- a nation with a colorful tradition of vigorous populist speechmaking -- when did a raised voice on the stump become so ... discomfiting? And why weren't the Democrats picking up the talking points of Gore's speech and running with them? Almost alone on the op-ed pages, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert talked about what Gore actually said: "It has always been easy to make fun of Al Gore. But if there's any truth to the thunderous criticism he's turned loose on the Bush administration this week, it's time to dispense with the jokes and listen seriously to what the man is saying."

The College’s publication, Perspectives, recently noted Tony Giffard’s successful creation of a communication study-abroad program in Rome. Perspectives reported:

Giffard focused on print and broadcast media in Europe, exploring how national media systems are influenced by politics, economics, culture, and other factors, and how European Union policies impact media and the emerging information society

Although Giffard has taught the course many times before, he found it was a different experience in Rome. “We could buy and study local newspapers, watch television programs, and see movies in the vernacular,” he says. “The students learned a lot from the whole immersion in a different culture.”

Giffard is planning to repeat the program next winter quarter, this time with a limit of 20 students. He’s already looking forward to it. “One of the best features of the program was getting to know the students individually, not merely as faces in a large lecture hall,” says Giffard. “They became our friends. It made a huge difference.”

Representatives of the Dart Center were active at two key conferences this summer. At Unity 2004 (Washington, D.C., August 4-7), Dart Award Director Migael Scherer led a workshop on issues of journalism and trauma; joining her were author Lori Robinson and Dart Ochberg Fellows Jimmie Briggs, a freelance journalist, and Ron Claiborne, ABC News Correspondent. At the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (Toronto, August 4-7), Dart Center Executive Director Roger Simpson participated in a panel discussion: "Trauma Tragedy, and Terror: A Pedagogy for Protecting Victims, Journalists and Communities. Dart Center administrator and researcher Meg Spratt presented her paper, "News Photography and Reactions to Tragedy: How Journalistic Imagery Triggers Emotion and Influences Perceptions of Violence, Safety, and Responsibility."

The Dart Center will conduct its second "Teaching About Emotional Trauma" seminar for college journalism teachers Sept. 17-18 at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond.

[Download a Microsoft Word version of the August, 2004 "Communication"]