Rodney G. Miller
Rodney G. Miller
Communication strengthening leadership in organizations and society.
About
32
Publications
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Introduction
Current research at The Communication Institute in language and emotive processes to reassess common explanations of meaning creation in public discourse. Integrating rhetorical, stylistic, linguistic, semiotic, and pragmatics perspectives for new understandings of communication. Includes reference to polemic, controversy, satire, or humor, as well as semantic phenomena and figures more based on formal properties.
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Publications
Publications (32)
Evaluates persuasive language of Australian politicians and advocates of social change from the 1890s to modern times. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of 18 rhetorical stylistic features, such as metaphor, polemic, controversy, humour and slogans, as well as semantic phenomena or figures.
Incorporates detailed language studies of: Sir Samuel...
ANTI-propaganda Action reviews individual and collective approaches to counter propagandists. Examining propaganda as a dynamic of large groups, the chapter distills priorities. It focuses on multi-faceted, pro-active initiatives at scale. The chapter calls for research to identify further actionable insights from studying propaganda “in the wild,”...
While written clearly and suitable for students, this rethinking of how we communicate contains fresh insights for researchers. In brief, the book provides an accessible exploration of semiotics, while also challenging the inadequacies of traditional communication models that underpin common views of how communication occurs. Since most of the medi...
Trustees and senior managers of universities and nonprofit organizations commonly encounter challenge when seeking alignments that optimize fundraising. The paper incorporates understandings for fundraising success from structured study of strategies, processes, and behaviors for institutional advancement employed by leaders of some of the world's...
Describes the social, economic, and political climate fostering the rapid growth of communication education in Queensland, Australia and nationwide from the mid-1970s. Notes changing government mandates to satisfy the expanding needs in the private and public sector for employees with enhanced communication abilities. Traces the development of new...
Index of articles, commentaries and reviews of books or journals in the foundation publications of The Communication Institute, Australian Journal of Communication (1982-1987) and Australian Scan: Journal of Communication (1976-1981).
Keywords: communication, speech, drama, film, television, semiotics, rhetoric, linguistics, cultural studies, broa...
Connecting seven essays written over three decades from 1979 to 2010 is the focused study of communication practices to optimize results – whether to teach oral communication, strengthen democracy, grow organizational trust, build community relations, or sustain fundraising. The book incorporates lessons from leaders in more than twenty high-perfor...
A synthesized approach for an organization's leader to sustain funding growth in the best or worst of economic times.
This leadership guide to sustain an organization's external funding is distilled from the collected input of college chancellors, presidents, advancement leaders and consultants. Each was asked to identify three steps for a college...
The book describes the social, economic, and political climate fostering the rapid growth of communication education in Queensland and nationwide from the mid-1970s. Notes changing government mandates to satisfy the expanding needs in the private and public sector for employees with enhanced communication abilities. Traces the development of new pr...
Examines a key stage in pioneering efforts to evolve interpersonal and mass communication research and teaching in Australian higher education during the 1970s. Describes impulses for developing the Australian Communication Association (now ANZCA), noting the polysemic character of "communication" and characterizations of "communication studies" as...
The chapter assesses the advocacy of The Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG, international human rights jurist and former justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009). It integrates rhetorical, stylistic, and linguistic approaches to evaluate his persuasive style, drawing on qualitative and quantitative analyses. How Kirby finds common ground by inviti...
Assesses Germaine Greer’s rhetorical literacy that sets a tone for engaging readers in her book The Female Eunuch. Examines how Greer builds her case by incorporating principles and techniques of rhetoric to create a suasive informality. Describes how she uses a variety of rhetorical features and integrates figurative language, especially to frame...
The chapter explores humour as a potent way to make serious advocacy in impromptu and prepared remarks. It identifies some strategic, rhetorical uses of humour, based on the assessment of rhetorical humour in the speeches and media interviews of leading Australian public figures. These include the use of humour to gain attention, set an agenda, bui...
The paper examines assumptions and practices that shape the strategic use of communication for large-scale gains in widely-known, successful universities located in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It identifies communication strategies that institutional leaders use to
1) Align members of the governing board...
The paper evaluates perspectives and approaches of organizational leaders to gain or regain trust with stakeholders. Times of financial, economic, social, or other instability highlight the importance of how we think about communication to build or rebuild trust. While some organizational leaders thoughtfully draw on stakeholder intelligence to eng...
The cooperative effort of colleagues, especially organizational leadership, the volunteer board, and development staff, is widely accepted as the only powerful team to advance the mission of the service enterprise. Initially, this requires the board, chief executive officer (CEO), and chief development professional to evolve a strong working relati...
The chapter describes the application of leadership and high-speed management principles to improve the community-service-based fundraising of a nonprofit organization. What a leader does communicates best. Leaders earn credibility by achieving results. Typical challenges for a leader now are (1) highspeed organizational change; (2) limited authori...
Thesis (M.A. by research)--The University of Queensland.
The chapter examines the construction of personal identity in the 1983 Australian federal election by the leaders of the two main political parties, the Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and the Leader of the Opposition Labor Party, Bob Hawke. How the leaders' communication competence appeared to take shape through the campaign is outlined. Sty...
In the 1983 Australian federal election, television put a spotlight on the contrasting leadership styles of the Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser and the Labor Leader of the Opposition Bob Hawke. Both leaders used television heavily in a short, emotion-filled campaign that foregrounded the leaders and called for sophisticated television p...
The paper describes an approach to integrate the development of an organisation's external and internal communications. It supplements the issues management approaches increasingly used to address the concerns of an organisation's external publics with the development of communication cost-benefit analysis to enhance internal communications. A surv...
Communication of the following Australian public figures is analysed and evaluated: Sir Samuel Walker Griffith (1845-1920); Sir Robert Gordon Menzies (1894-1978); Gough Whitlam (1916- ); Germaine Greer (1939- ); and Mr. Justice Michael Kirby (1939- ). The paper (1) briefly identifies language features that mark the personal style of each person's p...
Australian mass media presenters lack information about their effect on information flow between government and citizens. Yet media reporters and public figures conduct discussions within an assumption of democratic debate while consciously and unconsciously distorting information. 'Educated, intelligent' individuals in the community need to overco...
Australian mass media presenters lack information about their effect on information flow between government and citizens. Yet media reporters and public figures conduct discussions within an assumption of democratic debate while consciously and unconsciously distorting information. 'Educated, intelligent' individuals in the community need to overco...
The chapter contends that teachers of communication, particularly oral communication, must be concerned with more than just acquisition of skills. Ways to deal explicitly with socio-political concerns are described as necessary in English or foreign language courses as well as within degree-level professional communication courses. It is proposed t...
Commencing from a challenge that Communication Studies is not a discipline, the paper offers clarification of uses of the word "communication" in the academy and in practice. For the development of a coherent field of study, it is suggested the new Australian Communication Association encourage conscious cooperation among researchers and teachers f...
Finding a balance between the extremes of secrecy/privacy and disclosure shape attempts to legislate or regulate in the area of freedom of information in the final decades of the twentieth-century in Australia. Guidelines somewhat agreed by citizens' groups are assessed. The effects of differences between government representatives and citizens in...
[An updated and much revised version published in 2022 as Chapter 13: 'Revolution' Rhetoric of Germaine Greer, in my book "Australians Speak Out: Persuasive Language Styles," Albany, NY: Parula Press, 151-165 + ref 318-319]
Questions
Questions (2)
Should researchers and educators do more to encourage policy-makers, media influencers, other opinion leaders, friends, family, neighbors, etc. to productively address propaganda?
Welcome your thoughts…
What are rhetorical stylistic considerations for speakers or writers to negotiate "distance...with regards to a question or a problem"? I'm grateful to Nick Turnbull at The University of Manchester, for neatly describing this perspective of rhetoric offered by Michel Meyer. [In Turnbull, Nick (2006) "Problematology and Contingency in the Social Sciences; (2017) "Political Rhetoric and its Relationship to Context: a new theory of the rhetorical situation, the rhetorical and the political"]
One example is mentioned in my book chapter, "Reform Advocacy of Michael Kirby." Link at:
Chapter Reform Advocacy of Michael Kirby
Associate Justice Scalia of the United States Supreme Court was politely but firmly invited to probe a broader view of originalism as long ago as 2010 when he visited Australia – by The Hon Michael Kirby AC, CMG, international human rights jurist and former justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009).
It appears the current propagators of originalism must rely on some willful blindness to conveniently overlook the recorded suggestions from the Founders of the United States that the Constitution would need to be interpreted, adjusted, or changed to accommodate unforeseen or unforeseeable circumstances.
This is just one of the ways that Kirby imaginatively uses language to invite openness to new understandings.
Other thoughts?
