Robert Hopper
Biographic Data
| ID | 649908 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Hopper |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Hopper |
| SIGNATURE | HOPPER R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3985-2828 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 267 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Using Poverty Lines to Measure Refugee Self-Reliance
Humanitarian models of refugee assistance increasingly promote refugee self-reliance without offering a clear understanding of what constitutes self-reliance, or how to measure it, although measurement is essential to assess whether the promotion of self-reliance has been successful. This paper proposes an approach to measuring self-reliance rooted in global poverty measurement: a refugee is self-reliant if their self-earned income exceeds the lo…
Honolulu’s colonial legacy of marginalization
Relying heavily on newspaper archives, this article explores the ‘first rough draft’ of Honolulu’s early urban frontier to rescue the spectacle of environmental and emergency management in the early twentieth-century town of Kakaʻako. Analysing the interdependent discursive and material processes in response to public health crisis – viewed here serving as a continuation of colonialism – I show how Kakaʻako existed as a release valve for detritus…
Gender Talk
Men and women are not from separate planets. Making an original and significant argument, Gendering Talk puts gendered communication in perspective by showing that the problem with male/female communication is not how men and women talk to each other, but in how they listen. By closely examining the details of actual conversations between women and men—particularly the conversations of people “coupling”—Hopper draws on theories of arousal, relati…
Going Public About Social Interaction
Going Public About Social Interaction
How Gender Creeps Into Talk
Generic he in conversation
The use of the pronoun he in circumstances of sex‐indefinite reference unduly emphasizes men over women, thereby both re‐constituting and signifying males’ micropolitical hegemony. To date this claim has been advanced primarily on the basis of imagined examples and of examples from writing. We searched for generic he in everyday conversation and found no clear instances of it. Speakers use they as an unmarked singular generic pronoun. We did find…
Studying Conversational Interaction in Institutions
Talk at Work
Part I. Theoretical orientations: Part II. The activities of questioners: Part III. The activities of answerers: Part IV. The interplay between questioning and answering
Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance
(1993). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly: Vol. 13, Performance and Conversation, pp. 181-183
Some Uses of Yeah
Speech errors and the poetics of conversation
Speech errors make audible to us certain figures of speech that operate in everyday interaction. Many speech errors display sound assonances and semantic links between the erroneous particle and surrounding activity. We may extend these analyses beyond errors to find principles of poetic activity at play throughout spoken interaction. From this basis, we consider some uses that speakers make of errors. Responses to errors, like errors themselves,…
Dialogic Teaching of Medical Terminology at the Cancer Information Service
Medical terminology helps health care professionals to achieve efficient communication with each other, but causes difficulties when health care professionals try to inform patients and their loved ones about their conditions. This report examines naturally-occurring telephone conversations between information specialists of the Cancer Information Service (CIS) and callers who seek medical information. We describe four formats for bringing medica…
Pauses, Transition Relevance, and Speaker Change
Journal Article Pauses, Transition Relevance, and Speaker Change Get access W.Ray Thomason, W.Ray Thomason Assistant Instructor 1Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Robert Hopper Robert Hopper Charles Sapp Professor of Communication 1Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Googl…
Observer
Journal Article Observer: Steps to an Ecology of Mind Get access Robert Hopper Robert Hopper Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 1, Issue 3, August 1991, Pages 267–268, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1991.tb00019.x Published: 17 March 2006
Describing Speech Phenomena
Universals and particulars in telephone openings
(1990). Universals and particulars in telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 24, No. 1-4, pp. 369-387
Ethnography and conversation analysis after talking culture
(1990). Ethnography and conversation analysis after talking culture. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 24, No. 1-4, pp. 161-171
The Effects of Sex Dialects and Sex Stereotypes on Speech Evaluations
Two studies examined the effects of male and female 'dialects' and sex stereotypes on speech evaluations. Although sex-linked language effects have explained more evaluative variance than stereotypes, the persistence of these effects across a range of conversational contexts is uncertain. Study 1 supported the dialect hypothesis across two stimulus conversations but did not support the stereotype hypothesis. Study 2 found dialect and stereotype e…
Emergent Goals at a Relational Turning Point
The present case study describes textual evidence of the goal of 'breaking up' in a heterosexual dating relationship. The evidence appears in three telephone conversations. In the first conversation, a dating couple discusses what to do for the evening. In the second conversation, the same couple agrees to stop dating. In the third, the male offers an account to another female of how the just-accomplished break-up took place. We discuss problems …
Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings
Near the beginning of many telephone conversations parties exchange initial inquiries and responses, such as: ‘How are you'?/'fine’. The present essay describes how speech acts in this initial inquiry slot signal and resolve problems. Previous research has demonstrated that some responses to initial inquiry act to premonitor problems. The present essay builds on these analyses beginning with data from telephone “call‐waiting.”; In call‐waiting, a…
Language, media, and communication
Speech, for Instance. The Exemplar in Studies of Conversation
This essay considers studies of speech and language that base claims in exemplars by discussing: (1) some classic exemplars used by Austin, Wittgenstein, and others; and (2) exemplars' specifications of message and scene. One exemplist school, conversation analysis, receives emphasis in this treatment, and is contrasted with experimentation in terms of sampling, design, and techniques for analysis. Recommendations for exemplist research include: …
Symbolic action as alignment
Measuring Language Attitudes
This paper describes investigations in the measurement of listeners' evaluations of spoken language. Lack of integration in research in this area has been due in part to the numerous measurement instruments used to assess such evaluative reactions. The paper reviews the development of past instruments, describes the design, analysis, and implementation of an omnibus measure, the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI), and interprets these findings in…
Measuring Language Attitudes
This paper describes investigations in the measurement of listeners' evaluations of spoken language. Lack of integration in research in this area has been due in part to the numerous measurement instruments used to assess such evaluative reactions. The paper reviews the development of past instruments, describes the design, analysis, and implementation of an omnibus measure, the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI), and interprets these findings in…
How Gender Creeps Into Talk
The Taken-for-Granted
This essay constitutes a theoretical account of how speakers interpret that which is taken for granted in messages. It is argued that the term “taken for granted” (TFG) is useful in reconsidering research concerning enthymemes, argument theory, indirect speech acts, conversational maxims, pragmatic implication, and a number of other areas. When combined with materials from the symbolic interactionist literature on alignment, the TFG concept provi…
Employment interviewers' reactions to Mexican American speech
Employment interviewers at large businesses in San Antonio, Texas, listened to taped speech samples of Mexican American males speaking English with varying degrees of accentedness in simulated employment interviews, evaluated speaker personality characteristics, and made a hiring prediction about whether each speaker might be hired for each of three level positions: supervisor, skilled technician, and semi‐skilled worker. Measures of interviewers…
Some Uses of Yeah
Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings
Near the beginning of many telephone conversations parties exchange initial inquiries and responses, such as: ‘How are you'?/'fine’. The present essay describes how speech acts in this initial inquiry slot signal and resolve problems. Previous research has demonstrated that some responses to initial inquiry act to premonitor problems. The present essay builds on these analyses beginning with data from telephone “call‐waiting.”; In call‐waiting, a…
Ethnography and conversation analysis after talking culture
(1990). Ethnography and conversation analysis after talking culture. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 24, No. 1-4, pp. 161-171
Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance
(1993). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly: Vol. 13, Performance and Conversation, pp. 181-183
Broadening the deception construct
This essay argues for an enlarged conceptualization of deception. A multidimensional scaling of similarity judgments of forty‐six deception‐related terms identified a number of aspects underlying the construct. They included evaluation, detectability, and premeditation. The elicited terms were subjected to a hierarchical cluster analysis, which revealed six families of deception: fictions, playings, lies, crimes, masks, and unlies. Implications o…
Language attitudes in the employment interview
This research examined effects upon employment decisions of an interviewee's speech characteristics, as displayed in job interviews. The hypothesis behind this study was that an applicant's speech characteristics affect hiring decisions in ways which could be separated from influences due to the applicant's ethnicity
Gender Talk
Men and women are not from separate planets. Making an original and significant argument, Gendering Talk puts gendered communication in perspective by showing that the problem with male/female communication is not how men and women talk to each other, but in how they listen. By closely examining the details of actual conversations between women and men—particularly the conversations of people “coupling”—Hopper draws on theories of arousal, relati…
If you speak Spanish they'll think you're a German
The present research attempts to study language attitudes in innovative ways. Specifically, our problem is how to examine the language‐switching event as a context that reveals language attitudes of communicators. The major findings reported here concern a mulu'lingual school setting in Spain in which language choice and language‐switching are everyday occurrences. Open‐ended interviews supplemented with observational data were used to study atti…
Pauses, Transition Relevance, and Speaker Change
Journal Article Pauses, Transition Relevance, and Speaker Change Get access W.Ray Thomason, W.Ray Thomason Assistant Instructor 1Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Robert Hopper Robert Hopper Charles Sapp Professor of Communication 1Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Googl…
Universals and particulars in telephone openings
(1990). Universals and particulars in telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 24, No. 1-4, pp. 369-387
Emergent Goals at a Relational Turning Point
The present case study describes textual evidence of the goal of 'breaking up' in a heterosexual dating relationship. The evidence appears in three telephone conversations. In the first conversation, a dating couple discusses what to do for the evening. In the second conversation, the same couple agrees to stop dating. In the third, the male offers an account to another female of how the just-accomplished break-up took place. We discuss problems …
Generic he in conversation
The use of the pronoun he in circumstances of sex‐indefinite reference unduly emphasizes men over women, thereby both re‐constituting and signifying males’ micropolitical hegemony. To date this claim has been advanced primarily on the basis of imagined examples and of examples from writing. We searched for generic he in everyday conversation and found no clear instances of it. Speakers use they as an unmarked singular generic pronoun. We did find…
Remediation and legislation in everyday talk
Communicators achieve increased rule consensus as they use talk to overcome problems. Two kinds of talk seem especially useful to increasing consensus: remedial talk, which uses rules to correct past problems; and legislative talk, which uses rules to propose guides for future conduct
Relationships between speech delivery and speech effectiveness
Six speech delivery variables—volume, rate, voice quality, posture, gesture, and bodily movement—were varied within a five‐minute persuasive speech. The speech was delivered in each of ten conditions by the same speaker in the same environment. The resultant video‐tapes were validated and shown to more than 220 subjects. The findings of this phase of the research indicated that speech delivery, as operationally defined in this study, had virtuall…
Speech errors and the poetics of conversation
Speech errors make audible to us certain figures of speech that operate in everyday interaction. Many speech errors display sound assonances and semantic links between the erroneous particle and surrounding activity. We may extend these analyses beyond errors to find principles of poetic activity at play throughout spoken interaction. From this basis, we consider some uses that speakers make of errors. Responses to errors, like errors themselves,…
Speech, for Instance. The Exemplar in Studies of Conversation
This essay considers studies of speech and language that base claims in exemplars by discussing: (1) some classic exemplars used by Austin, Wittgenstein, and others; and (2) exemplars' specifications of message and scene. One exemplist school, conversation analysis, receives emphasis in this treatment, and is contrasted with experimentation in terms of sampling, design, and techniques for analysis. Recommendations for exemplist research include: …
Symbolic action as alignment
Studying Conversational Interaction in Institutions
Describing Speech Phenomena
The Effects of Sex Dialects and Sex Stereotypes on Speech Evaluations
Two studies examined the effects of male and female 'dialects' and sex stereotypes on speech evaluations. Although sex-linked language effects have explained more evaluative variance than stereotypes, the persistence of these effects across a range of conversational contexts is uncertain. Study 1 supported the dialect hypothesis across two stimulus conversations but did not support the stereotype hypothesis. Study 2 found dialect and stereotype e…
Is Deprivation Linguistic? Suggested Changes for Teacher Training Programs Concerned With Black English
A linguistic approach to Black English (BE), often called "difference theory," is preferable to its predecessors, but it cannot resolve many problems which exist for speakers of that dialect. Linguists disagree about the nature of BE, who speaks it, the aims of instruction most appropriate for speakers of BE, and strategies most suitable for such instruction. Finally, the best advice that Iinguists can offer about BE is that we should on many occ…
Relationships between speech delivery and speech effectiveness
Six speech delivery variables—volume, rate, voice quality, posture, gesture, and bodily movement—were varied within a five‐minute persuasive speech. The speech was delivered in each of ten conditions by the same speaker in the same environment. The resultant video‐tapes were validated and shown to more than 220 subjects. The findings of this phase of the research indicated that speech delivery, as operationally defined in this study, had virtuall…
Language attitudes in the employment interview
This research examined effects upon employment decisions of an interviewee's speech characteristics, as displayed in job interviews. The hypothesis behind this study was that an applicant's speech characteristics affect hiring decisions in ways which could be separated from influences due to the applicant's ethnicity
Employment interviewers' reactions to Mexican American speech
Employment interviewers at large businesses in San Antonio, Texas, listened to taped speech samples of Mexican American males speaking English with varying degrees of accentedness in simulated employment interviews, evaluated speaker personality characteristics, and made a hiring prediction about whether each speaker might be hired for each of three level positions: supervisor, skilled technician, and semi‐skilled worker. Measures of interviewers…
Remediation and legislation in everyday talk
Communicators achieve increased rule consensus as they use talk to overcome problems. Two kinds of talk seem especially useful to increasing consensus: remedial talk, which uses rules to correct past problems; and legislative talk, which uses rules to propose guides for future conduct
Couples’Personal Idioms
Robert Hopper, Mark L. Knapp, Lorel Scott; Couples’Personal Idioms: Exploring Intimate Talk, Journal of Communication, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1 March 1981, Pages 2
The Taken-for-Granted
This essay constitutes a theoretical account of how speakers interpret that which is taken for granted in messages. It is argued that the term “taken for granted” (TFG) is useful in reconsidering research concerning enthymemes, argument theory, indirect speech acts, conversational maxims, pragmatic implication, and a number of other areas. When combined with materials from the symbolic interactionist literature on alignment, the TFG concept provi…
Teasing as Daddy's classroom
If you speak Spanish they'll think you're a German
The present research attempts to study language attitudes in innovative ways. Specifically, our problem is how to examine the language‐switching event as a context that reveals language attitudes of communicators. The major findings reported here concern a mulu'lingual school setting in Spain in which language choice and language‐switching are everyday occurrences. Open‐ended interviews supplemented with observational data were used to study atti…
Compliments
Mark L. Knapp, Robert Hopper, Robert A. Bell; Compliments: A Descriptive Taxonomy, Journal of Communication, Volume 34, Issue 4, 1 December 1984, Pages 12
Broadening the deception construct
This essay argues for an enlarged conceptualization of deception. A multidimensional scaling of similarity judgments of forty‐six deception‐related terms identified a number of aspects underlying the construct. They included evaluation, detectability, and premeditation. The elicited terms were subjected to a hierarchical cluster analysis, which revealed six families of deception: fictions, playings, lies, crimes, masks, and unlies. Implications o…
Measuring Language Attitudes
This paper describes investigations in the measurement of listeners' evaluations of spoken language. Lack of integration in research in this area has been due in part to the numerous measurement instruments used to assess such evaluative reactions. The paper reviews the development of past instruments, describes the design, analysis, and implementation of an omnibus measure, the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI), and interprets these findings in…
Symbolic action as alignment
Language, media, and communication
Speech, for Instance. The Exemplar in Studies of Conversation
This essay considers studies of speech and language that base claims in exemplars by discussing: (1) some classic exemplars used by Austin, Wittgenstein, and others; and (2) exemplars' specifications of message and scene. One exemplist school, conversation analysis, receives emphasis in this treatment, and is contrasted with experimentation in terms of sampling, design, and techniques for analysis. Recommendations for exemplist research include: …
Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings
Near the beginning of many telephone conversations parties exchange initial inquiries and responses, such as: ‘How are you'?/'fine’. The present essay describes how speech acts in this initial inquiry slot signal and resolve problems. Previous research has demonstrated that some responses to initial inquiry act to premonitor problems. The present essay builds on these analyses beginning with data from telephone “call‐waiting.”; In call‐waiting, a…
Describing Speech Phenomena
Universals and particulars in telephone openings
(1990). Universals and particulars in telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 24, No. 1-4, pp. 369-387
Ethnography and conversation analysis after talking culture
(1990). Ethnography and conversation analysis after talking culture. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 24, No. 1-4, pp. 161-171
The Effects of Sex Dialects and Sex Stereotypes on Speech Evaluations
Two studies examined the effects of male and female 'dialects' and sex stereotypes on speech evaluations. Although sex-linked language effects have explained more evaluative variance than stereotypes, the persistence of these effects across a range of conversational contexts is uncertain. Study 1 supported the dialect hypothesis across two stimulus conversations but did not support the stereotype hypothesis. Study 2 found dialect and stereotype e…
Emergent Goals at a Relational Turning Point
The present case study describes textual evidence of the goal of 'breaking up' in a heterosexual dating relationship. The evidence appears in three telephone conversations. In the first conversation, a dating couple discusses what to do for the evening. In the second conversation, the same couple agrees to stop dating. In the third, the male offers an account to another female of how the just-accomplished break-up took place. We discuss problems …
Observer
Journal Article Observer: Steps to an Ecology of Mind Get access Robert Hopper Robert Hopper Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 1, Issue 3, August 1991, Pages 267–268, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1991.tb00019.x Published: 17 March 2006
Speech errors and the poetics of conversation
Speech errors make audible to us certain figures of speech that operate in everyday interaction. Many speech errors display sound assonances and semantic links between the erroneous particle and surrounding activity. We may extend these analyses beyond errors to find principles of poetic activity at play throughout spoken interaction. From this basis, we consider some uses that speakers make of errors. Responses to errors, like errors themselves,…
Dialogic Teaching of Medical Terminology at the Cancer Information Service
Medical terminology helps health care professionals to achieve efficient communication with each other, but causes difficulties when health care professionals try to inform patients and their loved ones about their conditions. This report examines naturally-occurring telephone conversations between information specialists of the Cancer Information Service (CIS) and callers who seek medical information. We describe four formats for bringing medica…
Pauses, Transition Relevance, and Speaker Change
Journal Article Pauses, Transition Relevance, and Speaker Change Get access W.Ray Thomason, W.Ray Thomason Assistant Instructor 1Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Robert Hopper Robert Hopper Charles Sapp Professor of Communication 1Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Googl…
Psychology (27 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Linguistics (19 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Communication (12 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works)