Departmental News
Hample Co-Authors Study of Message Inventional Repertoires
Associate professor Dale Hample is the co-author of an essay in the July 2008 issue of Communication Studies. The essay, entitled "Inventional Repertoires and Written Messages" explores the relationship between inventional repertoires and message elements.
Theories of message production have in common that they presume the existence of inventional repertoires, Hample and his colleagues suggest, but few such theories have connected repertorial elements to message features. Research on inventional capacity has established that repertoire size is a feature of cognitive ability and has explored the content of the repertoires. Hample's article is the first study to connect these repertoires to actual messages. We hypothesized that repertorial features would be predicted by a combination of motivation and ability, that the repertoire elements would predict message elements, and that the message features would predict the contents of think-aloud protocols. Each hypothesis was supported.
Citation: Hample, Dale, Christopher Gordy, Alison Sellie, & Michaela Wright, "Inventional Repertoires and Written Messages," Communication Studies 59 (2008): 220-234.
