Political Science and Speech Communication--A Team Approach to Teaching Political Communication.

This paper proposes making speech communication more interdisciplinary and, in particular, combining political science and speech in a team-taught course in election campaigning. The goals, materials, activities, and plan of such a course are discussed. The goals include: (1) gaining new insights into the process of contemporary campaigns and dismissing the myths surrounding the role of political parties, (2) understanding the structure of an election campaign organization that operates on a local level, (3) developing a capacity to see political and social problems in terms of asking empirical questions, (4) learning more about the political behavior of voters in issue elections, and (5) providing students with an opportunity to observe and question political poll takers and officials. The course would be taught on a classroom-field experience basis, and the activities would include lectures, presentations, readings, films, special projects, and tests. The plan of the course is based around an inventory of propositions predicting the relationship between political campaigning and political behavior (i.e., voting turnout and partisan direction of the vote). (TS)