This article presents a curated collection of six teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These MFA presenters demonstrated activities in helping students understand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media in business communication. This My Favorite Assignment 34th edition introduces readers to a variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate tasks involving social media and AI. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

This study examined how lecture background type influences student learning experiences in business and professional communication contexts. An online experiment was conducted with undergraduate students in the United States. Participants viewed a lecture on one-way interviews presented with either a digitally created background (university-branded PowerPoint slide) or authentic-appearing background (image of a physical office wall). The results revealed an indirect effect of lecture background type on students’ perceptions, mediated by the perceived social presence of the instructor: specifically, a lecture delivered with an authentic-appearing background fostered social presence, which in turn, enhanced students’ perceptions of the instructor’s credibility and their affective learning.

Artykuł poświęcony jest wizualnej reprezentacji migrantów na okładkach tygodników opinii. Analizie poddano 158 okładek z lat 2020–2025, traktowanych jako perswazyjne komentarze redakcyjne o charakterze multimodalnym. Badanie, osadzone w ramach współczesnych teorii retoryki wizualnej i analizy dyskursu medialnego, pozwala zrekonstruować dominujące toposy, strategie emocjonalne oraz ideologiczne różnice w narracjach o migracji w Polsce i Niemczech. Okładki nie tylko odzwierciedlają spory polityczne, ale także współtworzą je, programując emocje odbiorców. Jednak obecność toposów solidarności i pragmatycznych ujęć politycznych sugeruje, że dyskurs ten jest zróżnicowany i podlega negocjacjom ideologicznym. Dane ilościowe wskazują ponadto na na przewagę negatywnych przedstawień, szczególnie w polskich tygodnikach opinii, co utrwala narrację strachu oraz opozycję „swój – obcy”.

Tematem artykułu jest analiza wystąpień kandydatów na prezydenta Polski ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem Karola Nawrockiego i Szymona Hołowni w trakcie przedwyborczych debat telewizyjnych, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem perswazyjnej roli metafory. Metafora w ujęciu kognitywnym to nie tylko sposób mówienia, lecz przede wszystkim narzędzie rozumowania, dlatego stanowi też ważny element retorycznych zabiegów, mających na celu przekonanie odbiorcy do proponowanej przez nadawcę wizji świata. Metafora może zatem, inaczej niż w przypadku argumentacji opartej na racjonalnych przesłankach, kreować pożądane przez mówców zestawy przekonań i postawy oraz wzmacniać postulowane w tekstach wartości. Analizie poddane zostały te spośród wystąpień, które zaliczane są do tzw. swobodnej wypowiedzi, czyli zawczasu przygotowanych tekstów, mających stanowić sedno programu wyborczego i planowanych przez kandydata działań. W ramach sześciu wyróżnionych kategorii tematycznych związanych bezpośrednio z wyborami zidentyfikowano schematy, które najczęściej mają konotacje negatywne. Dominują metaforyczne nawiązania do choroby, braku woli czy zwierzęcia. Na tym tle pozytywnie odznaczają się jedynie metafory POLITYK TO BUDOWNICZY i POLITYK TO REPREZENTANT.

In contemporary digital publics, rhetoric and culture intertwine, shaping collective understanding and moral judgement. Taking the public accusations against Katherine Diez as its point of departure, this article explores the rhetorical dynamics of a public accusation through which communities articulate and enforce shared norms while simultaneously reconstituting their own identities. By tracing and mapping how the accusation emerged, circulated, and crystallized across platforms, the article examines how rhetorical participation and cultural meaning-making unfold collaboratively in a networked media ecology. Drawing on theories of narrative rhetoric, accusatory rhetoric and participatory communication, the article demonstrates how a single accusation becomes a site where participants negotiate authority, moral legitimacy, and identity. The article contributes to recent research on accusatory rhetoric and offers a method for delimiting an object of analysis within a networked media ecology.

Ancient Greek rhetoric gave rise to and contributed to the (initial) development of many terms that even today attract the interest of philosophers and rhetoricians round the globe. Among those terms is logos, perhaps most characteristically described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. But Aristotle is not the sole ancient Greek representative of rhetoric who considered the term. In this essay, I explore how selected ancient Greek figures—i.e. the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and a few others—understood logos in the context of rhetoric. I assert that, despite some differences, they essentially viewed the term similarly, as connected to discourse involving argumentation intended to exert influence for socio-political or philosophical purposes.

This article investigates the motivation informing President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s rhetoric regarding America’s lack of a direct military response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Employing Kenneth Burke’s pentad as its analytical lens, this study identifies how the president attempted to shape public opinion through his linguistic choices and selective interpretation of events. Biden’s rhetoric justifying the US’ non-military reaction to the conflict is found to reflect realism, and supports the claim that the US approach regarding the situation in Ukraine is an action policy. Furthermore, the results provide insight into the understanding of the working of the no-use-of-force rhetoric within the context of the still evolving post-Cold War world order.

W artykule podejmuje się problem uśmiechu jako perswazyjnego składnika komunikacji niewerbalnej. Problem usytuowany jest między klasyczną teorią retoryczną a współczesnymi badaniami nad emocjami i interakcją społeczną. Wskazuje się miejsce uśmiechu i jego rolę w konstruowaniu ethosu, pathosu oraz captatio benevolentiae, odwołując się do ujęć Arystotelesa, Cycerona i Kwintyliana, a także do studiów nad mimiką i ekspresją emocjonalną (m.in. Duchenne, Knapp). Autorka argumentuje, że uśmiech – tradycyjnie postrzegany jako gest spontaniczny – może być również świadomie wykorzystywanym narzędziem retorycznym, które wzmacnia wiarygodność mówcy, rezonans emocjonalny oraz poczucie relacyjnej bliskości z odbiorcą. Interdyscyplinarne ujęcie łączy perspektywy retoryczne, psychologiczne i neurobiologiczne, ukazując uśmiech jako mikro-strategię perswazji zakorzenioną zarówno w kategoriach etycznych, jak i afektywnych.

The following article is a rendering of the opening keynote speech given by Dr. V. Jo Hsu at the 2025 Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) Symposium that took place in Minneapolis, MN on October 17–18, 2025.

This article revisits the mid-century medical debate over the “treatment” of transsexualism in the U.S., summarily represented in the most cited essays on transsexualism at the time. The article leverages the stasis point of those medical debates—is transsexuality a product of the psyche or the soma?—as a singularly rich site for rhetorical inquiry arguing that this case demonstrates that stasis has both substance and a rhetorical form that determines the limits of what is accepted as a legitimate argument within any debate. The ultimate aim of this essay is twofold: one, to add to the rhetorical history of transsexuality with regard to medicalization and, two, to demonstrate how the decision of medical professionals to not allow sex-change surgery as a legitimate treatment to transsexual patients had much to do with the rhetorical association of site of malady/site of treatment and little to do with scientific evidence.

Existing research has explored the rhetoric surrounding women’s health, fertility, and motherhood, as well as the effect of medical discourse practices on patients’ understanding and decision-making in reproductive and other health contexts. I build on this work to examine the use and impact of common language surrounding pregnancy and miscarriage, especially for older mothers—particularly the terms advanced maternal age, blighted ovum, and expectant management. Drawing from rhetorical and autoethnographic methods, I argue that these terms function constitutively to shape sense-making about processes that otherwise exist only sub-clinically, and do so in ways that reify risk but also clearly demarcate the limitations of medical care. Broadly, this research contributes to our understanding of the ways that medical rhetoric shapes experience and understanding about reproductive health-related issues, and it also provides a foundation to more effectively communicate with pregnant women, and especially older mothers, about their care options.

Editors' Introduction to Volume 9 Issue 2

In this article, the author uses the rhetorical concept of techne, here understood as a repeated engagement involving mind and body, to understand eating disorder recovery. The article relies on posts from the subreddit r/fuckeatingdisorders and personal story to explain how the behaviors and mindsets described by the posts are considered techne, and how recovery itself is an exercise in learning and relearning. This learning and relearning, also seen as the development of techne, is connected to deeper ontological claims about what it means to live in a body and recover in said body.

Assessing the writing competence of pupils learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at primary school is associated with specific challenges because of learners’ limited language resources. This study investigates the extent to which characteristics of their texts trigger so-called halo effects. Halo effects are an assessment bias where the quality of one feature unintentionally influences the evaluation of other aspects. The study examines halo effects across nine aspects of text quality (communicative effect, level of detail, coherence, cohesion, complexity of syntax and grammar, correctness of syntax and grammar, vocabulary, orthography and punctuation), based on a random sample of narrative texts from a sixth-grade corpus. 200 pre-service teachers assessed four randomly assigned texts. Halo effects were calculated by comparison to expert ratings using multi-level regression analyses. Results show that orthography and vocabulary were the two main triggers of halo effects. Punctuation also triggered some halo effects, but to a smaller extent. The assessment of communicative effect, complexity and correctness of syntax and grammar was not determined by the corresponding text quality but dominated by other criteria. Results highlight the importance of being aware of halo effects when assessing young EFL learners’ texts and emphasise the need for suitable training measures. • Analysis of halo effects across nine aspects of text quality. • Random sample of narrative texts from a sixth-grade EFL corpus. • Orthography and vocabulary are the two main triggers of halo effects. • Punctuation also triggers halo effects but to a smaller extent. • Halo effects call for awareness and targeted training.

This study examined the hierarchical structure among second/foreign language (L2) writing subskills using a Hierarchical Diagnostic Classification Model (HDCM). A pool of 500 essays composed by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students was assessed by four experienced EFL teachers using the Empirically-derived Descriptor-based Diagnostic (EDD) checklist. Based on a literature review and the expertise of three content experts, several models were developed to reflect various hierarchical interactions among L2 writing subskills, including linear, divergent, convergent, independent, unstructured, mixed, and higher-order. The comparison of the models showed the presence of an unstructured interaction among L2 writing subskills, indicating that content is the foundational subskill for the mastery of vocabulary, grammar, organization, and mechanics. Higher mastery classes were also associated with higher educational levels, greater frequency of English use, and longer exposure to L2. Understanding the hierarchical relationships among L2 writing subskills can improve targeted instructional strategies and assessment practices. • A constrained version of existing DCMs is represented by hierarchical DCMs. • Models were developed to show hierarchical interactions among L2 writing subskills. • An unstructured interaction among L2 writing subskills was identified. • Higher mastery classes were associated with higher educational levels. • The classes were associated with greater English use and longer L2 exposure.

The increasing adoption of automated essay scoring (AES) in high-stakes educational contexts necessitates careful examination of potential biases within the systems. This study investigates how the demographic composition of training data influences fairness in AES systems developed from finetuned large language models (LLMs). Using the PERSUADE corpus of 26,000 student essays, we conducted a systematic analysis using demographically restricted training sets to isolate the impact of training data demographics on LLM-AES performance. Each demographically restricted training set comprised essays written by one racial/ethnic group. Four variants of a Longformer-based AES were developed: one trained on demographically balanced data and three trained on demographically restricted datasets. An initial analysis of the human ratings indicated that demographic factors significantly predict human essay scores (marginal R² = 0.125), a pattern that is paralleled in national writing assessment data. LLM-AES systems trained on demographically restricted data exhibited small systematic biases (marginal R² = 0.043). However, the LLM trained on balanced data showed minimal demographic bias, suggesting that representative training data can effectively prevent amplification of demographic disparities beyond those present in human ratings. These results highlight both the importance and limitations of training data diversity in achieving fair assessment outcomes. • 12.5% of variance in human essay ratings was explained by demographics. • We construct demographically restricted training sets to isolate bias. • Balanced training data minimized LLM-AES bias across demographic groups. • LLM-AES trained on demographically restricted data showed more bias.

The hybrid exchange project described here aims to facilitate intercultural learning and cultural awareness by promoting meaningful virtual and cultural interactions among students from universities in Kenya, Ireland, and Germany. We collected qualitative data from former participants, who engaged in virtual and in-person exchanges. Our study indicates that hybrid exchange programs effectively promote intercultural understanding, and personal and professional development in technical communication. The program's design, which includes structured activities and social exchanges, contributed to the successful achievement of these goals. Such approaches can serve as a model for improving virtual team dynamics in various sectors, applicable beyond educational contexts.

Video games are forms of multimodal technical communication, conveying complicated information about game goals, mechanics, game physics, and more, to the player in a way that usually feels integrated into the game itself. This article highlights ways that games use interaction to convey information to players, classifying the communicative elements in several popular games into C.S. Pierce's classes of sign (decoratives, indicatives, and informatives). This paper asserts that technical communicators can take cues from video games to design technical communication products that better meet contemporary users’ expectations of agency and interaction—allowing them to explore and discover on their own.

This study revisits Sam Dragga’s research on ethical decision-making in document design, updating it to reflect contemporary concerns. Our findings indicate that participants today perceive the document design scenarios as significantly more unethical than those in Dragga's original study, with heightened attention to accessibility, cultural sensitivity, and social justice. While Dragga's study emphasized concerns over the consequences of document design choices, our results suggest a shift in focus toward the writer's intent. Participants frequently judged deliberate manipulation as unethical, even in cases where no direct harm was evident. These findings highlight the evolving ethical priorities in technical communication and underscore the need for practitioners and educators to reassess and revise the field's guiding principles to align with contemporary values of inclusivity and social responsibility.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping technical communication, necessitating strategies to assess its impact. This article introduces a framework combining human-in-the-loop automation with a task-based approach for communication roles. Effective AI integration requires identifying and organizing key writing tasks to fit into automated workflows. The framework underscores the value of writing expertise and offers practical guidance for practitioners, scholars, and educators. By aligning AI tools with technical communication tasks, professionals can produce accurate and complex communication products. This approach highlights the essential role of human expertise in effective, AI-assisted writing.

This corpus-based study investigates the grammatical stance constructions in CEO statements within the annual reports of U.S. and Vietnamese banks from 2020 to 2022. The findings indicate that modality is the dominant stance type followed by attitudinal and epistemic stance markers. Both groups of bank leaders favor desire/intention/decision verbs with infinitive complement clauses, certainty/likelihood verbs controlling complement clauses, and volition/prediction modality. But variations exist in the specific stance devices employed to shape corporate image and engage with stakeholders. These findings provide insights into cross-cultural corporate discourse in the banking sector and have valuable implications for business writing and professional communication.

This study uses an online questionnaire survey to investigate Chinese social media users’ acceptance of firm-generated credibility-building posts (FGCPs) on Sina Weibo. The findings show that heuristic cues related to content (i.e., topics regarding competence, benevolence, and integrity) and source (i.e., firm nationality and industry types) along with the moderating role of topic, account, and platform familiarity cues significantly influence users’ acceptance level of such posts. After incorporating the insights gained from participants’ responses to open-ended questions in the questionnaire, this study concludes with practical recommendations for crafting effective FGCPs on social media platforms like Sina Weibo.

This study investigates the social media strategies that Chinese museums use in communicating on Weibo, focusing on the ways these museums engage with the public and the effectiveness of their online interactions. Combining grounded theory and content analysis, the authors analyze 319 posts from six major museums and 842 posts from 36 smaller museums. Their findings suggest that although museums effectively use social media for educational purposes, there is room for more interactive and diverse content to enhance public engagement. The study provides practical insights on how museums can optimize their social media strategies by emphasizing audience-centered communication and greater interactivity in order to foster deeper connections with the public.