Vol 18, No 1 (1999)

The newspaper headline presents itself as a linguistic axis in the communicative
interaction between the speaker (the writer of the headline) and the hearer (the reader
thereof) against the background of the speech act theory. As such, the meaning of the
headline is determined by certain variables, i.a. syntactic and contextual variables,
and its inherent communicative components.
The universal and multidimensional reality, including the rich context of man, entity
and event, features as the source of information on which the newspaper headline
reports.
Knowledge of the speech act theory can empower the subeditor with a means of inference
regarding the intention with and discourse strategies of the newspaper headline,
ensuring maximal cognition and perlocution by the reader.
In short: by using the speech act apparatus analytically, the headline writer can rest
assured that he informs the reader optimally; that he, though it be journalistically
unethical, can even manipulate him.

The first democratic elections in the history of South Africa have taken place, the
Government of National Unity has been installed, and as the country at last starts
moving towards establishing a non-racial society based on a constitution that embodies
equal rights for every person, the need to establish an equitable and effective higher
education system becomes a top priority.
This requires a transformation process that will necessitate the management of diversity,
and organisational changes within all our institutions of higher learning

In the quest to establish communication as a critical management function both
literature and research have stressed the importance of effective communication as a
prerequisites to the success of various programmes including service quality. Effective
internal communication, leadership and employee issues seem to be three generic
aspects of critical importance in the potential success of any organisation. This
article will attempt to give academic insight into the link between service quality
initiatives and these three aspects and will attempt to underline the importance thereof
with current research results.

With the forthcoming second election on our doorstep, the quality of arguing and
debating comes into sharp focus. This aspect has been neglected to a large extend in
the past. Therefore this study gives a qualitative analysis of the Mandela versus De
Klerk trend setting debate – a first for South Africa – as a step towards understanding
and evaluating the processes involved in debating. In this paper the focus falls on the
verbal strategies and tactics. This paper not only gives a descriptive analysis of the
strategies and tactics that have been used, but where necessary, gives an evaluation
of the use of them. With this information as basis, some recommendations are proposed
to improve the use of strategies and tactics. These recommendations are made in the
hope that it will strengthen the quality of debating in general, in order to enrich
democracy and allow citizens to make well informed decisions in this year’s election.

A few weeks ago we were the fortunate recipients of Clicking by Faith Popcorn, proclaimed
by Fortune Magazine to be “the Nostradamus of Marketing”. The subtitle of the book is
“16 Trends to future fit your life, your work, and your business”. Nostradamus, here and
now telling us about our future?
As part of our strategy consulting work, we also read through a variety of magazines,
journals and e-zines covering a wide range of disciplines, such as business, economics,
politics and technology. Perhaps being more attuned to the trends we picked up
because of Clicking, it dawned on us that almost all of the articles illustrated in some
form or another a real shift in social patterns. This awareness raised a concern that
perhaps what Clicking was doing was simply illustrating the surface of a much more
substantial “social revolution”. Could it be that these trends are nothing more than
the symptoms of a much more profound change?