The Bradac lecture honors the life and scholarship of James J. Bradac James J. Bradac, a distinguished professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and an internationally recognized authority on interpersonal communication who died May 25, 2004 He had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) in April 1987, and despite only having the ability to communicate through advanced technology via eye-blink during his last decade, he continued to teach, co-edit the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, and conduct research. As Howard Giles his co-editor of JLSP wrote “The prognosis was a maximum of 6 years, so he defied all the odds with his tenacious will to live and work. For his own reflections on living and working with this disease, see his article entitled, “It’s all in your head,” published in the International Communication Association’s (ICA) Newsletter, November 1998. Indeed, he was, as usual, at his desk in UCSB working (with the assistance of one of his devoted caregivers) the previous day. He was months shy of his 60th birthday and lived in Santa Barbara with, and is survived by, his beloved wife Emilda Jaccard who cared for him all these years devotedly.

Bradac came to UCSB in 1980 after 10 years at the University of Iowa and, thereafter, chaired the communication department (1984-86) and assisted in inaugurating its now renowned graduate program. He was among the most influential scholars in his field, regarded as having a brilliant mind and this being reflected in his prodigious writings. Besides being an incisive theoretician, a longstanding interest was reflected programmatically over the years in how speakers’ use of various language features could affect the impressions listeners attribute to them. His diverse interests in interpersonal communication covered such topics as politeness, power, deception, self-disclosures and compliance-gaining, to name but a few. As he himself wrote, “I am interested in consequences of language variation…My assumption in all of this work has been that language is attributionally rich, that it carries a large amount of social psychological information about speakers and writers”. … Bradac touched all he met by his striking demeanor, vibrant personality, and self-professed noble Czech blood; he often (with the appropriate accent) referred to himself as “Count von Bradach”! He will be sorely missed as a model of humanity and professionalism, and has left us an enormously profound and scholarly legacy, “

The Inaugural James J. Bradac Memorial Lecture

On Friday October 8, 2004, John Bowers, professor emeritus, University of Colorado and co-author with Jim and John Courtright of “Lexical variations in intensity, immediacy, and diversity: An axiomatic theory and causal model” presented the first James J. Bradac Annual Memorial Lecture titled "Old Eyes Take a New Look at Three of Bradac's Favorite Variables.” The lecture was published as Old Eyes Take a New Look at Bradac's Favorite Variables Journal of Language and Social Psychology 2006 25: 7-24.

The Second Annual James J. Bradac Memorial Lecture

On October 21, 2005 Professor Ellen Ryan of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario presented the second annual Bradac Lecture, “Finding a New Voice: Writing through Health Adversity.” Professor Ryan also works in the area of language attitudes and Jim and Ellen co-authored a journal special issue while she was at UCSB. Ellen Ryan is Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences and Professor of Gerontology and an Associate Member of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University.
The lecture will be published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

The Third Annual James J. Bradac Memorial Lecture

Please save October 27th, 4:00-5:00pm, Life Science Building, Room 1001, for the 3rd Annual James J. Bradac Memorial Lecture sponsored by the Communication Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Charles Berger from the University of California, Davis, will be presenting a lecture titled "A Tale of Two Communication Modes: When Rational and Experiental Processing Systems Encounter Statistical and Anecdotal Depictions of Threat."

Charles R. Berger, Ph.D. , received his BS in Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication from Michigan State University. Dr. Berger has conducted a long-term research program focused on the role cognitive planning and social interaction processes play in the production of messages. In addition, he is concerned with the ways in which information about risk influences individuals judgments of their vulnerability to threatening phenomena and is well known for his pioneering work in uncertainty reduction theory. Professor Berger was co-author with Jim Bradac of the 1982 book Language and Social Knowledge: Uncertainty in Interpersonal Relations which was awarded the International Communication Association Fellows Book Award in 2002, an award which recognizes those books that have made a substantial contribution to the scholarship of the communication field and have stood the test of time. Dr. Berger has edited Human Communication Research and more recently Communication Research. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and he has served as President of the Association. Professor Berger has taught courses concerned with communication and cognitive processes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.