Digital Commons Network^™

From Antiracism To Abolition: The Role Of University Culture Centers In Black Students' Academic Identities And Language, Kristin Demint Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on focus group, interview, and participant-observer data collected as part of this IRB-approved [19.177] qualitative research project, this dissertation provides insights about how Black American students develop academic identities through coursework and extracurricular involvement in a Black culture center on the campus of a historically white institution (HWI). I apply the lens of “abolitionist education” (Love) to explore the languaging that students and faculty in the Black culture center do to create community and racial uplift in a type of institution where racial identity historically has been marginalized and obscured—and where, the collected data indicate, such occlusion continues despite …

Dialogic Language As Digital Ethos: An Analysis Of Language Used In The Anti-Vaccine Conversation On Twitter, Jeffery A. Sternstein

Theses and Dissertations

Many scholars attribute social media’s influence with a rise in distrust of expert advice. These scholars have suggested that people are turning to non-experts for advice because those non-experts seem to be more willing to openly discuss medical issues while also providing empathy, as opposed to the experts who have been trained to speak with detached authority. For this dissertation, I have done a study to find evidence supporting these theories. To do this, I looked at the Twitter conversation which has been focusing on anti-vaccination themes. Drawing on tweets from within that conversation, I conducted an inter-rater reliability test …

Expository Language Sample Assessment Of Spanish- English Bilingual Middle-School Children, Rachel Ann Eggert

Theses and Dissertations

Because of the possible bias and limitations in using standardized assessments, it is advantageous to assess school-age children who are bilingual using additional descriptive assessments, including language sampling. Choosing expository discourse language sampling to assess this population is beneficial because it is the standard form of discourse in a classroom setting and provides a more complex language sample. Using expository discourse language sampling, this study assesses the oral expository discourse language skills of Spanish- English bilingual middle school students who have learned English as a second language. The study found that expository discourse was a feasible way to assess the …

Italian As A Heritage Language Spoken In The Us, Maria Teresa Bonfatti Sabbioni

Theses and Dissertations

The present study focuses on Italian as a heritage language spoken in the US by individuals bilingual in Italian and English, exposed to both language since birth. The subjects of the study are the members of six family nuclei, for a total of seven children as heritage speakers of Italian and as input receivers, and 6 parents as native speakers of Standard Italian and as input providers, living in different cities in Wisconsin and Illinois. The study specifically investigates the following structures: a) Gender assignment and gender agreement between determiner, noun and adjective; b) Auxiliary selection in the Italian compound …

The Information-Seeking Strategies Of Humanities Scholars Using Resources In Languages Other Than English, Carol Sabbar

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE INFORMATION-SEEKING STRATEGIES OF HUMANITIES SCHOLARS

USING RESOURCES IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH

by

Carol Sabbar

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016

Under the Supervision of Dr. Iris Xie

This dissertation explores the information-seeking strategies used by scholars in the humanities who rely on resources in languages other than English. It investigates not only the strategies they choose but also the shifts that they make among strategies and the role that language, culture, and geography play in the information-seeking context. The study used purposive sampling to engage 40 human subjects, all of whom are post-doctoral humanities scholars based in the …

Meaning In Motion, Kara Hendrickson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis essay and accompanying exhibition examine the capacity of interactive art to stage situations for participants to explore embodiment. In presenting the four-part interactive suite "Body Language" by Nathaniel Stern, the exhibition invites viewers to engage with digital projections that track and respond to movement by producing animated text and spoken utterances. Through the juxtaposition of motion performed by the viewer’s physical body with computer-generated words and speech, "Body Language" explores the complex ways in which the body and language depend upon each other to create and communicate meaning. This essay also proposes that the gallery uses its power …

Using Fluency Training To Enhance The Conjugation Of Spanish Verbs, Emily Ann Smedlund

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored whether a treatment package that included fluency training, Precision Teaching, multiple discrimination, matching to sample, and cumulative practice procedures could teach students to correctly translate noun clauses such as "April cried" from English to Spanish and correctly conjugate the Spanish verb in the clauses even though the conjugation had not been directly trained. The verbs were in the past tense (preterit) and drawn from three classes such that verb inflection in Spanish was identical for verbs within a class and with only a few exceptions different for verbs from different classes. Three students who could not correctly …