Digital Commons Network^™

The Definite Article System In L1-English L2-Spanish Learners, Diego Ardura

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Previous studies on the acquisition of definite plurals in Child and Second Language Acquisition have found strong evidence on how transfer can affect the L2-acquisition of articles. Nevertheless, these studies presented some limitations. First, they failed to consider other variables that could interfere with transfer in the acquisition of the article system. And second, the methodology used to test the participants’ implicit knowledge of article system was very similar in all studies (Truth-Value Judgment Task). In order to fill these two gaps in the literature, the present study uses a listening comprehension task to test how the mass/count distinction …

The Use Of Multimedia Material In Teaching Chinese As A Second Language And Pedagogical Implications, Zhongyuan Williams

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The use of Multimedia materials has been widely accepted as an useful and effective tool in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Many studies and researchers have examined multimedia material’s effectiveness from a number of aspects, including four skills of language learning: listening, speaking, reading (including vocabulary comprehension) and writing. However, the effectiveness of multimedia material from the aspect of L2 grammar comprehension hasn’t been well explored.

This study examines the effectiveness of multimedia material in teaching second language grammar comprehension among beginning and intermediate-level Chinese learners. In particular, it investigates the relative efficacy of three different modes used …

Estructuras Desbordantes En Silvina Ocampo. Invenciones Del Recuerdo Como Poema Largo, Claudia Marcela Páez Lotero

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The subject matter of this work is the long poem entitled Invenciones del recuerdo, written by Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) between 1960 and 1988, a period of time which covers the majority of the developmental stages of this author’s literary career. The hypothesis that this study intends to prove is that Invenciones del recuerdo, by using the form of the long poem, a literary form of the Latin American Modernity, exceeds its own material limits in order to occupy other texts. Through its extensibility, comparable to a river that overflows its banks, Silvina Ocampo’s long poem establishes a dialogue with …

Factors Which Influence Key Entry Speed On Hard And Soft Keyboards: Experience, Eye Behaviors And Finger Movements, Seckin Celik

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Soft keyboards have become ubiquitous, especially with the introduction of the iPad. This study aims to determine for experienced touch typists whether there are characteristics of soft QWERTY keyboards that can make them easier to use and why those characteristics provide an advantage. Two characteristics would appear to be of central importance. First, hard keyboards provide home row positioning information that is not as easily provided by soft keyboards. Second, hard keyboards also provide auditory and tactile feedback when a key is depressed, something not generally provided with soft keyboards.

In order to test the hypothesis that the absence of …

Protesting Between The Lines: Carmen Martín Gaite's Frustration In Writing Vis-À-Vis 1950s Francoist Censorship, Emily Rose Spring

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis considered the impact of censorship and authoritarian rule by dictator Francisco Franco on two novels by 20^th century Spanish author Carmen Martín Gaite: El balneario, (1955) and Entre visillos (1958). The two works utilize a “discourse of censorship” to express complaints about life as a young woman deprived of fulfilling relationships and self-determination. These novels were analyzed through a search for subtexts and hidden meanings to argue for their status as texts that contain a subversive message.

This investigation was accomplished through historical research on Francoist censorship and repression; use of Michel Foucault’s theories about panopticism; …

Intersecting Symbols In Indigenous American And African Material Culture: Diffusion Or Independent Invention And Who Decides?, Donna L. Moody

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Native American and African American material culture of mid-19^thcentury to present day appear to hold evidence for a more ancient spiritual and cultural relationship between these two diverse peoples. There is evidence of strikingly similar, and in some instances, identical, pre-Columbian (before 1492) symbols from Africa and North America which allows us to examine questions of diffusion or independent invention.

This thesis provides an examination of cultural practices and spiritual beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of North America and Africa through symbols incorporated in the material culture of each, focusing primarily on textiles and it provides an exploration …

José Martí Pedagogo: Educación Y Modernidad, William P. Kearney

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

El objeto de estudio de este trabajo de investigación es la visión de la educación del autor cubano José Martí presente en los escritos de los últimos años de su vida, efectivamente de 1882 a su muerte en 1895. El punto de partida del estudio es la afirmación del crítico uruguayo Ángel Rama (1926-1983) de que la preocupación principal de Martí durante esa época era la incorporación de la modernidad en América Latina. La hipótesis que se intenta probar en este trabajo es que esa mirada hacia la modernidad asume inflexiones particulares aplicadas a la visión educativa del autor. Para …

The Terrorist Doppelganger: Somoza And The Sandinistas, Thomas A. Hohenstein

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis makes two arguments. First, that the analytical lens of terrorism is useful to understanding the modern state because it pits the state against its antithesis. Additionally, the discursive contest between the state and terrorists is best understood within a gendered framework. Second, the Sandinista Revolution did not revolutionize the discourse the Nicaraguan state used to legitimate itself, thus limiting the movement’s revolutionary nature.

A Comparative Study Of The Effectiveness Of Input-Based Activities And Output-Based Activities On The Acquisition Of Chinese Language, Xiaolei Zhang

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper describes an experiment that compares the effectiveness of input-based activities and the effectiveness of meaning-focused output-based activities on L2 Chinese learners’ ability to comprehend and to produce the Chinese adverb “才 cai”. Input-based activities provide learners with the opportunity to be exposed and work with the target language input. During input-based activities, learners are expected to turn the target language they read or hear into the linguistic data they understand. With the assistance of such input-based activities, L2 learners are likely to develop an implicit language system to internalize the target language and further acquire the language. Output-based …

Dialects Into Films----The Element Of “Dialect” In Chinese Films, Shun Yao

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

In recent years, using dialects in Chinese films has become more and more popular. By observing this phenomenon and investigating its history, I find out three functions that dialect has in cinema: severing as fun maker, indicating the identity of the speaker, helping to describe the speaker’s characteristics.

In order to understand why dialects have these functions in cinema, semiotic analysis and discourse analysis are employed in finding the reasons.

Towards A Neopragmatist Understanding Of Translation: A Cross-Disciplinary And Cross-Medial Survey, Steffani Scheer

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Maria Tymoczko (2005) highlights four research trajectories that are likely to be at the forefront of translation studies in coming decades: the attempt to define translation, the internationalization of translation, the impact of technology and globalization on translation theory, and the contextualization of translation studies relative to other areas of academic inquiry. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the first research trajectory. I hope to enrich current developments in translation studies by offering a new way of conceptualizing translation based upon pragmatist philosophy and its particular approach to language and epistemology. Specifically I build upon certain passages …

Corporeal Thresholds, Caroline Valites

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This text is a written articulation of my MFA thesis show entitled Corporeal Thresholds. It aims to share the poignant moments that inspired the work and contextualizes my practice within the framework of metaphysics and the phenomenology of perception. Specific topics include the body and the visceral, doubt and certainty, love and loss, and the defining spaces that influence our lives.

The Plural Forms Of Personal Pronouns In Modern Chinese, Baoying Qiu

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

There are four major patterns of the plural forms of personal pronouns in Modern Chinese, which are: Same Wording, Suffixation (Multisyllabic and Monosyllabic Suffixations), Sound Combination (Coda Suffix and New Wording), and Tonal Changes.

Same Wording was the original plural pattern since the singular form was also used as plural form in Old Chinese. Suffixation was already appeared in Middle Chinese. Author suspects that Suffixation was a concept inspired by non-Han languages such as the Buddhist Sanskrit. Each Chinese dialect chose a way to represent this concept based on its dialectal characteristic, thus there are many dialects in China. For …

Linguistic And Cultural Contact Phenomena In A Mandarin Class In The U.S., Dan Zhang

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study explores English language pragmatic phenomena in the Mandarin speech of a native Chinese language teacher as she interacts with American learners of Mandarin in a university classroom setting. I document and analyze her use of English backchannel 'mm hmm' in interactions that are otherwise in Mandarin, and I document and analyze the transfer of American interaction rituals and English syntax to her Mandarin language interactions with students. In this context, her patterns of communication both reflect and constitute cultural worlds. These pragmatic transfers to her Mandarin reflect her cultural and communicative assimilation to America, but they also serve …

Locating Environmental Justice Populations: A Method For Identifying Vulnerable Populations In Massachusetts, Zachary S. Silverman

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Environmental Justice is an issue that has been relevant in the mind of the federal government for the past 18 years. Within society, the goal of Environmental Justice looks to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable populations through the siting of environmentally hazardous sites. Instead of over burdening specific vulnerable populations, fair distribution of hazards throughout the population is desired.

Although there is a large body of research that study the location and impact of hazardous sites on the surrounding communities, there are few existing models which look to locate vulnerable populations through the use of quantitative data. Of the existing …

The Praxis Of Horst Hoheisel: The Countermonument In An Expanded Field, Juan Felipe Hernandez

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper examines the work of German artist Horst Hoheisel in Latin-America. I open the conversation by including Hoheisel’s provocative participation in the 2005 memory debates in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here, I introduce the nature of Hoheisel’s reasoning and the dialectical self-reflectiveness that is at work in his artifacts. In each project, I look for the way in which Hoheisel lays down the “memorialistic substance” of a specific site together with the self-critical rationality that characterizes his creation. The second part of this essay attempts to construct the theoretical parameters for the expansion of the definition of the countermonument. This …

"Madame Ma Chère Fille": The Performance Of Motherhood In The Correspondence Of Madame De Sévigné, Marie-Thérèse Of Austria, And Joséphine Bonaparte To Their Daughters, Meagen E. Moreland

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper conducts a critical comparison of the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné, Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria and Joséphine Bonaparte. These women instruct their daughters through a writerly exchange that implements a remarkably similar use of language that indicates a “performance” of her maternal role, meant to implement a personal or political agenda that requires the daughter’s acknowledgement and reciprocation. This project explores theories of speech acts and subjectivity to conduct a literary analysis of the construction of the maternal figure in a historical context, its representation in the letters of each woman with their daughters, the motivations for a …

Ana Roqué Y El Discurso De Emancipación Femenina Burgués Decimonónico Disfrazado En La Ficción, Sonia N. Batlle

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

La situación que atravesaba Puerto Rico a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX alteraba la rutina de los puertorriqueños. La isla pasó de ser colonia de España a ser territorio de los Estados Unidos. Entonces la identidad del puertorriqueño se convirtió en un proyecto nacional. Los cambios económicos surgidos bajo el gobierno estadounidense, dieron pie para que la mujer comenzara a reflexionar sobre su papel social y se organizaran. Se creó una división entre la mujer obrera quien se enfocaba en las luchas laborales y la burguesa quien aspiraba a tener un lugar de igualdad al lado del …

What's In A Letter?, Aaron J. Schein

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Sentiment analysis is a burgeoning field in natural language processing used to extract and categorize opinion in evaluative documents. We look at recommendation letters, which pose unique challenges to standard sentiment analysis systems. Our dataset is eighteen letters from applications to UMass Worcester Memorial Medical Center’s residency program in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Given a small dataset, we develop a method intended for use by domain experts to systematically explore their intuitions about the topical make-up of documents on which they make critical decisions. By leveraging WordNet and the WordNet Propagation algorithm, the method allows a user to develop topic seed …

O Oceano Por Onde Passa O Navio Negreiro, Diana M. Menasche

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

A tese apresenta uma leitura aprofundada do poema “O Navio Negreiro”, de Castro Alves, valorizando os ricos aspectos imagéticos, narrativos e sonoros presentes na obra, assim como trazendo à luz o caráter holográfico de sua estrutura. Estudam-se as metáforas empregadas, as mudanças na atitude e no posicionamento geográfico do eu-lírico, bem como os recursos estilísticos que propiciam o encantamento do falar em voz alta característico do poema, no contexto de sua organicidade.

This thesis presents an in-depth reading of the poem “O Navio Negreiro,” written by Castro Alves. It analyzes the complex metaphors, narrative strategies and sound effects employed by …

Decolonizing Texts: A Performance Autoethnography, Hari Stephen Kumar

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

I write performance autoethnography as a methodological project committed to evoking embodied and lived experience in academic texts, using performance writing to decolonize academic knowledge production. Through a fragmented itinerary across continents and ethnicities, across religions and languages, across academic and vocational careers, I speak from the everyday spaces in between supposedly stable cultural identities involving race, ethnicity, class, gendered norms, to name a few. I write against colonizing practices which police the racist, sexist, and xenophobic cultural politics that produce and validate particular identities. I write from the intersections of my own living experiences within and against those cultural …

Eugenothenics: The Literary Connection Between Domesticity And Eugenics, Caleb J. True

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This is an analysis of the connection between the domestic science and eugenics. While it is made clear by historians such as Megan Elias and Kathy Cooke that there is ample connection between eugenics and euthenics, there has not been as comprehensive an analysis of the direct connections between domestic science and eugenics. Close examination of literature from the domestic science movement reveals the shared goals of domestic science and eugenics. The domestic science movement was also a necessary precursor to the euthenics movement, not simply a “re-envisioning” of home economics by Ellen Richards. When Richards died, her euthenic ideals …

Situated Architecture In The Digital Age: Adaptation Of A Textile Mill In Holyoke, Massachusetts, Dorcas A. Brooks

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The City of Holyoke, Massachusetts is one of many aging, industrial cities striving to revitalize its economy based on the promise of increased digital connectivity and clean energy resources. But how do you renovate 19th century mills to meet the demands of the information age? This architectural study explores the potential impact of sensing technologies and information networks on the definition and function of buildings in the 21st century. It explores the changes that have taken place in industrial architecture since 1850 and argues for an architecture that supports local relationships and environmental awareness. The author explores the industrial history …

Meat And Meanings: Adult-Onset Hunters’ Cultural Discourses Of The Hunt, Tovar Cerulli

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study is a description and interpretation of talk about hunting. The study is based on data gathered from in-depth interviews with twenty-four hunters in the United States who did not become hunters until adulthood. A single overarching research question guides the study: How do people create and use discourses of hunting? The study is situated within the ethnography of communication research program and, more specifically, within the framework of cultural discourse analysis. The study employs cultural discourse analysis methods and concepts to describe and develop interpretations of how participants render hunting symbolically meaningful, and of what beliefs and values …

Bad Blood: The Southern Family In The Work Of William Faulkner, Neil T. Phillips

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis concerns the Southern family in the work of William Faulkner, specifically The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and Go Down, Moses.

Language Movement Museum And Library, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Mohammad J. Shahadat

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The project aims to restore the cultural and historical richness of Bengali nation in urban scale and preserve the historical site of the area which contains some glorious memories of our Language Movement. To pass the history to new generation and to establish our cultural richness, a Language Movement Museum and a Library are proposed to be designed in the Shaheed Minar (Martyr Monument) Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This museum and library will represent the movement of 21 February, 1952 that depicts our love for the mother tongue which is an unprecedented event for the whole world.

Geo-Graphies: Performing City Space And Economic Possibility And The Storyteller Of Cairo, Miriam C. Maynard-Ford

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Albert Cossery, known as the ‘story teller of Cairo’, weaves tales of the marginalized living in a city of the global South whose geographies have been impacted by colonial and neocolonial legacy. Cairo’s city and economic spaces have often been theorized as determined and dominated by the forces of neoliberalism, an approach that obscures the experience of residents who contest and evade these forces daily. For example, in “Les Couleurs de l’infamie”, the main character is a robin-hood archetype that revels in observing the resourcefulness of the city’s residents. ‘Alternative’ occupations and spatial uses abound: an unemployed philosopher teaches secretly …

Subversive Representations Of Education In Francophone Novels Of The Colonial Maghreb, Whitney Bevill

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Much work exploring alterity and hybridity in the Maghreb ignores representations of education which confront seminal formative experiences, specifically education. French colonial education was problematic because it granted access to the colonizer’s culture, yet it also created a rupture in self-identity for Maghrebi students. In this thesis, I interrogate the literary representations of sites and sources of education by analyzing how these representations discuss the tension between formal French education and informal Maghrebi education.

My thesis begins with a historical overview of colonial education in the Maghreb. I then discuss literary methods of negotiating identity, contrasting Arab and Western autobiography …

Writing With The Grain: A Multitextual Analysis Of Kaidan Botandoro, William D. Wood

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

As a text Botandōrō demonstrates bibliographic codes that straddle the border between modern and pre-modern literature. Wakabayashi would present his work as the fruit of his technique of ‘photographing language’ that, by extension, would provide closer and more direct access to the interiority of “author.” In his prologue he presented his shorthand method as a technique that would come to represent the new standard of modern writing. As they created a new system for transcribing language, stenographers were wrestling with the philosophical nature and limitations of language in spoken and written form, and their discoveries and accomplishments would provide a …

An End To The “Vichy/Algeria Syndrome”?: Negotiating Traumatic Pasts In The French Republic, Justin W. Silvestri

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Within the past few years, France has exhibited a changing relationship in regards to its memory of its collaborationist and colonial past. The controversies of the loi du 23 février 2005 and the 2007 Guy Môquet Commemoration displayed a new openness to discuss and evaluate traumatic pasts. Public debate during the two controversies focused on the difficult process of how to incorporate these traumatic events into the national narrative. Furthermore, this process of negotiation has opened up a vibrant discussion over what parties in France possess the authority and the right to construct the nation’s history. Medical metaphors of neurosis …