Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Background Noise On The Communicative Experience Of People With Mild To Moderate Aphasia: A Qualitative Study, Riley Robertson Hegewald

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how retelling stories with a variety different background noise conditions affected the communicative experiences of people with aphasia (PWA). Participants included 11 adults with mild to moderate aphasia and 11 age- and gender-matched controls. Participants participated in a semi-structured interview immediately following the experimental measure where they were asked open-ended questions regarding their experience retelling stories and how those experiences related to their everyday lives. Results revealed three themes related to how participants responded to communicating in noise: (a) cognitive reactions, (b) emotional reactions, and (c) social reactions. The findings suggest that PWA exert more effort when …

Effects Of Background Noise On The Spoken Language Of Young And Older Adults During Narrative Discourse, Erin Lecheminant

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how different background noise conditions affected the spoken language production of young (18-25) and older (60-85) adults when performing a story retell task. Participants included 10 female and 10 male young adult (YA) participants, as well as 10 female and 10 male older adult (OA) participants. Participants retold stories in a silent baseline and five background noise conditions (conversation, monologue, phone call, cocktail, pink noise). Speech fluency and language production measures (cohesive and coherent utterances, lexical-phonological errors, grammatically correct words, Moving Average Type Token Ratio (MATTR), speech rate, and disfluent words) were compared between groups and across …

Formations Of The Mayan Diaspora In Guatemala And The Us: Land, Migration, And Linguistic Ideologies As The Markers Of Diasporic Separation., Daniel Antipov

Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the phenomenon of diaspora formation among the indigenous Guatemalan population as a major identity marker in the new Guatemalan immigrants in the US. This work provides: definition of diaspora, its historical frames, juxtaposition of the self and the Other, and separation and differentiation of the indigenous languages

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 …

"You Will Be Evaluated According To The Following": Language, Race, And International Students At A U.S. Predominantly White Institution, Anusha Anand

Theses and Dissertations

As sociolinguists have long noted, racial hierarchies in the United States have been maintained through a hegemonic standard language ideology that assumes white middle-class ways of speaking as “standard” and the linguistic marginalization of non-whites ways of speaking as “nonstandard” (Bonfiglio 2010). This phenomenon is well-documented in studies on the perceptions of racialized international TAs (ITAs), which show that the racializing ideologies about ITAs’ language held by predominantly white, Western undergraduates impact their perception of ITAs’ comprehensibility and teaching ability (Staples, Kang, & Wittner 2014). Other studies on international students have shown that the discrimination that they face is driven …

Exploring Genetic Counselors’ Experiences, Language, And Discussion Of Consanguinity In Clinical Practice: A Multinational Perspective, Romy Isabel Fawaz

Theses and Dissertations

Consanguinity, defined as the degree of relationship between closely related individuals, is a widespread historical practice that is not specific to any one religion, population, or region of the world. Genetic counselors regularly ask whether a reproductive couple is consanguineous as part of the review of family history and risk assessment. Couples who are in consanguineous relationship may be subject to negative attitudes and stigma, potentially due to cultural differences and norms at a population level and these attitudes may interplay with questions, answers, and discussions around consanguinity. We hypothesized that genetic counselors may experience some level of discomfort discussing …

An Other Word For It Is Us, Aca Carle

Theses and Dissertations

I am contemplating language and animacy; their enmeshment with each other and their connective fibers between beings. My art follows from the belief that animacy is inherent in matter and that language is inherent in animacy.

“Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world.” (Abramb 56)

An Analysis Of The Relation Between Vocabulary And Emotion Regulation: Toward Developing Problem Identification Tools For The School Setting, Ariella Gettenberg

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research suggests that the ability to describe one’s own emotions significantly impacts their overall emotional adjustment. The current study aimed to determine whether the relation between language and emotional adjustment extends beyond emotion vocabulary, to general vocabulary. Participants (n = 181) were administered measures of emotion vocabulary, general vocabulary, and emotional maladjustment. Results indicated that a general vocabulary measure cannot replace an emotional maladjustment measure but may serve as a proxy for emotion vocabulary in predicting mental health outcomes. Statistical analyses revealed that general and emotion vocabulary constructs are most closely related to mental health outcomes in the specific …