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Theses and Dissertations

English language

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Interpreting Standard Usage Empirically, Jacob F. Frandsen Mar 2014

Interpreting Standard Usage Empirically, Jacob F. Frandsen

Theses and Dissertations

Writers, editors, and everyday language users look to dictionaries, style guides, usage guides, and other published works to help inform their language decisions. They want to know what is Standard English and what is not. Commentators have been prescribing and proscribing certain usages for centuries; however, their advice has traditionally been based on the subjective opinions of the authors. Recent works have analyzed usage by relying wholly or partly on statistical and descriptive data rather than traditional opinion alone; however, no work has presented statistical usage data in a user-friendly and consistent format. This study presents a statistically based methodology …


"At The Coal-Face Of Standardization": Uncovering The Role Of Copy Editors In Standardizing The English Language, Jonathon R. Owen Mar 2013

"At The Coal-Face Of Standardization": Uncovering The Role Of Copy Editors In Standardizing The English Language, Jonathon R. Owen

Theses and Dissertations

Though much work has been done on the definition of Standard English and on the standardization process, little attention has been paid to the role of copy editors in that process. Editors comprise a class of craft professionals employed to remove errors from texts and make them more consistent, but when editors speak about editors at all, they generally rely on anecdotes rather than hard data about what editors do. Since formal written English is often used as a baseline for determining what is standard, and since corpora of published writing are increasingly used to research questions of usage, it …


The Correlation Of Arab Ells' Academic Reading Fluency In Arabic And English, Jonathon C. Mccollum Jul 2012

The Correlation Of Arab Ells' Academic Reading Fluency In Arabic And English, Jonathon C. Mccollum

Theses and Dissertations

Educational and economic developments in the Persian Gulf have increased the need for academic English reading fluency in the rising generation of college-bound students. A discussion of the literature on the linguistic properties of Arabic diglossia and orthography affirms the challenge that Arabs confront in L1 literacy. Because of the difficulties encountered in Arabic literacy, the transfer of L1 skills to L2 emerges as a salient issue for English instruction in the Arab world. The following study of Arab ELLs' academic reading fluency in Arabic and English investigates a hypothesized positive correlation between L1 and L2 reading abilities. Quantitative and …


Pronouns Of Address In The Book Of Mormon, Lyle L. Fletcher Jan 1988

Pronouns Of Address In The Book Of Mormon, Lyle L. Fletcher

Theses and Dissertations

The first section of this thesis is a diachronic examination of second person pronouns in English with special focus on variations in usage such as pronominal shifting between thou (and related forms) and ye (and related forms), as well as an examination of the second person pronoun usage in the English Bible (especially the King James Version) with a similar focus. From the thirteenth century on variations in usage have been common.

The second section is a synchronic examination of second person pronouns as used by Joseph Smith and some of his contemporaries, followed by an analysis of these pronouns …


Attitudes And Attained Esl Proficiency Among First Generation Swedish Mormon Immigrants, Cecilia Nihlen Jan 1981

Attitudes And Attained Esl Proficiency Among First Generation Swedish Mormon Immigrants, Cecilia Nihlen

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis project, the relationship between attitudes toward target and native culture groups and attained ESL proficiency among immigrants was evaluated. The subjects were thirty adult native Swedes, all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had spent an average of 29 years in the United States. Fourteen were members of a Swedish-speaking branch, while sixteen were members of English-speaking wards. Significant differences were found in immigrants' attitudes toward the culture groups. High English proficiency related positively with a more positive attitude toward the target culture group. Those demonstrating high proficiency viewed the general native …