Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons^™

Training Grammaticality: Can People Be Taught To Perceive The Singular ‘They’ As Grammatical?, Val Willham

Undergraduate Honors Theses

As the usage of personal pronouns other than he and she becomes more mainstream, debates about their usage have become more and more common. Many of the reasons discouraging their use are rooted in negative attitudes toward people who prefer to be referred to as such (Patev, et al 2019). However, prior research has also found that perceptions of singular gender-neutral pronouns like they/them as being grammatically confusing can be an obstacle toward their use, even by people who otherwise hold positive opinions towards transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) individuals (Patev, et al 2019). Given the role that language use …

Cross-Dialectal Vowel Mapping And Glide Perception, Abram Clear

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Broadening our understandings of how the perceptual system accounts for dialectal vowel variation, this research investigates the perceptual mapping of Appalachian English (AE) monophthongal [aɪ]. I explore this mapping through the secondary perception of palatal glides in hiatus sequences of monophthongal [aɪ.a]. Formant transitions from a high front vowel to a non-high, non-front vowel mimic the formant signature of a canonical [j], resulting in the perception of an acoustic glide (Hogoboom 2020). I ask if listeners may still perceive a glide when canonical formant transitions are absent. If participants map monophthongal [aɪ] to a high front position, they might perceive …

The Multifaceted Process Of Language Attrition, Ryanne Mikunda

Ramaley Celebration

The Multifaceted Process of Language Attrition

Ryanne Mikunda

Ethan Krase

This research project defines and examines the many factors that influence the process of language attrition, which is an individual's loss of skill in a language that is not caused by a medical condition, i.e., is non-pathological. To begin, this study offers a brief history of first and second language attrition to establish language attrition's role in both the fields of second language acquisition and minority language loss. This history also outlines the parameters under which language attrition is studied, and the required conditions that precede it. The most important …

Creating A Theoretical Framework To Underpin Discourse Assessment And Intervention In Aphasia, Lucy Dipper, Jane Marshall, Mary Boyle, Deborah Hersh, Nicola Botting, Madeline Cruice

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Discourse (a unit of language longer than a single sentence) is fundamental to everyday communication. People with aphasia (a language impairment occurring most frequently after stroke, or other brain damage) have communication difficulties which lead to less complete, less coherent, and less complex discourse. Although there are multiple reviews of discourse assessment and an emerging evidence base for discourse intervention, there is no unified theoretical framework to underpin this research. Instead, disparate theories are recruited to explain different aspects of discourse impairment, or symptoms are reported without a hypothesis about the cause. What is needed is a theoretical framework that …

Altered Speech: A Case-Study Of Identity-Driven Speech In A Dissociative Identity Disorder System, Sarah Domin

Scripps Senior Theses

The field of sociolinguistics has long been interested in how speech differs across groups. These studies have been focused on how demographic factors like class, race, and geographical region alter speech patterns. However, more recently, the agency of individuals to use language as a tool to construct a certain identity or persona has been highlighted (e.g., Podesva 2007; Eckert 1989; Eckert 2008). These studies are limited due to the nature of their methods, relying on either one individual with a limited scope of characteristics or on a larger group of people with many different variables at play other than identity. …

Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I present a way to effectively blend modern theories of language acquisition and the contemporary practice of teaching Latin. I intend to demonstrate that a curriculum is able to balance both traditional and innovative philosophies by adapting Second Language Acquisition Theory’s idealized way to learn a language to fit the realistic limitations of the classroom. I begin with a discussion of the history of language pedagogy, focusing on Latin’s influence on the study of language learning from antiquity to present. Next, I present the key topics in SLA and the practical implications of this research for today’s …

De-Centering The Monolingual: A Psychophysiological Study Of Heritage Speaker Language Processing, Christen N. Madsen Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Models of grammar, processing and acquisition are primarily built on evidence from monolinguals and adult learners of a second language. Heritage speakers, who are bilinguals of a societal minority language, acquire and use their heritage language in informal settings; but who live, work, and are educated in the societal majority language. The differences between heritage speakers and both monolinguals and adult second language learners are extensive: heritage speakers are not educated in the heritage language, their input is typically not from a prestige variety of the heritage language, and they are dominant in the majority language, using it more frequently …

Fresa Style In Mexico: Sociolinguistic Stereotypes And The Variability Of Social Meanings, Rebeca Martinez Gomez

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation examines the flexibility in the social meanings of sociolinguistic stereotypes and how linguistic and non-linguistic information affect these meanings. The investigation consists of four empirical studies surrounding the case of fresas in Mexico –members of the upper class that are perceived as using a unique linguistic style.

Study 1 investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics associated with the fresa stereotype. Through a qualitative analysis of 64 webpages and 3 performances of the style, it is shown that fresasare perceived as the counterpart of another construct, nacos,and that their linguistic style is linked to English due to …

The Power Of Prayer, Victoria Dawn Thompson

Capstone Collection

If words are arbitrary, how does prayer have power?” is the question of inquiry in this paper. An unobtrusive Content Analysis inquiry methodology was used to answer this question. The answer lies in the finding that words and thoughts are not the same thing, and our thoughts expand beyond the audible and visible. The implication for professional practice these findings present is that a deeper awareness of “Self” is needed to understand people’s miraculous way of resolving conflict via prayer.

The Reflection And Reification Of Racialized Language In Popular Media, Kelly E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This work highlights specific lexical items that have become racialized in specific contextual applications and tests how these words are cognitively processed. This work presents the results of a visual world (Huettig et al 2011) eye-tracking study designed to determine the perception and application of racialized (Coates 2011) adjectives. To objectively select the racialized adjectives used, I developed a corpus comprised of popular media sources, designed specifically to suit my research question. I collected publications from digital media sources such as Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Fortune by scraping articles featuring specific search terms from their websites. This experiment seeks …

Natural Language Processing Of Forum Data: Modeling Social Interaction And Performance In Stem Learning, Marissa Emory, Lucile Pitte

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Linguistic Expression And Gender: A Function Word Analysis Of Jane Austen’S Pride And Prejudice, Erica Corbiere

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

The current study investigates ten dimensions of female and male categories of speech, which focus on function words, as previously identified by Newman et al. (2008). Through the use of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count tool (using the LIWC2015 dictionary), these ten categories were analyzed in the dialogue of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Results were consistent with previous findings by Newman et al. (2008). Four of five previously identified categories as more often used by male speakers (numbers, words per sentence, prepositions, articles, and words greater than six letters) were used with an even greater difference between …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Language, Culture, And Self In Language Learning, Barbara Johnstone

Barbara Johnstone

No abstract provided.

Review Of Suzanne Romaine, The Language Of Children And Adolescents: The Acquisition Of Communicative Competence, Barbara Johnstone

Barbara Johnstone

No abstract provided.