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Articles 1 - 27 of 27

Full-Text Articles in Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

You Talk Like A Girl: Stereotypes About Women’S Language, Allison Fisher Apr 2021

You Talk Like A Girl: Stereotypes About Women’S Language, Allison Fisher

Honors College Theses

In her 1973 essay “Language and Woman’s Place,” linguist Robin Lakoff claimed that clear differences exist between the speech of women and men, and that these differences both reflect and perpetuate women’s powerlessness in society. Lakoff’s work became the basis for a substantial number of studies on gendered language since. Outside of academia, assumptions about the existence of “women’s language” are prevalent in popular advice books and manuals directed at women, who are advised to use or avoid certain linguistic features, including those identified by Lakoff nearly fifty years ago. These include the use of empty adjectives, tag questions, hedges, …

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The Lexiculture Papers: English Words And Culture, Stephen Chrisomalis Jan 2021

The Lexiculture Papers: English Words And Culture, Stephen Chrisomalis

Anthropology Faculty Research Publications

The Lexiculture Papers is a collection of scholarship on English words and culture. Each of the 62 chapters was originally authored by a student-scholar in the course, Language and Culture, at Wayne State University, between 2013 and 2020. Each chapter is a short social and historical description of a single English word in its cultural context, principally since 1800. Using a combination of historical linguistics, etymology, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis, the papers analyze English-speaking social life through the lens of specific words.

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Spanish From The "East Side" Of Las Vegas: Simplification Of Tense/Aspect Distinction In Ser And Estar In Spanish Heritage Speakers Of Sunrise Manor, Nathalie Martinez Jan 2021

Spanish From The "East Side" Of Las Vegas: Simplification Of Tense/Aspect Distinction In Ser And Estar In Spanish Heritage Speakers Of Sunrise Manor, Nathalie Martinez

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Spanish heritage speakers in the United States are a reflection of the influence of linguistic and sociolinguistic pressures that creates variation across linguistic generations. This exploratory investigation seeks to fill this gap of linguistic knowledge in the Spanish-speaking community of Las Vegas, Nevada through a sociolinguistic study of the process of simplification of the simple forms of the past tense in Spanish heritage speakers of Sunrise Manor (Clark County, Nevada, USA), locally known as the “East Side”. The investigation focuses on the tense-aspect semantics in the verbs ser and estar of 9 heritage speakers between the ages of 18 and …

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Sociolinguistics And Insider/Outsider Status In Hawai'i, Elissa M. Uithol Apr 2020

Sociolinguistics And Insider/Outsider Status In Hawai'i, Elissa M. Uithol

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

Prior to the rise of tourism in Hawai’i, the Hawaiian economy was largely driven by plantations. As labor was imported to work these plantations, a rich, multiethnic culture developed on the islands, producing a similarly diverse linguistic situation. What began as a pidgin blend of several languages for the purpose of communication between workers and supervisors has since developed into a language unique to the islands: Hawaiian Creole English (HCE). Social status in Hawai’i has long been influenced by a person’s manner of speech, as evidenced by elite Standard English (SE) schools founded to educate children of those in the …

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A Sociophonetic Analysis Of Islander Creole Rhotics, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos Jan 2019

A Sociophonetic Analysis Of Islander Creole Rhotics, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

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A Sociophonetic Analysis Of Islander Creole Rhotics, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos Jan 2019

A Sociophonetic Analysis Of Islander Creole Rhotics, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

This study uses a combination of phonetic predictors and sociolinguistic factors to examine the variable production of rhotics in an English-based Creole in the Island of Old Providence, Colombia. Speech data were collected from five informants by means of sociolinguistic interviews and other-speech elicitation tasks, while 328 Praat-annotated tokens were extracted from a transcribed corpus of approximately 5,700 words. Rhotic production was examined according to several acoustic correlates (i.e., formant frequencies and segmental duration) and linguistic (i.e., word position and stress) and social (i.e., sex) factors. Formant frequencies in the form of F3 and F2 revealed a post-alveolar production, while …

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Language Contact And Divergent Paths Of Variation: Bilingual Rhotics In Two Island Communities, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos Jan 2019

Language Contact And Divergent Paths Of Variation: Bilingual Rhotics In Two Island Communities, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

In the Caribbean Archipelago of San Andres, Colombia, Spanish coexists with an English-based creole known as Islander. This paper examines the outcomes of language contact in terms of the variable production of bilingual rhotics in two settings where contact with Spanish has taken place differently: the island of San Andres was declared a free-duty port in 1953, thus encouraging commercial expansion and greater contact with Continental Spanish, the immigrant language; on the other hand, Old Providence, its sister island, has far less day-to-day interaction with Spanish speakers, and as such Islander is still prevalent in most life aspects of native …

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Peaze Up! Adaptation, Innovation, And Variation In German Hip Hop Discourse, Matt Garley Oct 2018

Peaze Up! Adaptation, Innovation, And Variation In German Hip Hop Discourse, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

In this study, I investigate the stylistic use of various forms of the hip hop leave-taking peace in a 12.5-million-word corpus (2000-2011) of German-language Internet hip hop discussions. The English orthography is compared with a number of hybrid variants including, e.g., , , and . I analyze the distribution of these variants over time by comparison to use of the form in an American hip hop forum. I complement these results with a qualitative analysis of peace and its variants as situated in discourse, drawing a connection between linguistic features, discursive use, and corpus distribution. The discourse of German hip …

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Graphic Representations Of Grammatical Gender In Spanish Language Anarchist Publications, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos Aug 2018

Graphic Representations Of Grammatical Gender In Spanish Language Anarchist Publications, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos

Publications and Research

This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the suffixes -@, -x, -e and other orthographic innovations as transgressions to the genderedness of Spanish language. First I discuss the grammatical rules of expressing gender in Spanish and a summary of the ongoing debates concerning linguistic sexism and androcentrism in Spanish language. Then I present some examples of the gender neutral suffixes drawn from articles found in 3 “Do It Yourself” journals published online by three anarchist collectives in Latin America.

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Ethnolinguistic Convergence And Divergence Within Dyadic Communication, Anna E. Pitman Apr 2018

Ethnolinguistic Convergence And Divergence Within Dyadic Communication, Anna E. Pitman

Honors College Research

This study investigated just one dependent variable within communication: ethnicity. Ethnicity often influences language. The study examined interethnic communication behaviors through the lens of the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), as influenced by one of its offshoots, Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory (ELIT). Communication within CAT is given one of three labels—convergence, divergence, and maintenance. The study included four students at Harding University: two African American females, one Hispanic American female, and one Caucasian American female. The primary participant, an African American woman, had a recorded 20 minute conversation with each of the other three participants. Discussion questions provided were formulated to create …

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Language Attitudes In Algeria, Kamal Belmihoub Jan 2018

Language Attitudes In Algeria, Kamal Belmihoub

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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The Spanish Of The Archipelago Of San Andres, Colombia: A Comparative Variationist Study On Bilingual Rhotics, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos Jan 2018

The Spanish Of The Archipelago Of San Andres, Colombia: A Comparative Variationist Study On Bilingual Rhotics, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

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Spanish In Contact With Islander Creole, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos Oct 2017

Spanish In Contact With Islander Creole, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

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Cross Crossings Cautiously: Uses Of African American Vernacular English In American Literature, Emily Crnkovich Apr 2017

Cross Crossings Cautiously: Uses Of African American Vernacular English In American Literature, Emily Crnkovich

English Honors Projects

This project uses sociolinguistics to theorize the use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in literature across three time periods: the Antebellum era, the post-bellum/Reconstruction era, and the Harlem Renaissance. Different dialects of English encode different power structures, and in order to interrogate those power structures I track how white and black authors represent the language of African American characters on the page and how audiences interpret that language. I find that African American authors tend to embrace the variability and diversity of natural language better than their white counterparts, whose use of literary dialect often falls into essentialist clichés.

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Virtual Meatspace: Word Formation And Deformation In Cyberpunk Discussions, Matt Garley, Benjamin Slade Oct 2016

Virtual Meatspace: Word Formation And Deformation In Cyberpunk Discussions, Matt Garley, Benjamin Slade

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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Subject Pronoun Expression In Second Language Learners: A Corpus Study, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos Apr 2016

Subject Pronoun Expression In Second Language Learners: A Corpus Study, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

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Perceiving Spanish In Miami: The Interaction Of Dialect And National Labeling, Salvatore Callesano Mar 2015

Perceiving Spanish In Miami: The Interaction Of Dialect And National Labeling, Salvatore Callesano

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study implements a speech perception experiment that interrogates local perceptions of Spanish varieties in Miami. Participants (N=292) listened to recordings of three Spanish varieties (Peninsular, Highland Colombian, and Post-Castro Cuban) and were given background information about the speakers, including the parents’ country of origin. In certain cases, the parents’ national-origin label matched the country of origin of the speaker, but otherwise the background information and voices were mismatched. The manipulation distinguishes perceptions determined by bottom-up cues (dialect) from top-down ones (social information). Participants then rated each voice for a range of personal characteristics and answered hypothetical questions about …

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España Ante El Mundo: Spain's Colonial Language Policies In North Africa, Lotfi Sayahi Jan 2015

España Ante El Mundo: Spain's Colonial Language Policies In North Africa, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

During its presence in Northern Morocco and the Western Sahara, Spain lauded its colonial policies, and relations with the native populations in general, as being more successful than those of the other colonial power present in the region, France. While it is true that France’s educational policies were narrowly aimed at forming acquiescent elites of the Maghrebi societies, Spain’s policies in turn were severely conditioned by a hyper-awareness of existing ethno-religious divisions, a product of the prominence of religion in the historical relations between Iberia and the Maghreb. In this essay, I discuss the differences in Spain’s educational policies between …

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Multilingual Trends In A Globalized World (Book Review), Elizabeth M. Kissling Jan 2014

Multilingual Trends In A Globalized World (Book Review), Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

This book presents current trends in language education as reflections of and responses to globalization. The intended audience is a diverse group that includes students in linguistics and education, policy makers, educators, and activists. The main thrust of the book is to advocate for bilingual and multilingual education, positioning multilingualism as a resource rather than a problem

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Current Perspectives On Tunisian Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi Sep 2011

Current Perspectives On Tunisian Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

Despite its small size (63,170 sq miles) and a rather small population with a stable growth rate,2 Tunisia represents a rich sociolinguistic laboratory with a long history of bilingualism and language contact. The delicate position of Berber, the diglossic situation of Arabic and the increasing efforts for Arabization, the regional and social variation in Tunisian Arabic, the presence of French, and the gradual spread of English, among other closely-related topics, constitute the core themes of research within Tunisian sociolinguistics. Since the publication of R. M. Payne’s Language in Tunisia in 1983, no attempt has been made to reassess the situation …

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Realkeepen: Anglicisms In The German Hip-Hop Community, Matt Garley Jan 2010

Realkeepen: Anglicisms In The German Hip-Hop Community, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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Slavic Sociolinguistics In North America: Lineage And Leading Edge, Mark Richard Lauersdorf Jan 2009

Slavic Sociolinguistics In North America: Lineage And Leading Edge, Mark Richard Lauersdorf

Linguistics Faculty Publications

This article provides a general overview of North American research in Slavic sociolinguistics from the beginnings of the field at the start of the 1960s up to the present day. The work of North American scholars published in a selection of journals, series, and special collections, as well as in monographs and dissertations, is reviewed to illustrate the research trends and the overall coverage of languages and sociolinguistic subfields as Slavic sociolinguistics developed and matured in a North American context. This study is intended to serve as a historical backdrop for the new research presented in this volume, and it …

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Introduction: Selected Proceedings Of The Second Workshop On Spanish Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi, Maurice Westmoreland Jan 2005

Introduction: Selected Proceedings Of The Second Workshop On Spanish Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi, Maurice Westmoreland

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

This introduction to the Selected Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics includes descriptions of the papers chosen for the volume and acknowledgments.

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Consonantal Variation Of Spanish In Northern Morocco, Ruth Scipione, Lotfi Sayahi Jan 2005

Consonantal Variation Of Spanish In Northern Morocco, Ruth Scipione, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

In former Spanish Morocco, many educated speakers are able to draw upon various phonological systems such as French, Moroccan Arabic, and Modern Standard Arabic in order to pronounce Spanish sounds. However, although the speakers of this study are highly proficient in Spanish, there are still some segmental features that set them apart from a native Spanish speaker. These features include the failure to produce the fricative allophones of bilabial, dental, and velar stops the failure to distinguish between the simple and multiple vibrant trill, and difficulties in producing the palatal nasal. While the Spanish of these Northern Moroccans seems to …

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Introduction: Selected Proceedings Of The First Workshop On Spanish Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi Jan 2003

Introduction: Selected Proceedings Of The First Workshop On Spanish Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

This introduction to the Selected Proceedings of the First Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics includes the background for the conference, descriptions of the papers chosen for the volume, acknowledgments, and references.

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Penguins Can't Fly And Women Don't Count: Language And Thought, Janet M. Bing Jun 1992

Penguins Can't Fly And Women Don't Count: Language And Thought, Janet M. Bing

English Faculty Publications

Many people object to sexist and racist language partly because they assume that language not only reflects, but somehow affects attitudes. A one-to-one relationship between language and thought seems obvious to those who never question it, but the issue of whether language influences thought and behavior has been a matter of debate in philosophy even before Berkeley and Wittgenstein. Literary critics, particularly those who call themselves deconstructionists, are still debating to what extent language constructs reality.

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Aboriginal Australians Speak : An Introduction To Australian Aboriginal Linguistics, Eric G. Vaszolyi Jan 1976

Aboriginal Australians Speak : An Introduction To Australian Aboriginal Linguistics, Eric G. Vaszolyi

Research outputs pre 2011

It has duly been recognized that Aboriginal society in Australia is far from homogeneous. People and groups referred to as part-Aborigines, urban Aborigines, fringe-dwellers, rural Aborigines, traditionally oriented or tribal Aborigines in the outback and so on display considerable diversity in terms of culture, identity, aspirations and the like. Language is no exception. Some Aboriginal people (mainly in cities or towns and some rural areas) would speak as good an English as any non-Aboriginal Australian and often much better: indeed, their only language, their. 'mother tongue' is English. In contrast, in the outback one can still meet Aborigines who speak …

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