Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons^™

“4, 24”, And 4c”: The Shared Knowledge Of Hair Terminology And Cultural Pride Among Black Women., Aliya J. Claiborne

Student Research Submissions

This paper aims to explain the significance of hairstyles and terms used by black women and seeks to explore how these choices can sway the negative perceptions about black womanhood. Past research has shown that what is “just hair” to others serves as a statement piece and an overall representation of black women. By observing and recording naturally occurring conversations in black hair salons and conducting interviews with black women, I investigated the following question: How do black women use specific terminology to discuss their hair while also constructing identity and reflecting on societal views? I conclude that black women’s …

"And I / Am The Arrow": The Narrative, Personae Construction, And Language Ideology Of Confessional Poets' Identity Performance, Madison Fuchs

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This thesis argues for consideration of linguistic features in service of raising the postmodern confessionalist poet identity as an utterance and an act of loyalty to performance. The embodiment of the confessionalist identity, attributed to the features used to adhere to the confessional mode, is realized through the invention of confessional personae. These confessional personae merge the responsibilities of the speaker and the narrator to convey a pseudo-autobiographical utterance to a designated audience. In this thesis, I analyze a sequence of poems that either possess taboo subjects or utilize linguistic functions, like indexicality and audience design, that mark its mode. …

The Movie Is On!: Pragmatics Of The Video Joker In Who Killed Captain Alex?, Hunter Hulett

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The film Who Killed Captain Alex? (WKCA) is a Ugandan film that provides an opportunity to examine the use of pragmatic and specifically deictic features to study the manipulation of borders between the film and reality. A commentator called the Video Joker (VJ) is the film’s deictic center, constantly destabilizing deictic relations and orienting the internal and external pragmatics of the film around themself. As the film’s ultimate pragmatic force, they occupy a position blurring diegesis and non-diegesis due to originating as real-time film commentators before being edited into the text. In this unique position, they shift the deixis’s organization …

We Can Do This / Juntos Sí Podemos: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Government-Sponsored Covid-19 Public Service Announcements (Psas) In English And Spanish, Katalina R. Peterson

Scripps Senior Theses

Communication inequities are known to negatively impact people from socioeconomically and linguistically disadvantaged backgrounds during public health crises (Gomez-Aguinaga et al., 2021). In the United States, Hispanics—especially those who speak Spanish—have been among the communities most disproportionately affected by COVID-19 (National Center for Health Statistics, 2022). The pandemic has underscored the importance of understanding the linguistic and discursive strategies implemented by institutions entrusted with disseminating public health information to reach diverse audiences, especially the most vulnerable. This paper analyzes the linguistic practices used to create public service announcements (PSA) produced in English and Spanish by health agencies at both the …

Language Ideologies In Deep South Korea: Voices Of Jeollanamdo English Teachers, Ian Schneider

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Language ideologies serve as shared beliefs and key frames that link language and society, mediating both macro-level social forces and micro-level interactions. Through this lens, this thesis compares the ideological perspectives and experiences of expatriate and local English teachers working in secondary-level schools in the rural province of Jeollanamdo, South Korea. Through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews, this study argues for complexity and nuance in how language teachers from distinct backgrounds perceive and negotiate dominant English language ideologies in Korean society. Moreover, these ideological perspectives differ between teachers of local and expatriate backgrounds, or teachers working in urban and rural …

‘A Category Of Their Own’: Quantitative Methods In The Use Of Pile-Sort Data In Perceptual Dialectology, Zachary Ty Gill

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Mississippi Gulf Coast Creoles perceive language differences in their home area. A pile-sort task was carried out in which respondents were given stacks of cards with local communities written on them and instructed to stack together the regions where people “talk the same.” Once the piles were made, the fieldworker discussed their sortings with the respondents. The stacks were analyzed by means of a hierarchal agglomerative cluster analysis and non-parametric multidimensional scaling with k-means cluster analysis overlays to extract the perceived dialect areas. The groupings reveal that respondent strategies are based …

Entre La Ciudad Y La Provincia VariacióN SociolingüÍStica En MáLaga, Marina Bonilla Conejo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

En esta tesis se presenta una investigación sociolingüística sobre el español de la provincia de Málaga, y, específicamente, se realiza una comparación entre la variedad hablada en la capital y dos localidades cercanas a la misma: Rincón de la Victoria y Vélez-Málaga. La finalidad de este estudio es determinar el empleo del sonido interdental fricativo [θ] y la articulación de la /s/ en posición de coda en las tres áreas geográficas mencionadas y si, a su vez, existe progresivamente una convergencia hacia el estándar nacional, o si, por el contrario, los participantes hacen uso del estándar regional, de acuerdo con …

Investigating Media Influence On Language Change In Low-Level Sociolinguistic Variables, Keaton Strawn

Honors Projects

This survey investigates the contentious issue of media influence on language change in variationist sociolinguistics, focusing on low-level variables – a distinction created to partition phonological and morphosyntactic variables into a category that emphasizes their deep level in the linguistic system. Works by influential researchers and well-respected names in the field are put in dialogue to determine what evidence for and against media influence is compelling and where gaps exist, incorporating work on global linguistic variants and phonological variant diffusion in places like Glasgow per Jane-Stuart Smith’s controversial study. This discussion draws conclusions when possible, and ultimately comments on the …

Finding Their Chrysanthemum: Linguistic Representation In Children's Literature, Marielena Zajac

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Children in America today struggle with finding themselves in the books they read due to societal expectations. From an early age, children are dictated on the correct way to speak and write in “American,” which can leave children and their home languages feeling unseen and dismissed. To help further the conversation and promotion of linguistic diversity in American society, this capstone analyzes dialectal representation in children’s books, with a heavy focus on attitudinal linguistic principles rather than prescriptive mechanics. The secondary research explores current literature and resources that discuss literacy acquisition in adolescents, trends in dialects in America, and childhood …

Using Sociolinguistics And Literary Studies To Understand Code-Switching Within Works By Louise Erdrich, Bruno Santic

Undergraduate Theses

There exists a multitude of definitions and concepts that describe the movement between and from one linguistic code to the next, commonly referred to as code-switching. Each definition given differs not only between fields of research but also within said fields of research, making it incredibly difficult to create one unified definition for code-switching. The two most popular fields of research that have extensively studied code-switching are sociolinguistics and literature/literary studies, with both fields having basic tenets of study that create different nuances in how code-switching is described by researchers in each respective field of study. One of the key …

Un Estudio Sociolingüistíco Del Español De Hombres Con Descendencia Mexicana Que Se Identifican Como Homosexuales, Víctor Bulfrano Estanislao

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Ciertos rasgos lingüísticos específicos se asocian con hablantes de diferentes grupos. Los investigadores sociolingüísticos han identificado una serie de características lingüísticas como marcadores del habla homosexual en inglés y español; el presente estudio examina si estas características están presentes en el español producido por hombres homosexuales bilingües. Los hablantes examinados son hombres mexicanos de entre 18 y 30 años que viven en Chicago o los suburbios circundantes, son bilingües y se identifican como homosexuales. Los participantes completaron una serie de tareas: un cuestionario del contexto lingüístico, una narración oral y una entrevista sociolingüística grabada con el investigador. Se examinaron los …

Ambiguous Appalachianness: A Linguistic And Perceptual Investigation Into Arc-Labeled Pennsylvania Counties, Crissandra J. George

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The Appalachian Regional Commission (2022) designates 52 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties as Appalachia, excluding only the southeast portion of the state. Matthew Ferrence, in Appalachia North, states that his "home is sometimes called Appalachia, sometimes Rust Belt, other times Midwest, even though very few who live there would accept any of those labels as correct" (xi). This ambiguous and fluid identity is due to the shaping, forming, and changing of Pennsylvania’s role within society from a founding colony to a thriving state with industry, unselfishly spoiling others, to the grounds of converging identities (Ferrence xi). This ambiguous identity makes …

Fórmulas De Tratamiento En Ocaña, Colombia, Liceth Bohorquez Leon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The paradigm of forms of address has been a recurrent topic of study from a sociolinguistic perspective. Voseo, tuteo and ustedeo are the forms of address used in the Hispanic world. Voseo expreses confidence and familiarity, while tuteo same as voseo, denotes confidence and familiarity. Finally, ustedeo has a connotation of formality, respect and distance. This thesis aims to examine how forms of address are used in Ocaña, Colombia, and the relationship between their use and the social factors that affect the choice of pronoun. To achieve this aim, a sociolinguistic survey was applied to 88 participants. The …

Phonetic Contrast In New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels: Language Contact, Variation, And Change, Chaya R. Nove

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the acoustic correlates of the length contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish (HY) peripheral vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/, and compares them across four generations of native speakers for evidence of change over time. HY vowel tokens are also compared to English vowels produced by the New York-born speakers to investigate the influence of language contact on observed changes. Additionally, the degree to which individual speakers orient towards or away from the Hasidic community is quantified via an ethnographically informed survey to examine its correlation with /u/-fronting, a sound change that is widespread in the non-Hasidic English-speaking …

Variable Subject Pronoun Expression In The Spanish Of Londombia: A Study Of Language Contact In Canada, Angelica Hernandez Constantin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

According to the extended projection principle, subjects are mandatory in tensed clauses (Chomsky 1982). Languages, however, vary in their use of null and overt subjects. Languages like English, which are [-null subject] languages, require overt subjects (1a), rendering phrases with null subjects ungrammatical (1b), while languages like Spanish, which are [+ null subject] languages, allow for both overt (2a) and null subjects (2b).

(1) a. She wants bread.

b. *Ø wants bread.

(2) a. Ella quiere pan.

b. Ø quiere pan.

“(She) wants bread”

In Spanish the variable use of Spanish subject personal pronouns (SPPs) has been studied in monolingual …

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, …

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.

Perspectivas Sociolingüísticas Y Culturales En La Conservación Lingüística Del Wayuunaiki, Andrés Gabriel Espejel Fuentes

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Indigenous languages all over the world are endangered. The wayuunaiki language, spoken by wayuu Colombian ancestral communities, is not the exception. Even though the wayuunaiki is not endangered per se, does not mean that it is not at risk. Along this paper you will understand what the former statement means, and how this reality derives from a predetermined system yielded by a colonial epistemology. There is a succinct overview of the wayuu communities’ history so that we can truly understand how deep and well-hidden are the power discourses that might become a threat to the preservation of ancestral languages. …

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 …

Dominican Spanish In New York : Language Attitudes And Variation Of Final /ɾ/ And /L/, Gabriel Valentín Guadalupe

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the growing body of research on sociolinguistic variation of final liquids in Caribbean Spanish in a language and dialectal contact situation. To achieve that objective, this study analyzes the Spanish of Dominicans in the New York Metropolitan Area. The dissertation has two main goals. The first is to describe language attitudes among Dominicans in New York. Data extracted from questionnaires are analyzed to show how Dominicans evaluate their varieties of Spanish and those of others. Additionally, the dissertation looks at whether inter- and intra-group interactions affect language attitudes. The second goal …

Investigating Language Variation And Change In Appalachian Dialects: The Case Of The Perfective Done, Julia Horton, Anna Muraco

Honors Thesis

The perfective done (“She done tended the garden”) is an often-overlooked grammatical feature specific to relatively few dialects of American English, most prominently seen in Appalachian dialects. While the perfective done has been described in detail by linguists since the 1970s, and there has been a demonstrated decline in the frequency of use of the perfective done among Appalachian dialect speakers in the past fifty years, there is very little existing scholarship that investigates an empirical basis for the claim that this long-term variation in the use of done can be considered a true language change-in-progress. The present research reviews …

Bolstering Hyde’S Basic French Conversations I & Ii As A Resource For Missouri French Dialect Learning, Henry Greenstein

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

This paper features an analysis of the linguistic features of the Missouri French dialect, such as vocabulary, syntax, and phonology, and specifically how they are presented by Hyde in her Basic French Conversations I & II: Lessons 1-8. The ultimate goal is to bolster Hyde’s textbook’s effectiveness as a dialect teaching tool by providing additional context from other Missouri French academic works, studies of separate French dialects such as Louisiana French, and personal research. The project begins with an overview of the sparse linguistic and cultural inquiry that preceded Hyde’s textbook, then recaps the circumstances that led to Hyde …

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 …

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. …

SociolingüÍStica Urbana, SociolingüÍStica Rural : El Caso De La RegióN Del Cibao, RepúBlica Dominicana, Juanita M. Reyes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Resumen

Dialect Divisions In The Treasure State, Noah I. Rummel-Lindig

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Sociolinguistic research claims that there is a common dialect of English shared by all states between the Great Plains and Pacific coast. This dialect area is referred to as the West and is defined by a lack of easily discernable speech characteristics. (Labov et al. 2006). Researchers, especially those residing or hailing from the West, have objected to this presumed homogeneity and have sought to document variation in the dialects of English on a state or regional scale. Research on dialects within Montana is limited. Bar-el et al.’s (2017) perceptual dialect map tasks revealed that many Montanans believe that there …

“Home Is More Than Just A Place”: Oral Personal Narrative Storytelling In Central Appalachia, Brandon Jent

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This project seeks a linguistic understanding of oral personal narrative storytelling in Central Appalachia, particularly as it manifests in Eastern Kentucky, with aims of providing insight into the Appalachian storyteller trope (e.g., Montgomery 1998). Structural and discursive elements of oral personal narrative were identified and positioned within their sociocultural context through discourse analysis and narrative studies. Data were collected from story circles, a methodology first implemented in cultural and community organizing spaces in the South and throughout Appalachia (Roadside Theater 2014, Junebug Productions n.d.). The collected stories were transcribed and analyzed through a discourse analysis framework that combines discourse pragmatics, …

A Mixed Methods Analysis Of Corpus Data From Reddit Discussions Of "Gay Voice", Sara Elizabeth Mulliner

Dissertations and Theses

In the last decade, there have been a number of public discussions about "gay voice" and "sounding gay." These two phrases often serve as a shorthand for the belief that a listener can determine the sexuality of a speaker based on phonetic qualities found in a speaker's vocal output. However, these expressions are more accurately described as "catch-all" terms for speech that may contain features associated with non-gender conforming stances and personae. Notions about gender and sexuality could be intertwined in complicated ways in this language ideology. Investigating popular discussions of gay-sounding voices could provide information on what people are …

Mood Choice And Context Availability: A Variationist Approach To The Subjunctive In New York City Spanish, Joanna Birnbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the variable treatment of the Subjunctive in Spanish in New York City. Both Mood choice (Subjunctive versus Indicative) and Linguistic context availability (the presence and absence of Subjunctive-inducing contexts in speech) are studied. Data are from sociolinguistic interviews with 142 informants, stratified with respect to immigrant generation, gender, age, socio-economic status, national origin, etc. Subjunctive rates are analyzed, at the macro-level, in nine linguistic contexts and, at the micro-level, in the four most popular contexts (Modal, Protasis Si, Temporal, and Apodosis Si). Results of bivariate Pearson correlations and Chi-square tests reveal consistent usage patterns of …

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

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.