Applied Linguistics Commons^™

Dialogicity In Written Specialised Genres, Editado Por Luz Gil-Salom Y Carmen Soler-Monreal (2014)., David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

Review of Dialogicity in Written Specialised Genres, edited by Luz Gil-Salom and Carmen Soler-Monreal.

Hilltops And Marches: A Cultural And Semiotic Analysis Of Pepsi And Coca-Cola Advertising Strategies, Samuel Herrmann

Senior Honors Theses

The Coca-Cola Company released an advertisement in 1971 that had powerful themes of unity in a time of significant discord around the world. Almost 50 years later, the Pepsi Company released an advertisement that aimed to accomplish similar values of unity and commonality when the world seemed at odds with itself. While both advertisements sought to convey similar messages, the reception could not have been more different. Coca-Cola has experienced continued praise for their famous “Hilltop” advertisement while Pepsi was forced to take their advertisement down within 24 hours of its release. This paper utilizes semiotic theory to analyze the ...

The Effectiveness Of Code-Switching In Evangelism: The Use Of African American Vernacular English By Standard English Speakers, Cameron Joseph Myers

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

Abstract

This paper evaluates the use of code-switching as a linguistic and pragmatic tool to build interpersonal relationships between members of the African American minority group and the Standard English “white majority” for the purpose to evangelize the Christian faith. Using the Shannon-Weaver (Shannon & Weaver, 1999) communication model as a foundation, the research suggests that changing the message is the best way to overcome barriers in interpersonal communication (namely evangelistic communication). The research varies in use of code-switching as a pragmatic tool for this message change. Ariffin (2009), Jørgensen (1998), and Madsen (2004) give positive evidence for code-switching, while Anderson ...

The Effects Of Code-Mixing On Second Language Development, Aimee K. Spice

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

Second language development is an important topic of discussion in an increasingly multilingual world. This study aims to examine and detail research on the effects of code-mixing (CM) on second language development, answering how CM facilitates or constrains second language acquisition. Peer-reviewed articles on the topic published between 2013 and 2018 were examined and synthesized. Language learners/multilinguals answered questionnaires about their views on CM and second language acquisition, and a language teacher was interviewed regarding use of L1 in the language classroom and CM as a pedagogical tool. This study found that CM can be a beneficial tool for ...

La Revalorisation Économique Des Langues Ivoiriennes Et Leur Enseignement A L'École, Ettien Koffi

Linguistic Portfolios

Jadis considérée comme un handicap au développement économique, voici que grâce à la Théorie des Jeux, la pluralité linguistique s’avère maintenant comme une aubaine financière pour la Côte d’Ivoire et les états francophones d’Afrique sub-saharienne. La Côte d’Ivoire pourrait bénéficier d’une manne financière d’environ 7,196 milliards de francs CFA ($1.5 million) annuellement rien qu’en planifiant ses ressources linguistiques. La langue maternelle est une richesse économique intarissable et non polluante pourvu qu’on sache l’exploiter. Nous démontrons dans cet article sur la base de données statistiques fiables qu’à partir d ...

Gradience In Coda Cluster Devoicing In A Central Minnesota English Idiolect, Ettien Koffi, Andrea Simmonds

Linguistic Portfolios

When voiced segments occur in coda clusters, they undergo varying degrees of devoicing. We investigate this phenomenon in the speech of the second author, a native speaker of American English from Central Minnesota. The coda clusters under investigation occur in the lexical items transcribed phonemically as /θɪŋz/ (things repeated twice), /spunz/ (spoons), and /wɛnz.de/ (Wednesday), /slæbz/ (slabs), /kɪdz/ (kids),and /bægz/ (bags). Acoustic measurements and the 40/60 threshold are used in tandem to determine the gradience of devoicing that take place in the coda clusters /ŋz/, /nz/, /bz/, /dz/, and /gz/.

The Acoustic Correlates Of Brazilian Portuguese-Accented English Vowels, Ettien Koffi, Lillian Duarte Ribeiro

Linguistic Portfolios

This study is an acoustic phonetic analysis of Brazilian Portuguese English (BPE) vowels produced by seven Brazilian students. The research was carried out in the Spring of 2016 when the participants, mostly exchange students, were in their last semester of study in the United States after an average length of residency (LOR) of 19.71 months at St. Cloud State University. They were recorded producing the 11 vowel phonemes of American English. The main findings are that four vowels in particular – [ ɪ, æ, ʌ, ʊ] – interfere with intelligibility the most. The participants’ inability to produce these vowels intelligibly has a ...

Number Resolution Rule Agreement In Arabic Writers L2 English Compositions, Jon Cotner

Linguistic Portfolios

The proper agreement of phi-features (person, number, and gender) between a noun/noun phrase and a verb phrase within a grammatical language system is the realm of resolution rules; these resolution rules are the syntactic parameters that regulate this agreement. The initial study, of which this paper highlights a portion, examines L2 English compositions written by native Arabic speakers and investigates whether these students transfer phi-feature agreement patterns from their L1 to their L2. The findings discussed in this paper are focused on agreement errors in the application of number resolution rules, and the majority of these number agreement errors ...

Differential Analysis Of Lexical Pitch In Accent And Tone Languages, Ettien Koffi

Linguistic Portfolios

According to the Critical Band Theory, the auditory perception of F0 data is the same for all human beings. However, when F0 signals are transferred through the auditory cortex to specialized areas of the brain, they are perceived and processed differently, depending on whether the language is tonal or accentual. In tone languages, F0 data appears to be processed in Heschl’s gyrus (Schneider 2005, Bendor 2012), whereas in accent languages, it appears to be processed in the planum temporale (Binder et al. 1996). Furthermore, in accent languages, F0 signals are computed on a nominal scale, but in tone languages ...

Acoustic Correlates Of Lexical Stress In Central Minnesota English, Ettien Koffi, Grace Mertz

Linguistic Portfolios

In 1958, Fry published a very influential paper detailing the interaction between F0, duration, and intensity in the perception of lexical stress. His main finding was that that hearers of American English rely more on F0 than on the other correlates in the perception of lexical stress. He ranked these three correlates as follows: F0 > Duration > Intensity. However, subsequent research by other phoneticians has yielded a variety of rankings: F0 > Intensity > Duration, Duration > Intensity > F0, Intensity > F0 > Duration, Intensity > Duration > F0, etc. The goal of this paper is to investigate how speakers of Central Minnesota English encode and rank the ...

Sibling Acoustics: Phonetic Measurements Of The Vowels Produced By Three Brothers Who "Sound Alike", Ettien Koffi, James Lyons

Linguistic Portfolios

This paper seeks to apply an acoustic phonetic methodology to measure and account for the impressionistic assessment of the speech of three brothers whose relatives, friends, and acquaintances say “they sound exactly alike.” The current investigation is limited to the pronunciation of the 11 phonemic monophthong vowels in American English. The psychoacoustic instruments of masking and Just Noticeable Difference (JND) are used to verify if the brothers “sound alike” acoustically. The correlates of the vowels that are investigated in this study are F0, F1, F2, F3, intensity, and duration.

The Acoustic Correlates Of Alveolar Fricatives In The Idiolect Of A Northern Minnesota Female, Ettien Koffi, Michel Lopez-Backstrom

Linguistic Portfolios

This study investigates the acoustic correlates of the sibilant alveolar fricatives [s] and [z] in the first author’s idiolect. The corpus consists of 32 words containing 13 word-initial [s]s, six wordmedial [s]s, and 13 word-final [z]s. The 32 words are extracted from two texts read in running speech. All in all, 160 tokens are measured acoustically (32 fricatives x 5 correlates). The correlates in question are Center of Gravity, intensity, F2, duration, and voicing attributes. The findings indicate that only Center of Gravity and duration are significant correlates for differentiating between the alveolar fricatives [s] and ...

The Intelligibility Of The Onset Cluster [Pl] And The Coda Cluster [Ƞz] In Arabic-Accented English, Ettien Koffi, Phillip A. Klopfenstein

Linguistic Portfolios

This paper analyzes two specific instances of English consonant-cluster production among native Arabic speakers of English. We analyze the onset cluster /pl/ and the coda cluster /ŋz/. These clusters are of interest because the first segment in each cluster does not exist in Arabic but the second is shared by both Arabic and English. Five Arabic-speaking subjects were selected based on a number of shared features, including a shared city of origin, beginning their acquisition of English after the critical period, and having spent no more than one year in an English-speaking environment at the time of the recordings. The ...

A Corpus Analysis Of The Syntactic Distributions Of The Verb 'Get' : Meanings And Usages, Barbara Kennedy, Ettien Koffi, Glynis Perschke

Linguistic Portfolios

This paper is a corpus analysis of the syntactic distributions of . We examine the 198 most common usages of based on Corpus of American Soap Operas (CASO) databanks, a subset of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). We also provide 12 subcategorization frames to account for all the syntactic environments in which occurs in the database. This comprehensive investigation confirms that is unique among all English verbs by the sheer number of complements that it selects. Its varied uses and its frequency of occurrence in everyday English make a hard verb to master for native and non-native speakers alike ...

A Just Noticeable Difference (Jnd) Reanalysis Of Fry's Original Acoustic Correlates Of Stress In American English, Ettien Koffi

Linguistic Portfolios

In 1955, 1958, and 1965, Fry published three very influential papers that have revolutionized phoneticians’ understanding of the acoustic correlates of lexical stress. Fry does not only show that F0, duration, intensity, and vowel quality interact, but he also ranks them relative to each other for their individual contribution to the perception of stress. His experiments led him to rank the four correlates as follows: F0 > Duration > Intensity > Vowel Quality. I review Fry’s papers and highlight his main findings. I re-analyze his raw data on duration and intensity and re-interpret them in light of Just Noticeable Differences (JND) thresholds ...

Editor's Prologue Volume 7, Issue 1, Ettien Koffi

Linguistic Portfolios

No abstract provided.

The Language Agenda In Post-Colonial African Music, Quintina Carter-Enyi

Africana Digital Ethnography Project

For post-colonial African musicians, decolonization became an imperative. For musicians, singing in one’s native language was no longer merely creative expression, it took on a more significant role in decolonizing the African continent. This was also the case for composers, particularly those who traveled abroad to study in conservatories and universities in the United Kingdom or the United States of America.

In Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o makes a case for African literature to be written in African languages. He also points out that singers and musicians have resisted mental colonization by retaining indigenous musical practices and ...

Supporting Digital Problem Solving, Tyler Frank

Presentations and Publications

This presentation draws from findings based on a three-year research project with the goal of achieving greater digital equity for adult learners in libraries. This project addresses digital problem solving, a unique task adults face in today’s age of ubiquitous technology use. Marginalized and under-resourced digital users face challenges of access not only to high-speed Internet but also to getting the support they need for their digital learning and problem solving. Libraries are uniquely positioned to support these learners. However, this calls for techniques and tools to assist digital users in accomplishing their goals as they continue to develop ...

Advancing Digital Equity In Public Libraries:
 Assessing Library Patrons’ Problem Solving In Technology Rich Environments, Gloria Jacobs

Presentations and Publications

This mixed methods research examined the digital problem solving processes of vulnerable adults within the community setting of a public library. Data were collected from approximately 450 library users who completed a library survey, a subset who completed PIAACs Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments (PSTRE) assessment, and a smaller subset who participated in an observation protocol. Quantitative analysis revealed that library website use was a strong predictor of PSTRE scores. Qualitative analysis showed that digital problem solving needs to be seen as a set of contexts and events that are dynamic across different situations. In order to respond to ...

Elementos Persuasivos De La Citación En El Discurso Académico De Posgrado: Los Verbos Introductores De Las Citas En La Sección De La Conclusión, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.