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Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Partnering with Daimler Trucks is giving students experience and jobs; inspiring the next generation of women leaders; what Antarctica is telling us about our warming planet; Robert Mercer has helped countless students navigate their way to a PSU degree; and more.

Busy Intersections: A Framework For Revitalization, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper reports on the applicability of a pedagogical model for use in West Africa drawn from adult literacy practices in the United States. It proposes bridging the gap between linguists, teachers, and community organizers, and building on the ethnographic skills of language documenters. One increasingly important goal of language documentation has been “creating and mobilizing documentation in support of pedagogy” (Nathan and Fang 2009:132) or even as a “social movement” (Dobrin and Berson 2011). A documentary perspective is here synthesized with an adult literacy one, fitted to the context of West Africa, to offer some guidelines for revitalization efforts.

Towards An Intellectual History Of Evolutionary Economics: Competition And Struggle Versus Cooperation And Mutual Aid, John B. Hall, Svetlana Kirdina-Chandler

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our inquiry considers the origins of Evolutionary Economics by reintroducing a debate that took place in Russia in the 19th and early 20th century. Responses to Charles Darwin’s The origin of Species are considered, especially critiques stressing Darwin’s emphasis upon competition and struggle in natural selection, that can be traced directly to Thomas Robert Malthus. Considering challenging contributions made by several Russian scholars, we place special emphasis upon Peter Kropotkin’s focus on cooperation and “mutual aid” in natural selection and evolution. We then speculate upon the commonality found in the evolutionary views advanced by Kropotkin and his American contemporary, Thorstein …

The Distribution Of Talker Variability Impacts Infants’ Word Learning, Carolyn Quam, Sara Knight, Louann Gerken

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Infants struggle to apply earlier-demonstrated sound-discrimination abilities to later word learning, attending to non-constrastive acoustic dimensions (e.g., Hay et al., 2015), and not always to contrastive dimensions (e.g., Stager & Werker, 1997). One hint about the nature of infants’ difficulties comes from the observation that input from multiple talkers can improve word learning (Rost & McMurray, 2009). This may be because, when a single talker says both of the to-be-learned words, consistent talker’s-voice characteristics make the acoustics of the two words more overlapping (Apfelbaum & McMurray, 2011). Here, we test that notion. We taught 14-month-old infants two similar-sounding words in …

Challenging Queer As “Neoliberal”: The Radical Politics Of South Asian Diasporic Lesbian Representational Culture, Sri Craven

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay contributes to transnational feminist and queer interests in neoliberalism, sexual politics and representational cultures that all circulate globally today. It reads Deepa Mehta’s film, Fire (1996), and Suniti Namjoshi’s literary venture, Goja: An Autobiographical Myth (2000). Each processes the question of lesbian visibility as a question of female labor and class relations among women. By analyzing representations of lesbian life in the context of laboring female bodies, the article challenges the dismissal of queer politics as neoliberal in India. Sexual identity politics, as critics argue, often dovetails with neoliberalism’s project of protecting elite and bourgeois subjects’ interests at …

A Diachronic Approach To The Old Spanish Sibilant Merger And Its Impact On Trans-Atlantic Spanish. Part Ii., Eva NúÑEz-MéNdez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article is a continuation of Part I, published in the previous volume of Estudios Hispanicos.

The evolution of the medieval sibilant phonetic system is crucial to understanding the origin of Castilian varieties on both sides of the Atlantic. It helps to distinguish varieties such as Andalusian Spanish, Judeo- Spanish, and trans-Atlantic Spanish, which constitute proof of many of the diachronic processes happening during and after the late medieval period. This study helps the reader understand the linguistic variations of the sibilants in the modem language, and explores the origins and different steps in their evolution; furthermore, it evaluates recent …

Surface Reading The Upside Down Chandelier: Interface “Mastery” And Feminism, Kathi Inman Berens

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay compares the literary interfaces of one artwork, The Upside Down Chandelier [UDC], in two settings: a large-scale installation taking up a gallery room, and in a browser window. UDC is a generative, multimedia artwork authored in Flash by four women electronic literature artists using four spoken languages. It uses the same code base for both settings. The installation’s embodied and site-specific context at the gallery created multiple vantages from which to “read” the work’s design and purpose. In browser, UDC’s words are the only point of access. The reader’s urge to decode the words in …

Wiki-Based Collaborative Creative Writing In The Esl Classroom, Rima Elabdali

Dissertations and Theses

Despite the growing number of L2 studies examining digitally-mediated collaborative writing, the vast majority of these studies have focused on academic writing tasks. This study examined the dynamics and perceptions of groups of ESL students who used wikis to write collaborative short stories. The study also compared the short stories written in groups with posttest short stories written individually in terms of creativity, accuracy, and complexity. The study involved nine students taking a Creative Writing course in an intensive English program at a large university in the U.S. It followed a multiple case study design; the students were divided into …

The Knowledge Of Ideophones And Multilingualism: A West African Pilot Study, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Expressive language such as ideophones and mimetics have provided an important index of social and cultural features. On the continent of Africa, where the word category is generally known as ideophones, such words appear in every major phylum and in most families. They even appear in the continent’s pidgins and creoles, thus representing a language function of some considerable areality. The one place they do not appear, however, is in the colonizing languages when they have not been appropriated by local communities. When the European languages become every day varieties, however, ideophones are regularly used just as they would in …

The Knowledge Of Ideophones In Multilingual Contexts: A West African Pilot Study, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This presentation examines the ubiquity of multilingualism and its somewhat uncertain characterization; the claim for linguistic repertoires vs. languages; how to evaluate and document a linguistic repertoire, economically and expeditiously; ideophones as functionally areal but formally local, thus a control for borrowings; and, is there any sharing in highly multilingual areas? Are ideophones less local than has been empirically shown?

Assessing Problem Solving In Technology Rich Environments Within A Public Library, Jill Castek, Gloria Jacobs

Presentations and Publications

The presentation focuses on how critical thinking and a range of digital literacy skills may influence the ability to solve web-based information problems in diverse educational settings.

Exploring Transformation: An Analysis Of Culture, Identity & Borderlands (Full Issue)

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Understanding Our Complex World: Contributions To Philosophy, Social Science And Science (Full Issue)

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Adaptions: Mindful Living In The New Millenium (Full Issue)

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Identity, Communities, And Technology On The Cusp Of Change (Full Issue)

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Challenging Paradigms: New Frontiers In Graduate Research (Full Issue)

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Transformative Possibilities: Transcending Interlocking Boundaries (Full Issue)

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing The Mindful Teacher: Examining Evidence For Mindfulness Skills In Teachers' Classroom Speech And Behavior, Cynthia Lynn Taylor

Dissertations and Theses

Mindfulness-based interventions can improve teachers' capacities for attention and emotion regulation, as well as their prosocial dispositions like compassion and forgiveness. The purpose of this set of research studies (including three case studies and a larger non-randomized treatment -- control group quasi-experimental study) was to examine whether or not capacities like these, learned through participation in a mindfulness training (MT) program for teachers, become embodied and show through as changes in teachers' mindful behavior in the classroom -- specifically, their ability to be calm, clear-minded and kind-hearted in their speech and behavior with students in the classroom. These studies used …

Narratives Of Native American Women And Tribal Courts: The Framing Of The Violence Against Women Act Of 2013 In Mainstream, Native American, And Tribal Press Coverage, Alesha Marie Sangster

Dissertations and Theses

The Violence Against Women Act is a legislation created to expand more legal rights and services to survivors of domestic violence or intimate partner violence. Frame analysis was used to examine the coverage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013 in three genres of press media: mainstream press, Native American press, and tribal press. Based on the media frames produced in the three media genres, the legislation was presented as more of a conflicting or controversial issue in mainstream press through the use of the conflict frame and the "Indian as other" frame. But all news coverage also presented …

My Story, My Identity: Doctoral Students Of Color At A Research University, Audrey J. Jaeger, Karen J. Haley

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

We are deeply concerned about the small representation of faculty of color in the academy; thus, we address the question of how and why doctoral students of color choose a particular career path. This qualitative research study, through the voices of the doctoral students of color, identifies and explains both the overt and covert obstacles encountered by graduate students of color in their consideration of academic careers. The stories of leading change efforts through the pursuit of an advanced education are stories of individual agency. At the same time, their education was not an individual effort; rather, these students of …

Social Learning Through Stakeholder Engagement: New Pathways From Parcipitation To Health Equity In U.S. West Coast Hia, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, Moriah Mcsharry Mcgrath

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

While some contend that extensive public engagement activities are necessary to meet Health Impact Assessment (HIA) practice standards, other work suggests that an HIA of any type hasthe potential to inform decision-making in ways that embody HIA’s value of democracy (Cole & Fielding, 2007; Harris-Roxas et al., 2012; Negev, 2012). These divergent perspectives on how to realize democracy through public participation represents an area of evolving debate in the ongoing development of HIA practice in the US. Looking to the relatively diverse HIA practice on the west coast of the US, we explore the interplay between engagement strategies and HIA …

Formulaic Sequences In L2 Legal Writing, Lindsey M. Kurtz, Alissa J. Hartig, Olesya Kisselev

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Definite Article In Mel, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

As a function word, the definite article is subject to some attrition in the course of language change, usually originating in a a form with fuller phonetic substance such as a demonstrative, e.g., Greenberg 1978. This generalization holds true for the Mel languages, spoken in the countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. These languages were formerly part of the southern branch of Atlantic but are now thought to constitute an independent, e.g., Segerer Forthcoming. The reconstructed form of the Mel definite article is likely *lɛ (tone uncertain). In some dialects of Bom-Kim and the Dema dialect of Sherbro its …

A Framework To Address Challenges In Communicating The Developmental Origins Of Health And Disease, Liana Winett, Lawrence Wallack, Dawn M. Richardson, Janne Boone-Heinonen, Lynne C. Messer

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Findings from the field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) suggest that some of the most pressing public health problems facing communities today may begin much earlier than previously understood. In particular, this body of work provides evidence that social, physical, chemical, environmental, and behavioral influences in early life play a significant role in establishing vulnerabilities for chronic disease later in life. Further, because this work points to the importance of adverse environmental exposures that cluster in population groups, it suggests that existing opportunities to intervene at a population level may need to refocus their efforts “upstream” to …

A Diachronic Approach To The Confusion Of B With V In Spanish, Eva Núñez-Méndez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This volume presents specific topics in diachronic Hispanic linguistics. These topics include: lexical survivals in Ibero-Romance, Arabisms, lexical variation in early modern Spain, the origins of the confusion of b with v, Andalusian Spanish in the Americas, the expansion of seseo and yeísmo, processes of koineization, syntactic change in scribal documentation from the Middle Ages, and the semantic changes of the verbs ser, estar and haber. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the Spanish lexicon, phonetics, morphosyntax, dialectology and semantics with the input of ten prominent scholars.

It focuses not only on relevant issues in the evolution of Spanish but …

Epilogue: Open Education, Social Practices, And Ecologies Of Hope, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

For more than a decade, some of the world's top-ranked universities have invited the global public to freely access the very curricular content that previously had only been available to a privileged few. Under the umbrella term Open Education (OE), which refers to the advancement of education through "open technology, open content and open knowledge" (Iiyoshi & Kumar, 2007), this movement encourages universities, as well as educators at other institutional levels, to serve the greater public good through the sharing of topical and thematic learning objects as well as intact course materials and curricula.

Clatsop County Latinos: A Demographic And Economic Profile, Marisa Zapata, Amanda Hudson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Demographic change continues at an unprecedented rate across Oregon. In part driven by Latino population growth, the state’s future will include a population that only recently began to call Oregon home. Clatsop County is one area that is experiencing this population change (See Figure 1). Clatsop County has long remained ethnically homogenous. Yet, the rapid growth of the Latino population coincides at a time where the White population decreases in much of the county. There are few reports, describing the needs of the Latino population in the areas of planning and community. This report details several key demographic and economic …

The Effect Of Extended Instruction On Passive Voice, Reduced Relative Clauses, And Modal Would In The Academic Writing Of Advanced English Language Learners, Audrey Bailey

Dissertations and Theses

As more international students who are not expert users of English come to the United States to study at university, the field of teaching English for Academic Purposes grows. There are many important skills these international students must learn to become successful university students in America, but writing for academic purposes is of particular importance for these students to join the academic conversation in their respective disciplines. Corpus research has identified the grammatical features which are frequently found in different registers, and from this work it is known which structures are important in different types of academic writing. Grammatical structures …

More Than Meets The Eye: Latino Students In A Two-Way Immersion Program And Stereotype Threat, Edgar Ubaldino Solares Vega

Dissertations and Theses

Figures from the 2010 Census indicate that there are 50.5 million Latinos (16% of the total population) living in the United States (US) today. From 2000 to 2010, the Latino population experienced a very rapid growth rate of 43%, which accounted for over half the total population growth. More and more Latino students are entering our public schools and face the reality that 62 years after the Brown V. Board of Education ruling to integrate schools and equalize educational opportunities, schools are more racially and economically segregated and more unequal than they were more than half a century ago. As …

A Study Of The Intelligibility, Comprehensibility And Interpretability Of Standard Marine Communication Phrases As Perceived By Chinese Mariners, Lillian Christine Holland

Dissertations and Theses

Worldwide, mariners use a variety of English as an International Language known as Maritime English regardless of the first language spoken by the crew or port in which they enter. English knowledge and ability is therefore critical to a mariner's livelihood at sea and is also mandated by the International Maritime Organization. The ability to understand and be understood is paramount to safety at sea. This study investigated which accents of English a subset of Chinese mariners found easy or difficult to understand. The data from 39 Chinese mariners who listened to 8 Standard Marine Communications phrases was analyzed. The …