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The Universal Nature Of Hatred: Keith Stimely And The Culture Of Holocaust Denial, Linda Maizels

Dissertations and Theses

A partial accounting of the discord beneath the seeming conformity of opinion within the insular community of the proponents of Holocaust denial was documented and preserved by Keith Stimely, a Holocaust denier who donated his personal papers to the University of Oregon Special Collections Library in 1991. The thesis uses the Stimely Collection to emphasize the universal nature of the hatred and animosity inherent in the denial movement.

Chapter One surveys revisionist historiography concerning both world wars and the manner in which the deniers appropriated the trappings of revisionism in their attempt to rewrite the history of the Nazi genocide …

An Ethnographic Study: Building An Identity Through The Stories Of An Italian-American Family, Gloria Marie Tottten

Dissertations and Theses

Storytelling involves the active utilization of both past experiences and future possibilities, which is sustained through interaction, and could not exist without its past and future counterparts. It is the vehicle through which all intertwine.

This implies that communication is a very important element in the formation of an individual's identity - and to the meaning given to the storytelling practices. As a family member tells a story, other members listen, question, and request more about particular aspects of the story. By talking and listening, family members produce a narrative together, a story.

The purpose of this study was to …

Innovation In The Writing Center: A Diffusion Study, Talisman Kate Benton Saunders

Dissertations and Theses

An innovation is an idea, object, or practice that is perceived by a certain group as being new. To study the process by which an innovation is introduced to a certain target group and the results of the effort to convince the group to adopt the innovation is to study the diffusion of that innovation. This often involves examination of the social events and communication patterns among and between the stakeholders, change agents, and target group(s). The diffusion model is relevant and useful to many disciplines. It has many practical uses and applications for policymakers in that it offers the …

Increased Glutathione Metabolic Defense Capabilities In Cultured Alzheimer's Diseased Lymphoblast Cell Lines, Collin M. Shaw

Dissertations and Theses

The hypothesis to be tested states that the pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) involves elevated levels of oxidative stress, resulting in elevated levels of cellular oxidative defense mechanisms. If the premise is true, than AD pathologically afflicted cells should have a higher demand for glutathione (GSH) as an innate oxidative defense mechanism hence; greater GSH concentrations, increased GSH resynthesis capabilities, and increased levels of cystathionine gamma-lyase (CNase). Alzheimer diseased and age matched control lymphoblast cells, obtained from OHSU's Oregon Brain Aging Study, were cultured, and GSH biochemistry was subsequently evaluated. GSH was depleted by exposing cells to the GSH depleting …

Complaint Patterns Of Japanese English As A Second Language Students, Eriko Matsuda

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates cross-cultural production of speech acts of complaints. Speech acts are considered culture-specific. Speakers of different cultural background may have different ways of dealing with speech act situations. It is important for language educators to be aware of such differences. Previous studies show that second/foreign language learners tend to transfer their first language habits when performing speech acts in a target language. In this study, the complaint speech act performance of Japanese English as a second language students was compared to the performance of native speakers of English and native speakers of Japanese to see if first language …

Šawaš Ili?I-Šawaš Wawa -- 'Indian Country--Indian Language' : A Participant Observation Case Study Of Language Planning By The Confederated Tribes Of The Grand Ronde Community Of Oregon, Gregry Michael Davis

Dissertations and Theses

The Kwelth Tahlkie Culture and Heritage Board (KTC&HB) of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) have made it a priority to revitalize one of the languages which historically has been associated with being a Grand Ronde Indian-Chinook Jargon, referred to as činuk wawa 'Chinook talk' or simply činuk.

The purpose of the present study was to observe the language planning process as executed by the KTC&HB. Initial guiding questions were: (i) What stages is the KTC&HB going through in the process of planning for činuk revitalization? (ii) How do these efforts compare with theory and …

Speech Parameters Affects On Social Acceptability Ratings Of Adolescents With Repaired Cleft Lip And/Or Palate, Sarah Telkins Hoff

Dissertations and Theses

The current study explored speech social acceptability ratings of adolescents with and without orofacial clefts. The study utilized speech samples previously collected on 80 adolescents, 40 cleft and 40 noncleft, dubbed on to a stimulus tape in a random order. From an earlier study the following were available: (a) adolescent (cleft and noncleft) self-ratings of speech social acceptability, (b) objective ratings of the adolescents' speech social acceptability provided by a listener panel with no background in speech-language pathology. New data were collected by recruiting a new listener panel of 10 graduate students with training in speech-language pathology, utilizing a 7-point …

The Bolinger Principle And Teaching The Gerunds And Infinitives, Anna Maria Baratta-Zborowski

Dissertations and Theses

As teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, few would dispute the importance of teaching a subject such as English complementation by using a semantic rule. The difference in semantic meaning between the -ing and to-infinitive forms has been the object of many studies which have focused on specific groups of verbs (verbs of effort/ perception, emotive verbs, factive verbs, and implicative verbs). However, not many studies were found that covered, systematically, those verbs that are more often part of a native speakers's vocabulary and that might be found in form of lists in ESL/ENNL (English as a …

Speech Intelligibility Of 4-Year-Old Children, M. Jane Firestone

Dissertations and Theses

While speech-language pathologists routinely measure and report speech intelligibility when assessing young children with speech impairments, normative data have not been available for comparison purposes. When assessing children to determine if their communication abilities are at or below that of peers, one must first know what the normative standards are. Knowing the normal distribution for speech intelligibility at several ages would allow for more precise uses of the intelligibility information than is currently possible. Only a few available studies exist to allow tentative normative comparisons of speech intelligibility data.

The goals of this pilot study were to collect normative data …

Training For Volunteer Teachers In Church-Affiliated English Language Mission Programs, Janet Noreen Blackwood

Dissertations and Theses

There is currently a debate among language educators regarding the training and certification of EFL teachers. Largely ignored in this debate are short-term volunteer teachers in church-affiliated English language mission programs. These teachers fall somewhere on the continuum between untrained language teachers and trained professional language educators. The current study took place in response to the lack of research information available on this aspect of ESL/EFL teacher education.

This study focused on the training that is provided to volunteer ESL/EFL teachers affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) denomination. The four research questions sought to determine how the content and procedures …

The Representation Of Gender In Current Esl Reading Materials, Kyunghee Ma

Dissertations and Theses

This study is a partial replication of E.W. Hoomes' dissertation (1978). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether or not gender bias exists in current ESL reading materials and in cases where gender bias exists, whether it varies by learning levels. Eleven reading books which were used in ESL classes at Portland State University were selected from the textbook lists of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall in 1997. Content analysis was employed to examine distribution of males and females in passages and illustrations.

Gender bias was found to be statistically significant in the following categories: the assignment of …

Phonological Processing Of Japanese Kanji Characters, Randy L. Evans

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the lexical access of Japanese kanji characters, particularly the access of on-readings and kun-readings, which are different pronunciations that kanji may realize in different contexts. A modified Stroop experiment was used, using drawings instead of colors, in which subjects were to call out what they saw in the drawings while ignoring written distractors. The following three conditions were used:

1. A Kunyomi condition, which offered a distractor that is graphically and phonologically identical to the character that represents the object in the drawing,

2. An Onyomi condition, which offered a distractor that …

Divertir Et Instruire Dans Les Livres Pour Enfants D’Henri Bosco, Laurence Karine Graire

Dissertations and Theses

The theme of this thesis is the double focus of reading: pleasure and learning. Reading allows the readers, not only to identify themselves but also to escape from their everyday life. However, reading is more than a simple amusement, the cultural and personal enrichment it provides is especially valuable. Precisely because of the nature of the audience for children's literature, there is a deep desire from the author to teach the readers. The personality of the child is being formed and education with books is critical in laying a good foundation. Consequently, the writer, through the account he narrates, offers …

Perception Of English Passives By Japanese Esl Learners : Do Adversity Passives In L1 Transfer?, Koichi Sawasaki

Dissertations and Theses

The role of the first language (L1) in second language acquisition (SLA) has been disputed among researchers since the classic Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) was proposed. Some recent research shows that similarities between L1 and a second language (L2) can cause negative L 1 transfer. Others claim that functional differences between L1 and L2 should play more significant roles for L 1 interference.

The purpose of the present study is to examine whether negative L1 transfer would occur when Japanese learning English as a second language (ESL) perceive English passives. Japanese has so-called adversity passives, a productive linguistic system of …

ŠAwaš Ilıˀ--ŠAwaš Wawa: A Participant Observation Case Study Of Language Planning By The Confederated Tribes Of The Grand Ronde Community Of Oregon, Gregry Michael Davis

Dissertations and Theses

The Kwelth Tahlkie Culture and Heritage Board (KTC&HB) of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) have made it a priority to revitalize one of the languages which historically has been associated with being a Grand Ronde Indian-Chinook Jargon, referred to as c̽ɪnʊk wawa 'Chinook talk' or simply c̽ɪnʊk.

The purpose of the present study was to observe the language planning process as executed by the KTC&HB. Initial guiding questions were: (i) What stages is the KTC&HB going through in the process of planning for c̽ɪnʊk revitalization? (ii) How do these efforts compare with theory and …

The Effect Of Diastema Closure On The Remediation Of Lateral /S/: A Case Study, Reta Price

Dissertations and Theses

An important morphological-marker and one of the most frequently occurring speech sounds in English, the /s/ phoneme is also one of the sounds most often in need of remediation. Often, air emission during /s/ production, a particularly stubborn, often residual production error, is not remediated through traditional treatment methods, and yet the negative effect /s/ distortions have on listeners has been well-documented.

The subject of this investigation was a forty-eightyear-old male who received treatment for a lateralized /s/ during grade-school. It was hypothesized that his exerting high anterior pressure to prevent air from escaping from a diastema between his two …

The Effects Of Educational Setting And Instructor Type On Interaction Modifications, Katrina Kay Mcconaughey

Dissertations and Theses

The precise role of interaction in the process of second language acquisition and its place in the second language classroom are questions that continue to be important in research for both theoretical and applied linguists. The framework for this study is based on Long's (1983b) Interaction Hypothesis which proposes that input is made comprehensible by the modification of interactional structures. Many studies have looked at the differences between teacher-fronted classroom interaction and small group or dyad interaction without a teacher. The use of tutors and teaching assistants is common but not many studies have looked at how variation among instructor …

Sacagawea : The History Of A Myth, William Jeffrey Patten

Dissertations and Theses

Sacagawea, the Indian woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition has been one of the most romanticized figures in Western history. Although Sacagawea received little attention following the Corps of Discovery's return to the United States, she was rediscovered by writers associated with the women's suffrage movement at the end of the nineteenth century. The development of the enduring American legend that formed around Sacagawea was an Anglo-American and twentieth century phenomenon. In myth, she was given credit for the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and over time she became its savior and leader.

It is the …

Academic Esl Reading : Semantic Mapping And Lexical Acquisition, Jeffrey Darin Maggard

Dissertations and Theses

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theoreticians and educators disagree whether vocabulary should be explicitly taught in second language learning classrooms. These individuals are divided about the most efficient way for L2 learners to increase the size of their lexicons. This thesis proposes that explicit vocabulary instruction may significantly facilitate lexical acquisition for adult second language learners in academic contexts.

An experimental study designed to investigate the relationship between explicit vocabulary instruction and the rate of lexical acquisition is described. It was hypothesized that metacognitive strategy training in semantic mapping activities would significantly increase the rate of lexical acquisition for upper-intermediate university …

Spiritual Nourishment: A Central Christian Metaphor, Susan Sleeth Mosedale

Dissertations and Theses

Since its origins, Christianity has been pervaded by a large array of images in which the spiritual realities are symbolized as food. Such images may be not only verbal, but visual or expressed in actions. These images can be seen as expressions of a spiritual nourishment metaphor; I apply here the meaning of "metaphor" proposed by the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson: a metaphor is a concept that structures ideas and actions as well as language. This thesis establishes the spiritual nourishment metaphor as a philosophical concept and begins to explore its history within Christianity.

The spiritual …

The Juice Is Loose?: A Qualitative Study Of Employees' Perceptions Of Informal And Formal Communication Channels, Warren Jerome Brown

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine how employees perceive formal and informal communication channels within their organizational experiences. This study sought to answer two questions: One, what are employees' perceptions of formal and informal communication channels? Two, what similar or dissimilar perceptions of formal and informal communication channels emerge from interview and observational data?

I selected eight respondents from the greater Olympia, Washington and Seattle, Washington areas. Each respondent was purposely selected based upon their rich experiences across different sizes of and public/private structures of organizations. Additionally, I conducted seven observations within a medium-sized (50 -75 employee) public …

The Adjunct Model Of Content-Based Instruction: A Comparative Study In Higher Education In Oregon, Georgann Sue Percival

Dissertations and Theses

Content-based instruction (CBI) in all forms is widely used in ESL programs in higher education. The adjunct model of CBI, which links ESL classes to academic content courses, is regarded as an effective way to provide a transition between ESL and academic classes. Considering the growing numbers of limited English proficiency students entering colleges and universities for degree and vocational programs, the adjunct model provides an innovative means for ESL programs to serve these students. This comparative study investigates how adjunct model courses are planned, administered, and taught in eight colleges and universities in Oregon. Telephone surveys were used to …

Teaching Phonetic-Ideograph Rules To English Speaking Students Of Chinese, Jillian Ji-Fen Tsai

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the teaching of phoneticideograph rules would improve the memorization and character retention abilities of English-speaking students of Chinese. Two groups participated in the experiment, an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was taught using the Concentrated Character Recognition Method, which employs the teaching of phonetic-ideograph rules, while the other group was taught using a more traditional teaching approach, without receiving instruction on phonetic-ideographic rules. Subjects were enrolled in the first-year university Chinese class. All subjects were pre-tested before the treatment. Data of subjects who scored much higher than …

Teaching Peace Education In Esl/Efl Classes: An International Perspective, Cheryl Lynn Hill

Dissertations and Theses

This study offers an exploration of peace education ESUEFL classes, from the perspective of the teacher and the students. Using questionnaires designed by the researcher, qualitative and quantitative survey data were collected from a convenience sample of thirteen ESUEFL teachers and seventy ESUEFL students. The teacher survey focuses on the following questions: 1) How do ESI.JEFL teachers define peace education; 2) Why have some ESUEFL teachers decided to teach peace education in their classes; and 3) How do ESUEFL teachers incorporate peace education into their classes. The student survey carried out in three EFL classes in Israel, Italy, and Japan …

Ethnic And Language Identity Among A Select Group Of Vietnamese-Americans In Portland Oregon, Jay Owen Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

Vietnamese immigrants within the United States have demonstrated a strong desire to retain their ethnocultural identity. They have also experienced tremendous pressure to use English. What are the implications of these two trends for identity and language choice within the Vietnamese-American community? The presented research used multidimensional scaling (MDS) methods to describe the subjects' ethnic and language identities.

The population for the study consisted of adult Vietnamese-Americans who were born in Vietnam and were currently living in the US. The study had two stages. First, identity labels were generated using a modified Twenty Statements Test. A "Myself" label was added …

Esl Cd-Rom Principles And Their Application: A Software Evaluation, Stephanie Burgi Lamonica

Dissertations and Theses

CD-ROM applications within the past 5 years have aided the availability of Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) on a mass consumer level. This study assesses how the instructional design of commercial CALL English as a Second Language (ESL) CD-ROM materials make up for the lack of a human instructional component. The framework within which the evaluation takes place is communicatively based. Using a tool developed specifically for the study, 8 software from 6 companies were systematically evaluated. The 3-step process followed in the evaluation makes concessions for student, instructional designer, and instructor needs. Research questions address how the areas of …

Opening Doors: Culture Learning And Conversational Narratives With First Generation Hmong Refugee Women, Lucy Vincent Kimbro

Dissertations and Theses

The life experiences of two first generation Hmong refugee women form the basis of this study. Through loosely structured but guided interviews, memories of their lives in Laos and in refugee camps in Thailand, as well as their perspectives, feelings, and opinions about current aspects of their lives, the effects of American culture on their family; and their engagement in the language and culture learning process are explored.

An examination of the involvement of Hmong women in research and ethnographic accounts concerning Hmong culture, history, and experience, show that Hmong women's perspectives have often been overlooked or disregarded. One purpose …

The Home-School Connection: Parental Influences On A Child's English Second Language Acquisition, Catharine Jauhiainen

Dissertations and Theses

Few would dispute the tremendous impact that parents have on the intellectual, emotional, and social development of their children. An important issue in child second language acquisition is whether, or to what extent, parental attitudes and behaviors are associated with the success of language minority children in elementary ESL and mainstream classroom settings. The effects of parental educational values and expectations, and parental perception of ability to assist in the educational journey of their offspring, have been the focus of much research regarding majority language children. However, research exploring the beliefs and behaviors of language minority parents and their relationship …

El Español En El Condado De Multnomah, La Interpretación Médica Contextual, Y Las Funciones Del Intérprete Médico Profesional (The Spanish Language In Multnomah County, Contextual Medical Interpreting, And The Role Of The Professional Interpreter), Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas

Dissertations and Theses

El objeto de este trabajo es detectar el español hablado en el condado de Multnomah, Oregón, estudiar el significado de contextualidad en el ejercicio de la interpretación médica de español-inglés e inglés-español, y proponer una descripción de funciones para el intérprete basada en el perfil del cliente que solicita servicios en las clínicas públicas de la entidad.

El autor a través de un micro-enfoque coloca al lector en el centro del debate nacional actual acerca del significado de la interpretación contextual y las funciones del intérprete médico profesional; basándose en los censos estadounidenses de 1990 y en reportajes y estudios--tanto …

The Poetics Of John Keats In "The Fall Of Hyperion, A Dream", Amy A. Zenger

Dissertations and Theses

The Hyperion poems are Keats's epics. Like Wordsworth in The Excursion, in these poems Keats attempts to write an epic of the unexplored regions of the human mind. Unlike Wordsworth, however, Keats uses the narrative vocabulary of Hellenic myth--a vocabulary already at hand--but alters it to suit his own purposes. As they are concerned with the mind, these poems deal with the same issues that characterize contemporary debates about the relation of mind to language, issues that illuminate what these poems are about as much as they illuminate Keats's own use of language and theory of poetry.

This essay …