Digital Commons Network^™

Mississippi Asl Project, James Corey Blount

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

American Sign Language (ASL) is a manual language used by many deaf people in the United States and Canada. For much of its existence, ASL was believed to be a system of rudimentary gestures and signs based on the English language. However, studies that analyzed the linguistic properties of this signed ‘mode’ (Stokoe, 1960) legitimized that it was a language independent of spoken language, with its own system of principles and elements to construct meaningful utterances. Like any language, ASL is influenced by the social demographics of its users. Social demographics such as ethnicity, geographic location, age, gender, and socioeconomic …

Stories From The Old West End Of Boston: An Analysis Of Evaluative Devices In Oral Narrative, Melanie N. Platt

Honors Theses and Capstones

The following presents an overview of various evaluative devices found in a series of oral narratives from former residents of the West End of Boston, Massachusetts. In working with an archivist at the West End Museum, I was able to read through interviews, each conducted with residents that were displaced from the West End after the urban renewal project of the late 1950s. These interviews were recorded for the purpose of collecting each resident’s experience growing up in the neighborhood. After reading through each interview I found several instances of narrative speech. I conducted a narrative analysis, based on Labov …

Cultural Change In The Ancient Mediterranean And Near Eastern World: A Study Of Interactions Between The Egyptian Empire And Its Neighbors, Benjamin Rideout

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Reanimating Ghost Editions, Reorienting The Early American Novel, Karen A. Weyler, Michelle Burnham

English

What are the origins of the American novel? Does it begin with the imagination, when Europeans first began dreaming of life in the New World?1 Does it begin with Daniel Defoe’s adventurers, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, and their literary progeny? Or does the novel need a material presence in the soil of the New World? Does it begin in 1789, with William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy?—which Isaiah Thomas, with shrewd prescience, marketed as the “first American novel.” Or does it begin even earlier, in 1742, with Benjamin Franklin’s first American edition of Samuel Richardson’s sentimental novel Pamela, …

Empirical Doctrine, Jessie Allen

Case Western Reserve Law Review

We can observe and measure how legal decision makers use formal legal authorities, but there is no way to empirically test the determinative capacity of legal doctrine itself. Yet discussions of empirical studies of judicial behavior sometimes conflate judges' attention to legal rules with legal rules determining outcomes. Doctrinal determinacy is not the same thing as legal predictability. The extent to which legal outcomes are predictable in given contexts is surely testable empirically. But the idea that doctrine's capacity to produce or limit those outcomes can be measured empirically is fundamentally misguided. The problem is that to measure doctrinal determinacy, …

Deposit Guarantee Schemes And Investor Compensation Act, Republic Of Austria

Documents

No abstract provided.

Hobby Lobby: The Crafty Case That Threatens Women's Rights And Religious Freedom, Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

Despite the pro-religion rhetoric surrounding it, Hobby Lobby marks a loss of religious freedom. Missing from the majority's opinion is the core concept that religious freedom is necessary to protect the rights of all Americans, and that a religious belief must not be imposed on citizens through the force of law. Any interpretation of the First Amendment or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA")' that imposes one citizen's religious faith upon another must be rejected. This Article defends this non-imposition model of religious freedom and describes why and how Hobby Lobby incorrectly departed from it.

Two Dogmas Of Originalism, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

In the early 1950s, Willlard Quine’s Two Dogmas of Empiricism offered a devastating critique of logical positivism and the effort to distinguish “science” from “metaphysics.” Quine demonstrated that the positivists relied on dogmatic oversimplifications of both the world and human practices, and, in the end, suggested that our holistic natural experience cannot be reduced to purely logical explanations. In this piece, I argue that constitutional originalism—which, too, seeks to define a constitutional “science”—relies on similar dogmatisms. In particular, I contend that the “fixation thesis,” which claims that the constitutional judge’s first task is to fix the text’s semantic meaning at …

All Together Now: Using Principles Of Group Dynamics To Train Better Jurors, Sara Gordon

Scholarly Works

We ask juries to make important decisions that have a profound impact on people’s lives. We leave these decisions in the hands of groups of laypeople because we hope that the diverse range of experiences and knowledge in the group will lead to more thoughtful and informed decisionmaking. Studies suggest that diverse groups of jurors have different perspectives on evidence, engage in more thorough debate, and more closely evaluate facts. At the same time, there are a variety of problems associated with group decisionmaking, from the loss of individual motivation in group settings, to the vulnerability of groups to various …

Say The Magic Word: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Contract Drafting Choices, Lori D. Johnson

Scholarly Works

Drafters of complex contracts often face a thorny dilemma – determining whether to retain “magic words” included in form documents, especially when considering the advice of current contract style scholars advocating for the removal of all traditional contract prose. But the drafter need not remove all terms that serve as elegant shorthand for more convoluted legal concepts, particularly where the inclusion of the term advances client interests. The application of rhetorical criticism – the analysis of methods of communicating ideas – to drafters’ use of the term “time is of the essence” sheds light on the dominant motivations of drafters …

Journal In Entirety

The Asbury Journal

No abstract provided.

Inheriting The Earth: Towards A Geotheology Of Matthew’S Narrative, Dorothy Jean Weaver

The Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies

The claim of the Matthean Jesus that “the meek . . . will inherit the earth” (5:5) is unique to the Canonical Gospels and a claim that reflects Psalm 36:11(LXX). This essay examines Matt 5:5 alongside this biblical intertext and within its wider Matthean context to assess its significance within Matthew’s overall narrative. While ultimately “inheritance of the earth” awaits “the renewal of all things” (19:27), the Risen Jesus with “all authority in heaven and on earth” (28:18) calls his disciples to a worldwide mission to “all the nations” (28:19-20) that constitutes proleptically an “inheritance of the earth.”

Temperance In The Age Of Feeling: Sensibility, Pedagogy, And Poetry In The Eighteenth Century, Sarah Hattie Maitland

Open Access Dissertations

British Romanticism has traditionally been understood as participating in a narrative of progressive secularism. "Temperance in the Age of Feeling" seeks to challenge this narrative by examining the influence of temperance on Romantic conceptualizations of the relationship between sensation, thought, and feeling. I begin my argument by investigating Romantic notions of temperance as influenced by Book II of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. I claim that Romantic temperance differs from classical temperance because Romantic temperance is concerned with balancing mental faculties while classical temperance is concerned with moderating passions. Next I consider how temperance influenced Romantic theories of the relationship …

Toward A Psychosocial Understanding Of Suicide In American Literature And Culture Of The 1990’S, Sara E. Murphy

Open Access Dissertations

As a means of rectifying the problematic absence of multidisciplinary scholarly work on suicide, this dissertation project interrogates suicide in American literature and culture of the 1990’s across disciplines within the humanities, medicine, and the social sciences. Utilizing a psychosocial approach to the study of suicide – that is, an understanding of suicide as produced both by one’s psychological development within and by one’s social relationship to his or her environment – I address what I have identified as a unique trifurcated suicide response that arose in American culture in the 1990’s as it emerged through major societal and legal …

Nursing Satisfaction In A Magnet Hospital, Ahlam Hussain Abdullah

Open Access Dissertations

A cross sectional descriptive study was conducted to examine the relationship between staff nurses' self-perceptions of structural empowerment, self-perceptions of Magnet hospital characteristics and job satisfaction in a Magnet-designated community hospital in the Northeastern United States. Demographic variables of age, ethnicity, educational level, marital status and years of experience were also examined to determine the extent to which these variables can predict nurses' job satisfaction in a sample of 97 registered staff nurses. Simple linear regression analysis was used to answer the two research questions: What is the relationship between nurses' perception of structural empowerment level and job satisfaction? What …

Comic Art And Humor In The Workplace: An Exploratory Study ...Zzzzzz, Kella Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This study is a qualitative, exploratory examination of the phenomena of humor in the workplace. The purpose is to derive a better understanding of how real people enact humor in the workplace by examining the humor depicted by and through fictional characters in comic art. The body of work of cartoonist, Scott Adams, was the primary source of data. The study relies on what the imaginary characters of Dilbert find absurd, funny, and ridiculous about an imaginary workplace, the employee-employer relationship, the content of the characters' jobs, or in the social relationships of fictional characters. It involves analyzing specific cultural …

Overcoming The Barriers: Success Stories Of English Learners In A U.S. High School, Robbie Wedeen

Theses and Dissertations

A disproportionate number of high school dropouts are Latino immigrant students with emergent English language skills. Statistically, students that meet these demographic characteristics are more likely to drop out of high school before receiving their diploma. Thus, these same students will then enter the workforce ill equipped for job advancement or the requirements of postsecondary education. A set of negative experiences, referred to as the process of marginalization, may occur in high school, leaving these students alienated and less confident of success than their English-speaking peers. This study used a qualitative research method approach to investigate the factors that lead …

The Santo Sepulcro In Torres Del Río (Navarra): Historiography, National Identity And A Reconsideration Of “Mozárabic” And “Mudéjar” Architecture, Robin Haedong Kim

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

The church of the Santo Sepulcro in Torres del Río in the region of Navarra in northern Spain was constructed between 1160 and 1180. Most scholarship conducted in Navarra presents its medieval history through the lens of Christian/Muslim duality, and generally disregards scholarship that investigates the polyethnic nature of medieval Iberian society. In this context the Santo Sepulcro, which is most famous for its interlacing ribbed vault that is often compared to Islamic domes, is an anomaly that challenges standard narratives of Navarra’s history and art history.

The goal of this dissertation is to contextualize the Santo Sepulcro historically and …

Selection Into Mixed Marriages: Evidence From North Carolina, 1894-1906, Matthew T. Gregg

Business Faculty Publications

Using a novel dataset from agricultural censuses and geological sources, I examine the selec- tion into mixed marriages between whites and Cherokee Indians in North Carolina during the late nineteenth century. I find that the well-documented wealth advantage of Cherokee Indian households containing white husbands is driven mostly by positive selection. Thus, once family fixed effects are controlled for, the observed intermarriage premium is completely eliminated. (JEL D03, N31, O12.)

Interactions Between Cultural Attitudes, Cultural Instruction, And Second Language Use By International Students At The University Level, Rebecca K. Smith

Dissertations - ALL

While participating in study abroad programs, language instructors and learners

alike hope that learners will have many opportunities for communicative intercultural engagement in the second language (L2). Such interactions are desirable because correlations exist between the quantity and quality of L2 interactions that learners have and the ultimate language gains that they attain while studying in a host country (e.g., Baker-Smemoe, et al., 2012; Dewey, et al., 2013; Isabelli-Garcia, 2006). In order to optimize L2 development, this study investigates learners' out-of-class L2 use, cultural attitudes, and social motivations, in addition to analyzing how these factors may be impacted by different …

Southern California Small Business Leaders And Emotional Intelligence: Exploring Perceptions Of Effect And Value In The Workplace, Steven P. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Although they represent 99.7% of all employers in the American domestic workforce, the annual failure rate of small businesses is alarming. Given this high failure rate, research is needed to better understand the characteristics of leaders who create and sustain success in small businesses. The two-part purpose of this sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study was to (a) measure the emotional intelligence of small business leaders in Southern California and (b) explore the leaders’ perceptions of the effect and value of EI in the workplace. Following the collection of quantitative data using an online version of the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence …

Opening Doors: A Collective Case Study Of Integrating Technology In The Preschool Through 3rd Grade Classroom In A Developmentally Appropriate Way, Amy Louise Cox Cameron

Theses and Dissertations

Children today are growing up in a technology-saturated world and yet early childhood teachers do not typically include technology in their classrooms, or if they do, they include it inappropriately. The literature states that integrating technology in early education can yield many benefits, but many teachers of young children avoid using technology because they do not know how to incorporate it appropriately. This dissertation is an exploratory observational study of early childhood teachers (preschool through third grade) who integrate technology in their programs in developmentally appropriate ways. This study involved three classroom teachers who were identified as model teachers at …

African Renaissance And Globalization: A Conceptual Analysis And A Way Forward, Jose Cossa

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

After colonialism and subsequent independences of African states, the current wave of Globalization has been compelling Africans to rethink their position in the world. One key aspect of Africa’s redefinition and response to Globalization is the African Renaissance; a concept that has been subject to debate among African academia, with some African scholars arguing that it is borrowed from experiences unique to Europe and thus rendering it irrelevant to Africa. This paper is a conceptual analysis of the term African Renaissance and an assessment of its relevance within the context of globalization.

Anticipating A Sea Change For Insider Trading Law: From Trading Plan Crisis To Rational Reform, John P. Anderson

Utah Law Review

The Securities and Exchange Commission is poised to take action in the face of compelling evidence that corporate insiders are availing themselves of rule-sanctioned Trading Plans to beat the market. These Trading Plans allow insiders to trade while aware of material nonpublic information. Since the market advantage insiders have enjoyed from Plan trading can be traced to loopholes in the current regulatory scheme, increased enforcement of the existing rules cannot address the issue. But, simply tweaking the existing rule structure to close these loopholes would not work either. This is because the SEC adopted the current rule as a part …

Interruptions In Search Of A Purpose: Oral Argument In The Supreme Court, October Terms 1958–60 And 2010–12, Barry Sullivan, Megan Canty

Utah Law Review

We tend to think of the Supreme Court as an institution that is unchanging. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. The Court has changed in important ways throughout its history. During the last few decades, the Court has experienced many significant changes: Congress has virtually eliminated the Court’s mandatory jurisdiction; the Court has reduced by almost half the number of cases in which it grants review; the number of law clerks has increased; the numbers of lower court cases and judges have increased substantially; the Court has shortened by half the amount of time normally allowed for …

Using Cognitive Word Games To Promote Lexical Memory Access And Vocabulary Retrieval In Second Language Learners, Kejkaew Thanasuan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Fluency in a second language (L2) is one of the most important skills for the modern world. However, adults learning a new language face many obstacles, including motivation, time, and other challenges in learning. Technology learning tools may help solve these problems. In this dissertation, I tested the effectiveness of cognitive word games as a vocabulary learning method, with the main goal of investigating how different word games including a crossword paradigm task, a free association task and a word-stem completion task were effective at improving vocabulary memory access. The games selectively increased semantic (meaning) or orthographic (spelling) associations in …

Annotated Bibliography Of Thematically Related Historical Fiction Picture Books And Nonfiction Pairs, Katherine Seibel

Graduate Research Papers

The Iowa Common Core requires students to read both fiction and nonfiction texts. Iowa teachers would benefit from a list of books that will allow them to meet school curricular requirements as well as the Iowa Core requirement. The purpose of this project was to create an annotated bibliography of paired sets of picture books and nonfiction books that correspond to one mid-sized Iowa elementary school's literacy curriculum. The researcher selected units from the school's literacy program that could be taught in a historical context, and then prepared an annotated bibliography consisting of pairs of a historical fiction picture book …

A Real-Time American Sign Language Word Recognition System Based On Neural Networks And A Probabilistic Model, Neelesh Sarawate, Ming Chan. Leu, Cemi̇l Öz

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The development of an American Sign Language (ASL) word recognition system based on neural networks and a probabilistic model is presented. We use a CyberGlove and a Flock of Birds motion tracker to extract the gesture data. The finger joint angle data obtained from the sensory glove defines the handshape while the data from the motion tracker describes the trajectory of the hand movement. The four gesture features, namely handshape, hand position, hand orientation, and hand movement, are recognized using different functions that include backpropagation neural networks. The sequence of these features is used to generate a specific sign or …

The Role Of Salience In Second Language Acquisition, Ian South Comeaux

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract Cues to the actor role such as word order, noun animacy, case inflection and verb agreement vary in strength across languages. The competition model (CM; MacWhinney, 2005) suggests that adult L2 acquisition is difficult due to differences in cue strength between the native and target languages. Using a paradigm inspired by the CM, the present study examines whether salience plays a role in facilitating adjustments of cue strength during L2 learning. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language (via an actor-assignment task) which utilized four different cues: verb agreement, case marking, animacy, and word order. Word order, …

Bridging Gaps: Supplemental Materials For Struggling Students In Common Core Aligned Algebra 1, Reynalin Apinardo Baricuatro

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis emphasizes the need for, and the development of, auxiliary and supplemental materials for students struggling with the Module 1 of the Common Core aligned EngageNY/Eureka Math, Algebra 1 Curriculum, in particular, special education students and regular education students who are missing essential pre-requisite skills. The goal of this thesis is to provide resources which assist both the students and the teachers with the transition from the old Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum to the intensity, rigor, and mathematical sophistication of the new Common Core aligned curriculum. Clearly, the need for supplementary materials is not restricted to the first of six …