Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Language

Discipline
Institution
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 1501 - 1530 of 2239

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Students Say The Darndest Things! A Conversation Analysis For Teaching Assistants In The First-Year-Writing Classroom, Meredith Mcmillan Sep 2010

Students Say The Darndest Things! A Conversation Analysis For Teaching Assistants In The First-Year-Writing Classroom, Meredith Mcmillan

Theses and Dissertations

Teaching writing is about more than just the writing itself. It's about effective communication between students and teachers, which should create a positive and productive writing environment. However, within conversations, challenges of authority are likely to occur. This project discusses the pitfalls of communication between teaching assistants and students in the first-year-writing classroom. These pitfalls are defined as discourse violations, and are further explained and analyzed using concepts of language theory. Case studies of discourse violation scenarios are presented for discussion. Each scenario illustrates various types of discourse violations, and creates an awareness of the need for classroom management. Ultimately, …

Go to article

Flouting The Elmo Necessity And Denying The Local Roots Of Interpretation: "Anthropology's" Quarrel With Acta And Authoritarian Ip Regimes, Alexander S. Dent Sep 2010

Flouting The Elmo Necessity And Denying The Local Roots Of Interpretation: "Anthropology's" Quarrel With Acta And Authoritarian Ip Regimes, Alexander S. Dent

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This paper uses an anthropological definition of culture to examine the intensification of intellectual property policing, coupled with an expansion of its definition. These are ACTA’s aims. I argue that acts of sharing lie at the root of communication; humans must share in order to learn. Furthermore, symbols change their meaning as they circulate in different cultural contexts. Therefore, in denying the fundamental importance of sharing and local interpretation, ACTA will not only fail spectacularly as a policy document. It will also fuel a “war” on file-sharers, users of generic medicines, and manufacturers, sellers, and buyers of imitative goods and …

Go to article

Teachers As Language-Policy Actors: Contending With The Erasure Of Lesser-Used Languages In Schools, Kara Brown Sep 2010

Teachers As Language-Policy Actors: Contending With The Erasure Of Lesser-Used Languages In Schools, Kara Brown

Faculty Publications

On the basis of an ethnographic study of the Võro-language revitalization in Estonia, this article explores the way teachers function as policy actors in the broader context of the school. As policy actors, the language teachers' appropriation of regional–language policy helps simultaneously to reproduce and challenge existing ideologies in the school environment. I explore the teachers' understandings of their power and freedom to inform their navigation of the circumscribed choices offered in a post-Soviet educational system. [language, anthropology of policy, teachers, Baltic]

Go to article

Optional Scrambling In Child And Adult Ukrainian, Roksolana Mykhaylyk Aug 2010

Optional Scrambling In Child And Adult Ukrainian, Roksolana Mykhaylyk

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This dissertation investigates direct object scrambling in Ukrainian. Examination of various syntactic structures has demonstrated that Ukrainian speakers observe semantic/pragmatic constraints on scrambling insofar as only partitive/definite objects are shifted. However, it appears that the syntactic movement is applied only optionally given that objects can remain in situ even when appropriate semantic/pragmatic conditions for movement are met. This research investigates the hypothesis that what underlies scrambling is an obligatory grammatical process, but one that may be expressed in at least one of two ways: by syntactic movement or by prosodic (re)contouring. Apparent `optionality' of scrambling thus results from its simply …

Go to article

Frequency, Gradience, And Variation In Consonant Insertion, Young-Ran An Aug 2010

Frequency, Gradience, And Variation In Consonant Insertion, Young-Ran An

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This dissertation addresses the extent to which linguistic behavior can be described in terms of the projection of patterns from existing lexical items, through an investigation of Korean reduplication. Korean has a productive pattern of reduplication in which a consonant is inserted in a vowel-initial base, illustrated by forms such as alok-talok `mottled,' oto -poto; `chubby.' A wide range of consonants may be inserted, with variation both within and across speakers. Based on study of a Korean corpus as well as experiments in which native speakers formed reduplicated versions of nonce words, I argue that the choice of inserted consonants …

Go to article

Commodifying Creativity: Class, Labor, And Authorship In Isabella Whitney's “A Sweet Nosgay”, Janette Cavazos Aug 2010

Commodifying Creativity: Class, Labor, And Authorship In Isabella Whitney's “A Sweet Nosgay”, Janette Cavazos

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Isabella Whitney, the first woman to publish secular verse under her own name, is generally considered by scholars in terms of gender. My thesis argues she should be seen, instead, through her identity as a working-class writer. Her book of poetry, A Sweet Nosgay (1573), is shaped by her efforts to make her way in the world of print publication by commodifying creativity into a product. My thesis assesses the content of her poetry on the basis of class, which was the impetus for this commodification. My focus gives full authority to her as a Renaissance writer, one who resists …

Go to article

‘Diversa De Mí Misma’: Silence As Performative Resistance In Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Marcia A. Caltabiano-Ponce Aug 2010

‘Diversa De Mí Misma’: Silence As Performative Resistance In Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Marcia A. Caltabiano-Ponce

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s silences, including her final and mysterious withdrawal from letters, were not empty spaces at all but highly loaded performative resistances to patriarchal control. My work is based on Judith Butler's poststructural theory on performance and subject construction, with support from postcolonial and feminist theories. The approach is a break from the historical and popular gendered discourses that surround her final years, one that explores the loaded gaps and borders that provide liminal spaces for the transcendence of her voice and gender over the ages. I address the research, speculation, and theories that have misread …

Go to article

Feminism, Imperialism, Utopianism, And Science Fiction In Margaret Cavendish's “Blazing World", Terina Garza Vazquez Aug 2010

Feminism, Imperialism, Utopianism, And Science Fiction In Margaret Cavendish's “Blazing World", Terina Garza Vazquez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623-1673), the Duchess of Newcastle, was a woman writer in seventeenth-century England who was the first woman in history to be allowed within the halls of the Royal Society. She was also the first woman to write what should be considered the first work of science fiction by a woman titled The Description of a New World Called, The Blazing World, or simply The Blazing World. This thesis focuses on The Blazing World which offers a proto-feminist critique of imperialism and of gender relations in seventeenth-century England and of England’s emergent imperialist culture and points to a …

Go to article

Counterterrorism Intelligence Analysis: Language As Threat, Vulnerability, And Risk, Ibpp Editor Jul 2010

Counterterrorism Intelligence Analysis: Language As Threat, Vulnerability, And Risk, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the role of language in describing possible membership in or connection to al Qaeda.

Go to article

Characterization: A Content Analysis Of Pulitzer-Awarded And Traditional Features, Linda Janet Tobler Jul 2010

Characterization: A Content Analysis Of Pulitzer-Awarded And Traditional Features, Linda Janet Tobler

Theses and Dissertations

Characterization in Pulitzer-awarded features and traditional features was measured using a characterization typology developed by the author. Although some of the results were statistically constrained by a small n, those results which were statistically significant reflect that what separates Pulitzer-winning features from regular features are those elements of characterization particular to scene: a character's distinctive physical characteristics, clothing and possessions; the setting and environment as it defines a character; a physical description of character that is not lineament nor habitual posture or expression but bodily appearance in the immediate moment; a character's movements and actions, facial expressions, words, and …

Go to article

A Survey Of Definition And Its Role In Strengthening Design Theory, Robert Andruchow Jul 2010

A Survey Of Definition And Its Role In Strengthening Design Theory, Robert Andruchow

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper argues that an essential task for managing complexity in design is clarification of key terms within the field, and most importantly the term that defines the field itself: Design. This position rests on the argument that theory—a key tool for managing complexity in design—is weakened by ambiguous terminology, and crucially, ambiguity of the word design. Although it has been well documented that design is a highly ambiguous term and that this is problematic for the field as a whole, many designers are resigned to this fact since it is unclear how one can resolve differences of opinion about …

Go to article

Variability Of Syntactic Complexity In Persons With And Without Multiple Sclerosis, Kristin Diane Bjorkman Jul 2010

Variability Of Syntactic Complexity In Persons With And Without Multiple Sclerosis, Kristin Diane Bjorkman

Theses and Dissertations

Several recent studies have suggested that persons with multiple sclerosis (MS) have diminished syntactic complexity. A greater variability in responses to a variety of tasks has also been noted for persons with MS. However, naturalistic data on syntactic complexity and the complexity's variability in persons with MS have not been examined. In the present study, 8 volunteers with MS (age 18-70 years) and 10 adults without MS participated in both a 15-minute conversational language sample and a sentence completion task in two different sessions. No significant differences were found between groups on any measure, and variability within the groups was …

Go to article

Marital Naming/Naming Marriage: Language And Status In Family Law, Suzanne A. Kim Jul 2010

Marital Naming/Naming Marriage: Language And Status In Family Law, Suzanne A. Kim

Indiana Law Journal

What's in a name? Based on current family law and policy debates, the answer would seem to be: a whole lot. Today's discussion of legal prohibitions of same-sex marriage abounds with the assumption that language, in the form of names and labels, is deeply meaningful from a status perspective. Missing from this debate, however, is a careful examination of the role that names and labels play in the construction of the status category of marriage. This Article fills this gap in family law scholarship by providing an explicit account of how language plays a critical role in reflecting and reinforcing …

Go to article

Juntos, Pero No Revueltos: Actitudes Entre Monolingües Y Bilingües En El Aula, Miriam Cruz Jul 2010

Juntos, Pero No Revueltos: Actitudes Entre Monolingües Y Bilingües En El Aula, Miriam Cruz

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Por ser el sur de Texas, región de nuestra universidad de estudio, una comunidad principalmente bilingüe, y dada su ubicación geográfica fronteriza con México, existe en las aulas un número elevado de estudiantes bilingües. Por lo tanto, este trabajo de investigación se interesa en el estudio comparativo de las actitudes de los estudiantes monolingües frente a los bilingües en un curso de español para principiantes no hispanohablantes. En mi estudio distinguiré éste factor entre estudiantes bilingües, es decir, aquellos capaces de hablar o entender el español, en comparación con estudiantes monolingües que sólo hablan y entienden el inglés. Considero también …

Go to article

Hydric Life: A Nietzschean Reading Of Postcolonial Communication, Elena F. Ruiz-Aho Jun 2010

Hydric Life: A Nietzschean Reading Of Postcolonial Communication, Elena F. Ruiz-Aho

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the question of marginalization in cross-cultural communication from the perspectives of hermeneutic philosophy and postcolonial theory. Specifically, it focuses on European colonialism‘s effect on language and communicative practices in Latin America. I argue colonialism creates a deeply sedimented but unacknowledged background of inherited cultural prejudices against which social and political problems of oppression, violence and marginalization, especially towards women, emerge—but whose roots in colonial and imperial frameworks have lost transparency. This makes it especially difficult for postcolonial subjects to meaningfully express their own experiences of psychic dislocation and fragmentation because the discursive background used to communicate these …

Go to article

Politics Of Language: The Struggle For Power In Schools In Mali And Burkina Faso, A’Ame Kone Jun 2010

Politics Of Language: The Struggle For Power In Schools In Mali And Burkina Faso, A’Ame Kone

International Education

Power can be equated to the possession of a particular language used to navigate the world. In Mali and Burkina Faso, two former colonies of France, language choice for instruction in mainstream primary schools remains a struggle between the powerful and the powerless. Fifty years after independence from France, both countries continue to recognize French as the official language and as the medium of instruction in primary schools. With low literacy rates and high dropout rates in both countries, attention must be given to the effects French language has on these two post-colonial societies. First-acquired language instruction has been shown …

Go to article

‘Yeah, He’S My Daddy’: Linguistic Constructions Of Fictive Kinships In A Street-Level Sex Work Community, Kathleen Weinkauf Jun 2010

‘Yeah, He’S My Daddy’: Linguistic Constructions Of Fictive Kinships In A Street-Level Sex Work Community, Kathleen Weinkauf

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper examines how language assists in the construction of fictive kinship networks amongst U.S. street-level sex workers, thereby establishing affective ties and obligations as well as a definitive power structure between various members of their community and social hierarchy. Research findings suggest that these kin structures impact sex workers’ sense of agency in relation to others while simultaneously providing an additional means of insulation, alienation, and even exclusion from the dominant culture. This study indicates that language use within this community operates as a discursive framework that plays a critical role in relationship formation and maintenance.

Go to article

Scores: A Story Collection, Robert Paul Moreira May 2010

Scores: A Story Collection, Robert Paul Moreira

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This is a short story collection dealing with the themes of identity, immigration, death, and ethnicity, all juxtaposed with the game of baseball. The critical introduction of this thesis begins with a detailed survey of the baseball fiction genre, with a focus on seminal works and their respective authors, and their place in American literature. I examine major authors outside the genre who have employed baseball (metaphorically, symbolically, synecdochically) in their own works, as well as analyze the effect and evolution of realism in baseball fiction, and the themes of ethnicity and identity. I explore my own works in the …

Go to article

El Huisache Es Pocho, Pero Las Raíces No: Poems, Isaac Chavarria May 2010

El Huisache Es Pocho, Pero Las Raíces No: Poems, Isaac Chavarria

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This project is a collection of pocho poetry. The poems in my collection emphasize my identity as pocho. The term “pocho” is often used as a derogatory term describing a Mexican American who has lost the ability to speak Spanish. I recontextualize the border pocho as an occupant of two nationalities, as well as several social classes. Along with poets who identify themselves as Chicano/a, I am inspired by family and acquaintances who self identify as Chicano/a, Hispanic, Mexican American, or Mexican. I believe the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas is a unique enclave influenced by its people, landscape, …

Go to article

Wrestling Windmills, Christopher Girman May 2010

Wrestling Windmills, Christopher Girman

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This manuscript explores the teaching process by following the protagonist‟s four year journey at a middle school in Edinburg, Texas. The narrator passes through four distinct phases: first-year angst, pedagogic subversion, converting the natives, and, ultimately, personal and professional acceptance. Daily interaction disrupts the narrator‟s worldview, complicating his relationships with peers, colleagues, family, and the local community. In a series of moves designed to make himself more accessible to students, the narrator encounters sexual, racial, and gender bias—much of it his own. Finally, after a serious accident in Central Mexico during Spring Break, the protagonist relies on his students to …

Go to article

Between Silver And Glass, Catherine V. Lopez May 2010

Between Silver And Glass, Catherine V. Lopez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The critical introduction explores my stories, as well as my influences, and ultimate desires for said stories. The stories themselves explore a variety of topics. They are stories about growing up. They are stories about being a girl. They are stories about the magical world we live in. They are the sort of stories I'd like to read if I ever have free time again.

Go to article

An Attempt At Understanding Nietzsche's "On Truth And Lying In An Extra-Moral Sense", John David Lee Apr 2010

An Attempt At Understanding Nietzsche's "On Truth And Lying In An Extra-Moral Sense", John David Lee

Theses

This thesis is a reflection upon and evaluation of Nietzsche’s conception of language as presented in his early and posthumously published essay On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense. I take Nietzsche in On Truth and Lying to be launching a full scale attack on traditional accounts of language and truth. He counters such conceptions by presenting what he takes to be the “forgotten” origin of language, which he presents as consisting of a threefold process of metaphor formation. This conception of the origin of language is rather technical and, as I will try to show, is doing quite …

Go to article

Imaging And Imaginings Of Hawaiianness In The Contemporary Hawaiian Islands, Ashley Meredith Apr 2010

Imaging And Imaginings Of Hawaiianness In The Contemporary Hawaiian Islands, Ashley Meredith

Anthropology

The desire for the Hawaiian Kingdom to be restored and recognized as a nation-state has been a common interest among Hawaiians since the illegal United States occupation in 1893. However, colonial induced turbulence, caused by annexation, statehood, an early 20th century ban on Hawaiian language and cultural activities, the 50 percent blood quantum rule, and tourism, have had a profound impact on perceptions of Hawaiianness and Hawaiian identity and unity. With this historical backdrop, the thesis presents an analysis of the role and impact of the visual landscape in the construction and maintenance of individual and group identity in Hawai`i. …

Go to article

Who Owns Disability? An Investigation Into The Politics Of Representation, Shelby Forbes Apr 2010

Who Owns Disability? An Investigation Into The Politics Of Representation, Shelby Forbes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I show how a community of professionals providing equine therapy to individuals with disabilities discursively make sense of their enterprise. A market metaphor illustrates how disability is constructed as the capital sustaining the livelihood of their industry. Disability is a problem-centered concept. It is generally conceptualized according to a medical model which locates disability within the individual, as opposed to understanding it in a sociological sense which accounts for structural, cultural, and communicative factors. Therapy, on the other hand, is problem-determined-it needs to explicitly determine a problem to be treated in order to sustain itself as an …

Go to article

A Longitudinal Study Of Language And Ideology In Congress, Bei Yu, Daniel Diermeier Apr 2010

A Longitudinal Study Of Language And Ideology In Congress, Bei Yu, Daniel Diermeier

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents an analysis of the legislative speech records from the 101st-108th U.S. Congresses using machine learning and natural language processing methods. We use word vectors to represent the speeches in both the Senate and the House, and then use text categorization methods to classify the speakers by their ideological positions. The classification accuracy indicates the level of distinction between the liberal and the conservative ideologies. Our experiment results demonstrate an increasing partisanship in the Congress between 1989 and 2006. Ideology classifiers trained on the House speeches can predict the Senators' ideological positions well (House-to-Senate prediction), however the Senate-to-House …

Go to article

Languages And Loyalties: Shaping Identity In Tunisia And The Netherlands, Krista Moore Apr 2010

Languages And Loyalties: Shaping Identity In Tunisia And The Netherlands, Krista Moore

Macalester International

No abstract provided.

Go to article

The Influence Of Family Factors On Neuropsychological Outcome In A Clinical Sample Of Preschool Children, Kara Leiser Apr 2010

The Influence Of Family Factors On Neuropsychological Outcome In A Clinical Sample Of Preschool Children, Kara Leiser

Dissertations (1934 -)

Children impacted by neurological insult or disorder are at risk for impaired neuropsychological functioning; however, there is substantial variation in outcome, with many affected children doing very well. The factors that explain the variation in outcome in children with compromised neurological functioning are poorly understood. The present study examined the nature of relationships among family factors, including primary caregivers' appraisals of stress (i.e., primary caregivers' injury/medical condition-related stress, parenting stress, psychological distress, and relationship quality) and the primary caregiver-child relationship, and neuropsychological outcomes (i.e., intellectual functioning; language skills; adaptive, socio-emotional, and behavioral functioning). A clinical sample of 72 preschool children …

Go to article

Fixing Patent Boundaries, Tun-Jen Chiang Feb 2010

Fixing Patent Boundaries, Tun-Jen Chiang

Michigan Law Review

The claims of a patent are its boundaries, defining the scope of exclusion. This boundary function of claims is undermined by the fact that claims can be changed throughout the life of the patent, thereby moving the patent boundary. A boundary that can be moved at-will is one that the public cannot rely upon. This Article explores the problems of malleable patent boundaries. If a claim can be amended to permit a patentee to capture something he did not foresee when filing the patent application, the amendment confers an unexpected windfall that did not contribute to incentives to invent before …

Go to article

Feminist, Linguistic, And Rhetorical Perspectives On Language Reform, William Dorner Jan 2010

Feminist, Linguistic, And Rhetorical Perspectives On Language Reform, William Dorner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As people become aware that society treats women unfairly, they also perceive related shortcomings in the way that Modern English references women. For example, many have objected to the so-called generic he, the third-person masculine pronoun employed to refer to a person of unknown gender, and provided several alternatives, few of which have been widely adopted. Nonetheless, change is evident in the case of they becoming an increasingly common solution to refer to a person of unidentified gender. The intentional reform of the Modern English language, both in the past and present, has been a result of people's reactions to …

Go to article

A Study Of Plato's Cratylus, Geoffrey Scott Bagwell Jan 2010

A Study Of Plato's Cratylus, Geoffrey Scott Bagwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the last century, philosophers turned their attention to language. One place they have looked for clues about its nature is Plato's Cratylus, which considers whether names are naturally or conventionally correct. The dialogue is a source of annoyance to many commentators because it does not take a clear position on the central question. At times, it argues that language is conventional, and, at other times, defends the view that language is natural. This lack of commitment has led to a long-standing dispute over the outcome of the dialogue. I argue that the Cratylus provides no clear resolution to this …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last