European Languages and Societies Commons^™

Al-Manfiyun Exiliados: Voices Of The Lebanese Diaspora In Mexican Literature, Mia Del Rosario

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This thesis explores two key works of Mexican literature published in the late 20^th century in terms of their cultural relevance in the Mexican literary sphere. The novels En el verano, la tierra by Carlos Martínez Assad and Las hojas muertas by Bárbara Jacobs center around the infrequently-explored identities of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico and their Mexican-born descendants through a sociocultural lens, discussing their identity negotiation in the context of 20^th-century Mexico, which was in the process of redefining its national identity after the Mexican Revolution. During this time, people of ethnicities that did not fall into …

A Constructional Approach To Multimodal Linguistic Analysis, Fredy A. Mendieta Rodriguez

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation investigates the systematic organization of co‑speech gestures in referential communication, using data from Spanish‑speaking monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals. While traditional gesture research treats pointing as a universal phenomenon, the current analyses show that gestural productions display internal phonological patterning and context‑conditioned variability that parallels spoken constructions. Quantitative results demonstrate how referential distance and communicative context (find‑it versus misunderstanding situations) shape the selection of embodied phonological features—handshape, orientation, movement, and beats—revealing consistent associations between form and interactional demands. Qualitative analyses trace how gestural realizations reduce across discourse as shared understanding emerges. A new complexity metric, based on token frequency …

Reduction Of The Vocalic Sequence /Ea/ In Tapatío Spanish, Karol Ibarra Zetter

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Reduction of the Vocalic Sequence /ea/ in Tapatío Spanish

This study investigates reduction in the vocalic sequence /ea/ in spontaneous conversational Tapatío Spanish from CCT: El Corpus Conversacional Tapatío (Martínez Gómez & Ibarra Zetter, 2017). An example of this phenomenon is the vocalic sequence /ea/ in the word in teatro ‘theater,’ which is often produced as [ˈtja.tɾo]. However, the word azotea ‘rooftop’ is usually pronounced [a.so.ˈte.a] by CCT speakers. The lexical frequency of these words is one factor that influences the degree of /ea/ reduction. Typically, there is a correlation between the frequency of lexical items and their phonetic reduction …

¿Qué Lengua Hablas?: The Interaction Of Languages, Education And Identity In A Majority/Minority Sociolinguistic Setting, Luisa F. Hurtado Iglesias

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This thesis presents a comparative analysis of language dynamics in two distinct contexts: the Tres Fronteras region, where Spanish and Portuguese intersect, and Cauca, Colombia, where Namtrik and Spanish coexist. Through qualitative research methods including interviews and ethnographic observations, the study examines the roles of these languages in shaping social interactions, cultural identities, and community dynamics.

By exploring language use patterns, attitudes, and policies in these regions, the thesis seeks to uncover similarities and differences in the ways Spanish, Portuguese, and Namtrik influence individuals' sense of belonging and cultural expression. Furthermore, the study examines the impact of historical, social, and …

Muertos Made In México: Necrocapitalismo En La Cultura Mexicana, Luis A. Gamboa

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Muertos Made in México: Necrocapitalismo en la cultura mexicana examina textos de la literatura mexicana desde 1810 hasta la actualidad, junto con estudios cinematográficos, para explorar los contextos históricos y culturales que han contribuido al surgimiento de la violencia en México como fenómeno social. Asimismo, siguiendo la teoría de la necropolítica (2019) de Joseph-Achille Mbembe (1967), se analizan el realismo-gore y la doctrina neoliberal en México (1980-presente) que impulsan la deshumanización y cosificación de colectivos marginados y la trata de personas en el mercado global. Muertos Made in México propone que en una sociedad caracterizada por la muerte y la …

Returning To Northern New Mexico. A Study Of The Nuevomexicano Lexicon., Guevara Del Angel

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Spanish in New Mexico prior to the 1900s was the predominant language of the region that began to be displaced with the growth of the English-speaking population during the 20th century. In this dissertation I refer to the Spanish language variety that has had the longest historical presence in northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado as Traditional New Mexican Spanish (TNMS, as per Bills & Vigil, 2008). This study aims to document aspects of maintenance and change regarding TNMS. The traditional heritage variety of New Mexican Spanish is changing in many ways, evolving from what has been documented in the …

Aging And Learning: Community Engagemente And Self-Efficacy In L2 Teaching To Elderly Learners, Leticia Rinaldi Souza

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The elderly population (60 years or older) has been increasing during the past decades around the world and is expected to reach two billion by 2050 (Scult, Haime, et al 2015). However, the misconception that elderly people are uncapable, or incompetent is still part of the imaginary constructed around such populations (Minichiello and Coulson, 2005). Older adults present powerful functional capacities and social activities lead to better performance and slower decreases in their memory and executive function (Scott, Masser, & Pachana, 2020). Thus, second language learning plays an effective role in enabling active and regular engagement in social and psychological …

O Ventre Como Espaço De Resistência Em Maria Firmina Dos Reis E Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Jessica Luana Bueno Dos Santos Ms.

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The issue of violence against reproductive capacity and the right to motherhood in the context of the African diaspora in Brazil and Puerto Rico was systematically placed in the background, especially in the literary field, as was the case with the attitudes of resistance practiced against such violence. Considering this reality, this thesis compares two texts that approach such violence from a place of resistance, evidencing practices of insubordination common to such contexts: “A escrava” (1887) by Maria Firmina dos Reis (1822-1917) and “Matronas” (2012) by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (1970). Specifically, this study examines and compares the representational strategies used …

Disrupting The (Post) Neoliberal Order In Latin America Through The Representation Of Fictional Corporate Office Narratives In Argentina And Mexico (2007-2010), Juliana Todescan

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Due to the expansion of the neoliberal and global order in Latin America in the 1990s, national states and citizens are subjected to the free market interests regulated and managed by for profit corporations and the financial industry. Considering this a critical change in the social organization of Latin America, I compare narratives from Argentina and Mexico that imagine cosmopolitan cities being colonized by the corporate logic of profit. My analysis focuses on the representation of low level office workers in Antonio Ortuño’s novel Recursos humanos (2007), Guillermo Saccomanno’s novel El oficinista (2010), and Aníbal Jarkowski’s El trabajo (2007), and …

Trespassing And Transcending: Newcomer Crossing And Movement In Latina And Latin American Literature, Marina C. Todeschini

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In times when walls are raised and human diversity condemned, stories that present the free urban movement of marginalized characters become political. While the system excludes the brown/black newcomer bodies and restricted them to the margins, the texts analyzed here bring these bodies to the center, claiming their active role in the construction of the urban fabric. This way, Latin American and Latina authors are contesting the idea of citizenship and the right to the city of newcomer subjects by narrating the freedom of geographic and symbolic movement of often disenfranchised peoples. This dissertation analyzes the claims to urban rights …

La Llorona In Nuevomexicana Poetic Narratives: Reflections On Writing And Memory, Sutherland Jaramillo

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This paper focuses on poetic narratives that consider the folklore figure of La Llorona. I argue that contemporary nuevomexicana poets are responding to regional narratives as a way of challenging traditional structures of the lore and female archetypes to reclaim the identity and voice of the figure of La Llorona. Through literature that considers structure and archetype of the lore, Chicana feminist theory, and spectral theory, this essay surveys a selection of poems: “La Llorona Speaks” (2018) by Mercedez Holtry, “Una Carta de Amor de la Llorona” (2011) by Jessica Helen Lopez and “La Llorona” (2018) by Joanna Vidaurre-Trujillo. Through …

Written And Oral Histories Of The Chicano Movement At New Mexico Highlands University, 1968-1970, Julianna C. Wiggins

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This thesis presents spoken, written, and drawn histories produced before the Chicano Movement at New Mexico Highlands University in November 1970 and the discourses which have followed in the movement’s wake fifty years later. This qualitative study explores the campus climate at NMHU using the student newspaper Highlands Candle. Its contents from 1968 until 1971 are contrasted with the multiple voices of a generation which adopted the term Chicano as a racial identifier into the NMHU vernacular. Social factors including the formation of student-of-color groups and the return of veterans from the Vietnam War appear to change the student …

Revealing Silences: The Representation Of Black Identities In Hispanic Afro-Caribbean Autobiographical And Biographical Writing, Bryn Campbell

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This project explores how the historical contexts of the Hispanic Caribbean, including the regions of the Circum-Caribbean and the Caribbean Diasporas in the United States, have sustained dominant racial and nationalist ideologies that continue to silence or negate the identity of Afro-Caribbean subjects in national letters. My research focuses on the autobiographical and biographical writing of four Hispanic Afro-Caribbean men: Autobiografía de un esclavo (1840) by Juan Francisco Manzano¾originally published and translated to English in 1840 by Richard R. Madden¾ Klabel (2002) by Víctor Virgilio López García, Down These Mean Streets (1967) by Piri Thomas, and Las criadas de la …

Performing (Female) Masculinity In The Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World: An Analysis Of The Mujer Varonil In Gender And Genre, Nathaniel L. Redekopp

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The following dissertation on the trope of the mujer varonil^[1] employs bibliographical research in literary criticism and historiography to identify and describe socio-historic attitudes about gender. In particular, this dissertation examines gender as communicated by texts that use the mujer varonil, or “masculine woman”, characterization to either praise or vilify exceptional female subjects in ways that highlight normative limits for masculine and feminine gender expression. Four texts are examined: a male author writes each and each represents a literary genre that was significant in early modern Spain and Spanish America. These genres are the hagiography, the relación, the …

Del Entusiasmo Al Desencanto: Ironía Y Modernidad En La Obra De Tres Poetas Tzántzicos, Juan Carlos González Granja

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation I study the poetry of the Tzántzicos, an Ecuadorian cultural movement that in the 1960s intended to subvert the social order and assert the role of literature in the destabilization of the capitalist society. I analyze the poetry of Ulises Estrella, Raúl Arias, and Humberto Vinueza as a biography of a generation of leftist intellectuals engaged with the Revolution, and as a meaningful moment in the history of Ecuadorian modernity. I identify two moments in the continuum of this poetry across the decades from the 1960s to the present: enthusiasm and disenchantment. The moment of enthusiasm registers …

La Ausencia De Lo Afro En La Identidad Nacional De México: Raza Y Los Mecanismos De La Invisibilización De Los Afrodescendientes En La Historia, La Cultura Popular, Y La Literatura Mexicana, Dora Careaga-Coleman

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Recognizing the dire need for foundational texts in the burgeoning field of Afro-Mexican Studies, this dissertation illuminates transhistorical social, political, and cultural processes that led to the marginalization (invisibilization) of the African presence in Mexico. The project begins with an examination of the complementary relationship between hierarchy, integration, and 'blanquiamento' in the construction of Mexican national identity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and concludes with a discussion of Afromexicanos in popular culture from the golden age of Mexican cinema to the present. Chapter One demonstrates how from its implementation in the eighteenth century until its abolition by Jose Morelos …

The Word And The Flesh: The Transformation Of Female Slave Subject To Mystic Agent Through Performance In The Texts Of Úrsula De Jesus, Theresa (Chicaba) De Santo Domingo And Rosa Maria Egipcíaca, Rachel Spaulding

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Previous research about the African slave experience in the Ibero-Atlantic world has understood slave agency, or more polemically, slave autonomy, through the binary of accommodation versus resistance. However, current African Diaspora scholarship (Schwartz, Thornton, etc.) situates the slave experience within a spectrum of lived experiences. These lived experiences range from accommodation to resistance but often overlap: lived experiences expressed overtly as accommodation reveal covert resistance. My dissertation explores the words of three Afro-women: \xdarsula de Jesus (1604-1666), an Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Sister Teresa de Santo Domingo (1676-1748), also known as Sor Chicaba, who lived as a Dominican tertiary in Salamanca, Spain, …

Apocalyptic Expectations Among The Followers Of Pope Benedict Xiii (R. 1394—1423): Ms 940 Of The Trivulziana Library In Milan, Italy, Taylor Aaron

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In 1420 an anonymous follower of Pope Benedict XIII (r. 1394—1423) compiled a group of forty prophecies regarding his belief in the imminent arrival of the Antichrist entitled Las señales que serán quando el Anticristo verná a reynar. Although most scholars of apocalyptic literature during the Great Western Schism (1378—1417) conclude their studies with the Council of Constance and the election of Pope Martin V in 1417, this study demonstrates that apocalyptic thought evolved quickly among the dwindling supporters of Pope Benedict XIII. By examining the social, historical and literary context of Las señales, this dissertation sheds light on the …

Una Perspectiva Del Despojo: Cuerpo, Lengua Y Espacio Desde El Discurso Lésbico/Queer En La Literatura Fronteriza/Chicana, Cynthia Meléndrez

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Women writers on both sides of the US/Mexican border have rewritten Chicana-Fronteriza narratives by uncovering the individual memory of women and LGBTII communities along the US-Mexico Border. La tarima (2001) by Rosina Conde and Gulf Dreams (1996) by Emma Pérez reveal a consciousness of the social decay and domestic violence of urban border life. These authors deconstruct the identity of women and minorities by disassociating knowledge acquired through patriarchal structures. Moreover, Conde and Pérez break with established written patterns by mixing genres, and subverting traditional forms of language and notions of space. The dramatic and rapid changes on both sides …

Funny Girls: A Study Of The Graciosa In Four Early Modern Plays, Dolores Ruiz-Fabrega

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This study centers on the graciosa, the female stock comic figure of early modern Spanish theater. It focuses on the comical discourse of this character in order to underscore five basic reasons that prove that she is a figure of this theater that requires more scholarly focus. The graciosas that are analyzed are: Celia and Clara from Lope de Vegas La dama boba (1613), Isabel from Calderón de la Barca's La dama duende (1629), Flora from Francisco Rojas Zorrilla's Primero es la honra que el gusto (prior to 1648) and Irene from Agustín Moreto's La fuerza de la ley (1651). …

Declínio E Despertar Da Favela: Um Estudo (Auto) Etnográfico, José Luiz Santos Nogueira

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This thesis is made up primarily of auto-ethnographic studies. It is a collection of information about life in the favela (shanty town) as described by residents of the favelas with personal experience and by the author who is himself a resident of a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With a basis in facts, this study follows the appearance, development, decay, and redemption of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil. This work is based on the perspectives of literary production, cinema, culture and social projects, and personal testimonies of real events in the daily life of …

El Conflicto Armado A Través De El Tiempo: Análisis De Transitividad En Las Representaciones Discursivas De La Violencia (1998-2008), Félix Manuel Burgos

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Esta disertación es un análisis lingüístico que explora el discurso usado por el periódico más influyente de Colombia, El Tiempo, al reportar los eventos del conflicto armado colombiano. El análisis se basa en el estudio de 396 noticias publicadas durante el periodo 1998-2008. En estas noticias se examinan las características semántico-sintácticas de construcciones verbales que dan cuenta de hechos violentos cometidos por los diferentes actores del conflicto armado. Esta caracterización tiene como propósito evidenciar que un discurso, en apariencia neutral, representa de distintas formas las violencias del conflicto armado colombiano. Con ello se demuestra que el diario El Tiempo no …

Espacios Recorridos En La Escritura Sobre El Exilio: Luis Enrique Délano, Tununa Mercado Y Saúl Ibargoyen Islas En México, Marcela Patricia Zarate Fernandez

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

During the second half of the twentieth century, in many Latin American countries, military dictatorships that implemented a National Security Doctrine were developed, as a way to counteract the gradual attacks by socialist or communist groups. These political clashes were characterized by violence, fear instilled into society, the abolition of rights and freedoms as well as exile. The dissertation presented here is focused on the outcome that exile produced on those writers that lived this experience. Novels, biographies, autobiographies and testimonies about exile are characterized by presenting the memories emerging from the journey of exile. Through the observation of this …

Indita Que Si Indita Que No, Juan A. Romero Jr.

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Much has been written on the balladry of the US. and Mexico. Much has been written on the musical tradition in New Mexico. Much has been written on the tradition of Inditas in New Mexico and Southern Colorado. So one must ask the question, why another study on a subject which many have exhausted? This thesis is written in hopes of adding to the dialogue these scholars have left us. It is also written in hopes of providing an anthology or canon that in times past did not exist or was inaccessible for scholarly analysis. Since most Inditas are dispersed …

Crise Do Natural: Percepções E Representações Da Natureza E Suas Relações Com A Esfera Social Na Novíssima Prosa Latino-Americana, Danielle Murta De Laborde Affonso

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This thesis approaches the fictional works of three contemporary Latin American authors: the Brazilian writers Regina Rheda, Letícia Wierzchowski and the Argentine author Gustavo Nielsen. In selected works by these writers Humana Festa (2008); Os Aparados (2009) and El Corazón de Doli (2010), respectively, I analyze the literary representation of nature in relation to neoliberalism and globalization in Latin America. My study considers the explicit and implicit values attached to the ecological in contemporary society, how the environment is represented in contemporary literature and how it dialogues with current political, social and cultural trends. The thesis explores how the fictional …

Interlanguage Pragmatic Development In Native Speaker/Nonnative Speaker Participatory Online Environments, Adrienne Gonzales

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation seeks to discover the ways in which participation in an online social networking site affects interlanguage pragmatic development. Livemocha is an online social network centered around language learning that emphasizes the collaboration required in constructing language. This social networking site encourages learners to establish an identity through their user profiles and to reach out to other members through email, text-based chat, video chat, or peer-reviewed lessons. This study examines interaction in text-based chat between native speakers (NSs) and language learners of Spanish in this environment. Conversations were collected from seven participants over the course of one academic year …

Forging Alliances Across Fronteras: Transnational Narratives Of Female Migration And The Family, Vanessa De Veritch Woodside

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation examines the effects of transnational migration on women with particular attention to the (re-)negotiation of personal and cultural identity resulting from the adoption of novel roles within Chicana narratives of Mexican migration. Chapter One offers a historical background regarding the U.S.-Mexico border, (im)migration, and more specifically, women and migration, as well as an overview of pertinent Chicano migrant literature that serves as an appropriate point of departure for discussion of Chicana re-writings of such texts. This discussion offers border feminism as a framework for analyzing the representation of evolving feminine roles and familial configurations in the context of …

Estudio Sociolinguistico De La Marca Diferencial De Objeto Directo (Dom) En Dos Variedades Del Espanol Contemporaneo, Sonia Balasch Rodriguez

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This sociolinguistic-variationist investigation sheds light on two little-studied issues concerning Spanish DOM, or variable use of a before animate direct objects (DOs), in vernacular language: the complex interaction of co-occurring linguistic (type of verb; definiteness, specificity, grammatical number, topicality, type and syntactic position of DO) and social (speakers age, gender and occupation) features. The statistical analysis of over 1000 tokens of oral Spanish of Mérida, Venezuela, and Madrid, Spain, indicates that although a+OD is used more in Madrid (61% vs. 46%), both varieties show markedly parallel linguistic conditioning: the lexical effect of certain verbs (tener, ver, conocer, among others), as …

Ignacio Manuel Altamirano's Journey From 'Indio Puro' To Cultural Mestizo: Indigenous Identity, Mestizaje, And Nationalism In Nineteenth-Century Mexico, Angelica Sanchez-Clark

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Like many Mexican Liberal intellectuals, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (b. Tixtla, Guerrero, 1834; d. San Remo, Italy, 1893) played a central role in defining the role that the mestizo—and, by force of circumstance, the Indian—would play in the formation of national identity after Mexicos independence from Spain. This dissertation examines Altamirano's literary and political works, as well as his personal correspondence, and his experiences as a soldier, educator, and politician, in order to understand how Altamirano, represented as an 'indio puro' who underwent the transformation to mestizo, exemplifies the link between Mexico's colonial past and its struggle to define its national …

Mi Casa Es Su Casa: La Construcción De La Identidad Chicana Y El Desarrollo De La Doméstica En La Narrativa Chicana, Verónica Calvillo

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The development of the Chicano/a identity has prevailed as a main theme in a vast variety of Chicano/a Literature. This study analyses the construction of identity in female protagonists as they develop a domestic profession in the private and public sectors. The novels Face of An Angel written by Denise Chávez and Trini written by Estela Portillo-Trambley as well as selected poems written by Pat Mora set the stage for a dialogue between domestic workers and their employers as both parties negotiate their own identity and subsistence in a society where their presence involves a give and take for economic …