Reading and Language Commons^™

Damn The Dams: Framing ‘Schizophrenic’ Discourses Of The Hindu Right, Nandita Ghosh

Critical Humanities

This article examines the concept of schizophrenia as a cultural metaphor in order to analyze the Hindu Right’s contradictory language-framing politics within the public domain, particularly in relation to building mega dams on rivers Narmada and Bhagirathi. In so doing, it intends to examine the nature of the public domain itself that enables such framing politics within the context of late 20^th-early-21^st-century global capital. Language battles in the public domain have intensified during this period, especially through various forms of digital media. In India, the various groups that form the Hindu Right have often mixed the …

0887: Gwenyth E. Hood Collection, 1889-2023, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Gwenyth Elise Hood was born on December 10, 1955, to Thomas Arthur Hood and Marion Louise Snee Hood in White Plains, NY, but moved with her family to Brandon, Vermont at the age of seven. She developed a love of reading and writing at an early age, discovering some favorite authors—Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, and J.R.R. Tolkien—at roughly the same time, in early adolescence. Then came Dante. Dante drew her to learn Latin and Italian; she had already started on French due to family heritage and the availability of the language in High School. In 1979 she won a University of …

The Progressive Distribution Of Sentences Containing Relative Clauses In Japanese Textbooks Of English, Risa Nakagawa

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Relative clauses have been researched and found to be one of the more difficult English grammar items for people who speak English as a Second Language (henceforth, ESL) and people who use English as a Foreign Language (henceforth, EFL). In particular, objective relative clauses are one of the most challenging items for English learners. (Gibson, 1998; Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson, 2001; Mellow, 2006; Hawkins, 1994; King & Just, 1991; Otsuka & Aburai, 2003). By examining the frequency of subjective and objective relative clauses in six English textbooks which are being used in middle schools and high schools in Japan, the …

A Meaning-Based Approach To The Language Of The Toefl Test And Japanese Efl Textbooks: A Functional Analysis Of Patterns Of Lexico-Grammatical Meanings And Structures, Koshin Fukuyoshi

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The primary objective of this research project is to show varying degrees of textual and semantic contributions that semantic density and grammatical metaphors make in the way that TOEFL iBT reading sections and Japanese EFL textbooks are used. This research is conducted from two theoretical perspectives within the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The first analysis is to investigate logical and semantic relationships within clause complexes in order to identify structural variations and their textual distributions. The second analysis focuses on the use of ideational and interpersonal grammatical metaphors and on the way that they further compact or untangle textual …

Formal And Functional Linguistic Properties Of Esl Textbooks, Jessica Shea Lewis

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Based on the formal and functional perspectives espoused in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the main purpose of this thesis was to investigate the extent to which such lexico-grammatical features as lexical density, choice of nominal groups, and grammatical metaphor are used in ESL texts to scaffold target language proficiency levels. Of the number of lexico-grammatical metafunctions and their functional constituents, interpersonal metafunctional categories were analyzed from these three functional features in this thesis in order to reveal the ways in which interpersonal categories and the lexico-grammatical features are correlated as the level of difficulty of each text increases.

The analysis …

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Using Reading Cbm To Predict Performance On Smarter Balanced Assessment, Jonathan Wesley Shank

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study examined the relationship between AIMSweb oral reading fluency (R-CBM) and reading comprehension (MAZE) curriculum-based measures and performance on the English language arts/literacy (ELA/L) component of the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) using a sample of students in third through fifth grade (N = 499). Pearson correlations between R-CBM, MAZE, and SBA were moderate to high, with R-CBM generally demonstrating the strongest relationships with coefficients ranging from .73 to .75. Results from hierarchical multiple regression models indicated that R-CBM provided strong predictive validity for SBA performance among third grade students (63.4% variance explained, p<.001), while the addition of MAZE to the equation was negligible (1.4% additional variance explained, p<.001). Similar findings resulted from the fourth and fifth grade multiple regression models. The predictive value of R-CBM and MAZE each decreased as grade level increased. Results support continued use of CBM to predict success on the Smarter Balanced Assessment, although CBM using cloze passages explained little variance in high-stakes test scores beyond that of oral reading fluency alone.

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A Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures: A Systemic Functional And Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Intersemiotic Evaluation In University Science Textbooks, Leo William Roehrich

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Images are an invaluable medium in science textbooks for clarifying confusing concepts and establishing a visual foundation for field related topics. The integration of image and language within a single unit of discourse builds a larger meaning than the two semiotic forms are capable of producing separately. Visual representations are chosen for their functional value in aiding linguistic explanation and also for their aesthetic value in textual enhancement. Aesthetic choice is a matter of subjective opinion. Although science writing is generally classified as objective, authors embed personal opinion in written and visual discourse. The choice of visual medium has a …

Who Is You? Identifying "You" In Second-Person Narratives: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Analysis, Davina Kittrell

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In narratives, characters are introduced to readers through the use of textual clues left by the author. These clues, often in the form of pronouns, enable the reader to follow the various characters involved throughout the story. Pronouns have no lexical content and are used as referential devices, guiding the reader through the story and helping them recover the identity of the story’s characters. However, some narratives employ a literary technique in which the story’s protagonist is introduced by the pronoun “you” with no previous textual information given. As a result the pronoun “you” is assumed to be exophoric, pointing …

A Contrastive Systemic Functional Analysis Of Causality In Japanese And English Academic Articles, Masaki Shibata

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Typological differences between languages have been a much debated topic in linguistic studies. Despite their usefulness in understanding syntactic features of various languages, such contrastive analyses have yet to thoroughly explore semantic variation among languages; furthermore, the results obtained have not been practically utilized in other areas of applied linguistics. This situation may come from the fact that a large number of contrastive studies have eclectically examined isolated areas of language variation either from syntactic, morphological, or from pragmatic perspectives. Viewing this issue from another angle, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) focuses on language from a multi-dimensional perspective, where language is …

Text Complexity In Graded Readers: A Systemic Functional Look, Sally-Ann Newnham

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Utilizing the Systemic Functional Linguistic frameworks of taxis, logico-semantic relation, grammatical metaphor, and appraisal, this thesis examines two of the most popular rewrites: Jane Eyre and The Canterville Ghost from the Macmillian Reader, Black Cat Reading and Training, Oxford Bookworm, and Penguin ELT graded reader series. Although a considerable body of literature exists concerning graded readers, the majority of research tends to focus on statistical gains in fluency development or vocabulary acquisition and their retention rather than the linguistic properties of these texts. Furthermore, studies on textual adaptations primarily take a broad corpus-style approach, contrasting altered and unaltered material, rather …

Individual Novices And Collective Experts: Collective Scaffolding In Wiki-Based Small Group Writing, Mimi Li

English Faculty Research

This article reports on a case study that explored the process of wiki-based collaborative writing in a small group of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at a Chinese university. The study examined the archived logs from the group wiki ‘Discussion’ and ‘History’ modules with a focus on the group members' scaffolded interaction when co-constructing texts in the wiki space. The analysis revealed that the participants were actively engaged in reciprocal communication in terms of content discussion, social talk, task management, technical communication and language negotiation. They were also found to have scaffolded each other's writing efforts during co-constructing …

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0078: John Mckernan Papers, 1967-1975, Marshall University Special Collections

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John Joseph McKernan (11 May 1942 – 17 April 2025) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and taught at Marshall University from 1967 to 2010. He arrived with a M.A. in English from the University of Arkansas and earned two additional degrees while teaching full-time: a M.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in English from Boston University.

McKernan published poetry widely, including in the Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Ohio Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review. He published four collections: Walking Along the Missouri River (Lost Roads …

0075: Floyd J. Smith Diaries, 1887-1892, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

The Floyd J. Smith diaries were written between 1887 and 1893, when Floyd Smith was a young man of 16 to 21 years of age. The entries are concerned primarily with his great interest in reading, music, painting, photography, and hunting. Included in the collection are two medical notebooks from the University of Maryland, where Mr. Smith was a student. Of particular interest in the diaries are the passages describing holiday activities in Grafton, West Virginia, and others. The last diary describes his first year at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore.