Education Commons^™

Finding Their Chrysanthemum: Linguistic Representation In Children's Literature, Marielena Zajac

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Children in America today struggle with finding themselves in the books they read due to societal expectations. From an early age, children are dictated on the correct way to speak and write in “American,” which can leave children and their home languages feeling unseen and dismissed. To help further the conversation and promotion of linguistic diversity in American society, this capstone analyzes dialectal representation in children’s books, with a heavy focus on attitudinal linguistic principles rather than prescriptive mechanics. The secondary research explores current literature and resources that discuss literacy acquisition in adolescents, trends in dialects in America, and childhood …

Why Study Language? Discussing Language And Its Influence On Gender Discrimination, Katelyn Eisenmann

Honors Projects

An applied research project, with the culminating piece being a panel discussion that focused on the ways in which language use and structure contribute to attitudes and perceptions of gender within our society, and the politics that surround concepts of gender.

Investigating Nonstandard Southern American English In Written Sources: A Historical Sociolinguistic Approach To The Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, Juliana Norton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine and describe vernacular speech in East Tennessee during the nineteenth-century. This study combines strategies and methodologies from both historical and sociolinguistics to examine dialect in written sources. Specifically, this study utilizes phonological and grammatical data from the Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires supplemented with data from other written sources to describe East Tennessee vernacular speech. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the geographic and social distributions of nonstandard past tense verbs to be and do are analyzed. The findings from this study suggest that nineteenth-century East Tennessee vernacular speech of white men …

An Interventionist Approach To Language Study Abroad: Exploring Metalinguistic Awareness In The Acquisition Of Spanish Through Digital Portfolio Documentation And Expert Mentorship, Meredith Mcgregor

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Language study abroad offers the possibility of acquiring a multitude of competencies, linguistic and otherwise. While historically study abroad research has emphasized linguistic gains in isolation, it has gradually moved towards a more sociocultural approach whereby individual factors and intercultural competencies are seen as integral to the process of acquiring knowledge of a language. With remaining gaps in the literature, and as new instruments emerge, so too do new opportunities for tracking and measuring learning outcomes in innovative ways. The present study, framed by the intervention hypothesis and sociocultural theory, utilizes the social media platform Google+ as a space to …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Somali Dialects In The United States: How Intelligible Is Af-Maay To Speakers Of Af-Maxaa?, Deqa Hassan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The objective of this study was to determine the degree of intelligibility of Af-Maay to Somali university student speakers (n=21) of Af-Maxaa in the United States by implementing a perceived intelligibility test. The investigator aimed to test whether time spent in the United States, language contact with Af-Maay speakers, native Somali dialect, or the region of origin in Somalia affected the intelligibility of Af-Maay. The one-sample t-test showed that Af-Maay is partially intelligible to speakers of Af-Maxaa; t(21)=4.623, p=.000. This appears to agree with Crystal's (1987) Type 5 language-dialect relationship category, where there is a partial intelligibility due to the …

How Esol Teachers Become Aware Of Communicative Peace, Josette Leblanc

MA TESOL Collection

This paper examines the implications that the relationship between teacher language awareness and communicative peace may have on educational programs for teachers of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). The evaluation begins by analyzing proposals set out by the applied peace linguist Francisco Gomes de Matos, who suggests that ESOL teachers should teach communicative peace as an element of communicative competence, and also that education programs should provide training to support this approach. By juxtaposing current literature on structural and linguistic violence with Gomes de Matos' classroom techniques, the hypothesis is made that teachers who would teach communicative peace …

Registers Of Supplication And Demand In English-As-A-Foreign-Language Technical Writing, Kuang-Je Chen

Theses Digitization Project

This project introduces theoretical discussion on five aspects of writing: register, genre, pragmatics, functional writing, and social function the goal of this project aims at improving business peoples' technical writing competence.

Chinese Voices: Towards An Ethnography Of English As A Second Language, Diane Niblack Fox

Dissertations and Theses

This study draws on ethnographic methods to provide background information for the English as a Second Language teacher who looks out at the classroom and asks, "Who are these Chinese students?" The goal is to let Chinese students describe for themselves their experiences learning English, both in China and in the United States.

Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Decisions Of Correctness In New Mexico Spanish, Leslie Merryl Kravitz

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the attitudes of Spanish speakers of an Albuquerque community toward local and standard Mexican Spanish. The preferences expressed and the linguistic elements involved in such decisions were explored. Sociolinguistic factors related to individual and group choices were also considered.

In order to probe the relationship between social and linguistic facts, a single community was investigated. Martineztown, a small, insular Albuquerque Spanish-speaking community was first observed with regard to availability of formal models of Spanish. Sociolinguistic and ethnographic interviews were then conducted. Additional interviews were completed in other New Mexico communities to …

Units Of Study On Eight American Patriotic Holidays, Nina Pearson

MA TESOL Collection

This materials development project consists of information and lesson plans related to eight patriotic holidays in the United States. It is intended to be used by English as a Second Language teachers in intermediate classes. Each unit consists of background information on a specific holiday, a lesson plan which included culture and grammar points, and follow-up activities. Each lesson includes three objectives: a sociolinguistic/cultural objective, a linguistic objective, and an interpersonal objective, which deals with the atmosphere in which the learning takes place. Similar interpersonal objectives are stated in each lesson and emphasize the importance of a supportive, no-threatening learning …

Tres Cuentos, Beatriz Cespedes De Fantini

MA TESOL Collection

Teachers of Spanish are often concerned primarily with the mechanical aspects of language. A student's knowledge of the language is principally determined by his mastery of vocabulary, correct verb forms, etc. By devoting so much concern to the purely linguistic aspects of communication, other important dimensions have often been ignored; for example, the "appropriateness" of language use in a given social context. Once this dimension is considered, it becomes clear that besides knowledge of the mechanical construct of language, the student must also acquire knowledge of what language choices are appropriate for each social situation.

In this work, three original …