Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Domestic Workers In Hong Kong: Their Stories, Self-Perception, And Their Portrayal In Hong Kong And Filipino Media, Lauren Ernst

Senior Theses

Foreign domestic helpers are one of the most common and unique sights in current-day Hong Kong. On the weekdays, they can be seen walking dogs, taking children to school, and completing chores around the house. On Sundays, they flood the streets in full force, relaxing and taking advantage of their one day off a week. This population faces many challenges during their time in Hong Kong – these challenges are modern as well as historical and include financial, governmental, emotional, and social challenges. Along with the challenges of day to day life, they also face challenges in that their stories …

Talk Shows And Language Attitudes: A Sociolinguistic Investigation Of Language Attitudes Towards Taiwan Mandarin Among Chinese Mainlanders, Chun-Yi Peng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at the effects of media exposure and language ideologies on Mandarin speakers’ acceptability judgments. Although there is a long-standing tradition against citing media exposure as a source of language variation, I show that 1) media exposure to a non-local perceptually salient variant can make people more likely to rate non-local linguistic features as grammatically acceptable, and 2) media exposure shapes people’s language attitudes—a new alignment of attitudes is emerging among the millennials on the mainland.

Data were collected through an online survey consisting of grammaticality judgments, matched-guise tasks, open-ended attitudinal questions, and demographic questions. The data show …