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Full-Text Articles in Linguistic Anthropology

"Speak Arabic!": Arabic Dialect Comparison Videos And The Reconfiguration Of The Maghreb-Mashreq Language Ideology, Jacquelyn Stewart-Kuhn May 2024

"Speak Arabic!": Arabic Dialect Comparison Videos And The Reconfiguration Of The Maghreb-Mashreq Language Ideology, Jacquelyn Stewart-Kuhn

Honors Theses

There is a hidden power imbalance in the Arabic-speaking world. It is not related to warfare, politics, or oil, but language. For decades, Egyptian and Levantine (Mashreqi) dialects have been over-represented in Arabic language media, to the detriment of North African (Maghrebi) dialects. This imbalance has played a crucial role in reinforcing what Hachimi (2013) refers to as the “Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology,” i.e. the belief that Mashreqi dialects are superior to Maghrebi dialects. Yet in an era of social media, Mashreqi voices and dialects are becoming less dominant, and Arabic-speakers across the region are being increasingly exposed to Maghrebi voices …


Dungeons & Dragons: Fractals Of The Human Self, Katie Anderson Apr 2023

Dungeons & Dragons: Fractals Of The Human Self, Katie Anderson

Honors Theses

Dungeons & Dragons at its core is roleplay based storytelling, which implies the idea that the game is a work of fiction. While the world of Iad and the Free States of Tarvan does not exist on planet earth, the experiences and emotions felt by the players and their characters within the world are very much real. Players use extensions of themselves, their characters, to interact with the world around them, forging relationships and new lines of fate and destiny. Characters are fractals of their out of game personas, attached to one’s base personality and expanding outwards. The development of …


Student Attitudes Towards English Grammar, Evalyn H. Bassett May 2022

Student Attitudes Towards English Grammar, Evalyn H. Bassett

Honors Theses

The literature on English grammar is mostly on its history, standardization, educational implementations, how ideologies shape its frequency of usage, and how it is perceived by students learning English as a second language. This study seeks to address a gap in the literature that reviews the attitudes of college students towards English grammar as their first language and how these attitudes correlate with any past experience with English grammar up to this point. To gain a better understanding of student’s attitudes towards English grammar, an online mixed-methods survey was distributed to graduate and undergraduate students in all departments of the …


The Reagan Administration And The Aids Epidemic: The Relationship Between Rhetoric And Marginalization, Leah Pimm May 2021

The Reagan Administration And The Aids Epidemic: The Relationship Between Rhetoric And Marginalization, Leah Pimm

Honors Theses

The use of rhetoric can be a powerful tool to persuade individuals. Politicians are no stranger to using this tool and often employ it when speaking to their constituents. One politician who utilized his own forms of rhetoric is former President Ronald Reagan. Reagan used rhetoric to discuss major issues with the American public, including the AIDS epidemic. This thesis analyzes Reagan and his administration’s use of rhetoric regarding the AIDS epidemic in order to answer the research question: How did the Reagan administration’s use of rhetoric further marginalize the risk groups associated with the AIDS epidemic? Although previous literature …


Els Catalans Són Diferents: Catalan Independence Through A Cultural Lens, Maren Burling Jan 2019

Els Catalans Són Diferents: Catalan Independence Through A Cultural Lens, Maren Burling

Honors Theses

With a focus on Catalan independence, this thesis looks at how Catalans create and perform their regional identity, and how cultural symbols of Catalan society – food, sports, language, and others – are uniquely situated within the wider Spanish society. Both linguistic anthropology and symbolic/interpretive anthropology inform my writing and support my argument for the importance of language and other cultural symbols to Catalan identity, which are key to understanding Catalan separatism. My research contributes to current conversations in anthropology about the role of cultural identity in creating community. I argue that, in the Catalan case, cultural identity both shapes …