Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons^™

The Swiss German Language And Identity: Stereotyping Between The Aargau And The Zurich Dialects, Jessica Rohr

Open Access Theses

Swiss German dialects contribute to the social identity of a speaker, especially on a local level (Christen, 1995). Many dialects of Switzerland are associated with a common stereotype which relates to the identity of the speakers (Rash, 2002). This research looks at these notions and investigates concepts of identity ascription and stereotyping that arise between and from the dialects of canton Aargau and canton Zürich, in Switzerland. The generation of a definition of identity for the project, drawing off existing identity theories in sociolinguistics, and stereotyping theories, allow for an investigation of how the Aargau and Zürich dialects fit into …

The Effect Of Cultural Competence On The Acquisition Of French T/V Pronouns, Stacey C. Latimer

Open Access Theses

The appropriate use of Tu/Vous French pronouns in everyday situations proves to be an ongoing challenge not only for native speakers but also for learners of the language. The complexity of the use of these pronouns goes beyond grammatical conjugation as it necessitates a consideration of the sociolinguistic and pragmatic situation with which one is presented. As a result, students with less exposure to T/V pronoun usage in the French culture will consequently have more difficulty in understanding the proper use of these pronouns. ^ Although some studies have looked at students' use of T/V pronouns in online interactions (Belz …

Patterns Of Language Use And Language Choice Among The Cuban Community In Russia, Maria Yakushkina

Open Access Theses

The multiculturalism of a modern society involves constant interrelations of minority and dominant linguistic communities, which are reflected in language. Within this context patterns of language use and choice, language attitudes and language and identity connection have received special attention from a sociolinguistic perspective to better understand the outcomes of such language contact

The aim of the present study is to analyze patterns of language use, language choice, and language identity issues of two groups of Cuban immigrants in Russian society: individuals born in Cuba with both parents of Cuban origin (CC group) and individuals born in Cuba from mixed …

The 'X It Up' Verb Construction: A Syntactic And Sociolinguistic Approach, Ryan Hubble

Open Access Theses

This thesis focuses on a unique and, as of yet, unstudied particle verb construction in English, referred to as the `X it up' construction (e.g. I partied it up last night). Syntactic and sociolinguistic perspectives are taken to explore this phenomenon. In the area of syntax, it is proposed that the `it' in the construction is non-referential and that `it' is an (object) expletive. It is further proposed that the construction is unergative. These hypotheses are confirmed via syntactic tests, and a potential syntactic representation based on Basilico's (2008) particle verb analysis is offered as a structure in which the …

Pragmatic Transfer In Japanese Requests In Emails, Takako Noda

Open Access Theses

The speech act of request is known as a face threatening act (FTA) in the sense of Brown and Levinson (1987) and is considered a speech act that may negatively affect human relationships when it is used against cultural norms and constraints. Requests have been investigated in various languages, including English and Japanese (e.g., Hill et al., 1986; Fukushima, 1996; Gagné, 2010). Studies about interlanguage pragmatics, such as Matsuda et al. (2008) and Wada et al. (2008), showed characteristics of requests made by learners of Japanese. However, these studies all focused on the oral speech act, and there are few …