Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons^™

Monolingualism In A Multicultural Nation: The Impact Of Nationalism And Color-Blind Racial Ideologies On Support For English-Only Policies, Anna Benker

Departmental Honors Projects

The United States is one of few nations yet to name an official language. However, the desire to make English the official language of the US has been prevalent throughout history and remains strong to this day. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that are related to greater support for English-Only policy. Previous studies have found that ideas of nationalism, specifically holding ethno-cultural criteria of national membership, is correlated with greater support for English-Only policy (Citrin et al, 1990; Frendreis and Tatalovich, 1997; Garcia and Bass, 2007; Schildkraut, 2003). This study will retest some of these …

Subject Pronoun Expression In Second Language Learners: The Case Of First-Person Subject Pronoun, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Universal Design For Belonging: Living And Working With Diverse Personal Names, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

There is great diversity in the names and naming practices of Canada’s population due to the multiple languages and cultures from which names and name-givers originate. While this diversity means that everyone encounters unfamiliar names, institutional agents who work with the public are continually challenged when attempting to determine a name’s correct pronunciation, spelling, structure and gender. Drawing from over a hundred interviews in London (Ontario) and Montréal (Québec), as well as other published accounts, I outline strategies used by institutional agents to manage name diversity within the constraints of their work tasks. I explain how concern with saving face …

Code Switching, Lexical Borrowing, And Polylanguaging In Valencian Spanish : An Analysis Of Data From Conversational Corpora And Twitter, Andrew Jordan Lavender

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study examines lexical borrowing, code switching, and polylanguaging in Valencian Spanish to better understand how each is used differently in oral conversation in comparison with online communication on Twitter. This study compares data collected from three published corpora of oral interviews of speakers of Valencian Spanish with data collected from Twitter profiles of individuals residing in Valencia. In each of the sources Spanish is the preferred code into which Valencian material is inserted. A unique feature of data from the published corpora is the high frequency of code switching (CS) into Valencian in instances of reported speech. With regard …

Sociophonetic Accommodation As A Function Of Interlocutor Target Language Competence : The Case Of New York Dominican Spanish, Cecily Corbett

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation contributes to the variationist understanding of the process of phonetic accommodation through the analysis of syllable-final consonant weakening in the speech of native speakers of New York Dominican Spanish (NYDS) during their interactions with second language learners of Spanish. The principal objective is to examine the inner workings of the accommodation phenomenon by using Dominican Spanish as a medium. The data analyzed in this dissertation come from conversations between the informants—native speakers of NYDS—and four different interlocutors, one of whom is a fellow native speaker of NYDS and three who are second-language learners of Spanish with varying degrees …

VariacióN Y Cambio En El EspañOl De Bogotá : AnáLisis De Dos Variables SociofonéTicas, Leonardo Correa

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

RESUMEN

A Study Of Sociolinguistic Variation In A Small Community : Puerto Rican Spanish In Amsterdam, New York, Zahir Mumin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The objective of the current study is to contribute to the larger body of sociophonetic variation research by describing and analyzing Spanish as spoken in a small Puerto Rican community in the US. First, I describe phonological and morphosyntactic features of Spanish as used by four different groups of Puerto Rican informants in Amsterdam, New York based on the duration of time that they have lived on the Island of Puerto Rico. Previous research on Puerto Rican Spanish in the US has focused particularly on final /s/ deletion (Poplack, 1980b, 1980c), final liquid production of /l/ and /ɾ/ (Ramos-Pellicia, 2007), …

Gendered And Racialized Language Ideologies At Sdsu, Brooke N. Leetham

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

This research project explores the ways in which South Dakota State University students perceive speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in comparison to how they perceive speakers of Standard American English (SAE). Language ideologies affect these perceptions, and they largely exist on a subconscious level—therefore, I uncover them in order to discover how language ideologies affect SDSU. I conducted a matched-guise test with recordings by four speakers (two African American males, one African American female, and one mixed African American/White female). These speakers each made the first of two recordings in SAE and the second in AAVE. Out of …

The Reflection And Reification Of Racialized Language In Popular Media, Kelly E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This work highlights specific lexical items that have become racialized in specific contextual applications and tests how these words are cognitively processed. This work presents the results of a visual world (Huettig et al 2011) eye-tracking study designed to determine the perception and application of racialized (Coates 2011) adjectives. To objectively select the racialized adjectives used, I developed a corpus comprised of popular media sources, designed specifically to suit my research question. I collected publications from digital media sources such as Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Fortune by scraping articles featuring specific search terms from their websites. This experiment seeks …

Attune With Baby: An Innovative Attunement Program For Parents And Families With Integrated Evaluation, Sara Beth Lohre

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Infants speak in their own language; sounds, screeches, cries, and howls that help them to communicate their caregiving needs. Unaware, parents may develop a checklist of caregiving approaches to the baby. The infant tells the adult directly what they need, and waits for the parent to respond. Infant talk may change from soft and quiet to loud and aggressive; coos and cries become crying and screams as the infant’s caregiver—communicating the intensity of emotion, urgency of their request, or their frustration with varied and sometimes inadequate, failed, or missing caregiving patterns the infant has no choice but to accept. When …

U Wot M8?: American And British Attitudes Toward Regional British Accents, Alison Smith

Scripps Senior Theses

This research examines the relationship between British accents and their stereotypes. It looks specifically at the ratings of British and American subjects for a variety of British regional and standard accents, and examines them in contrast with observed stereotypes about these accents. The purpose of this paper is to compare the reactions of British and American participants in order to understand whether the stereotypes associated with these accents are purely socially constructed by British society, or whether qualities of each accent support these stereotypes. Results found a similar trend in the ratings of both American and British participants, though it …

/S/ Aspiration In Ciudad Juárez And Speech Accommodation, Sandra Esparza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Phonological variation in Spanish mainly affects consonants rather than vowels. One of the consonants that is part of the variation is /s/ (Hualde, 2005). The phonological process that commonly affects /s/ is aspiration and is defined as the absence of the oral place features while a glottal friction is retained (Clements, 1985). Aspiration occurs in about half of the Spanish-speaking world (Terrell, 1981) and constitutes one of the most useful stylistic and sociolinguistic variables that characterizes Spanish social dialects and discourse models (Lipski, 1991). Aspiration is present in several Spanish dialects in Latin America (Resnick, 1975). In the specific case …

The Effect Of Economic Integration And Political Centralization On Linguistic Diversity - And The New Function And Status Of The English Language In Europe, Demba K. Baldeh

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the effect of economic integration (EI) and political unity on

linguistic diversity and the new function and status of the English language in

Europe. It shows the current sociolinguistic transformation and the growing use of

English both as strong effects and key indicators of the process.

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 …

Reification, Resistance, And Transformation? The Impact Of Migration And Demographics On Linguistic, Racial, And Ethnic Identity And Equity In Educational Systems: An Applied Approach, Rebecca Ann Campbell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using an applied anthropological approach focused on language, this study investigates the relationship between linguistic, racial, and ethnic identities and school resource access in the context of migration. This project examines how these identities are established, experienced, reified, and resisted by various school actors. Exposing power at its roots through a multi-level analysis, this research informs on how people negotiate socialization into particular identities, propelling them toward positions in school and society of varying opportunity.

Focused on two elementary schools in a central Florida county that has been and is undergoing demographic changes, this work offers applications for educational institutions …

Powerful Words: An Exploration Of Linguistic Hierarchy In Moroccan Hospitals, Ellelan Degife

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Morocco is a country of distinct diversity, which exists as a result of the settling of multiple peoples and European colonization. As a result of this diversity, many languages are employed in different settings and spaces, and of these languages, French represents remnants of colonialism and continual elitism in the country. One of the spheres that French commands in Moroccan society is medicine, which creates a dichotomy between the educated health care providers and the underprivileged patients in public hospitals. The aim of this paper is to explore the effect of French on the doctor-patient relationship in urban, public Moroccan …

Virtual Meatspace: Word Formation And Deformation In Cyberpunk Discussions, Matt Garley, Benjamin Slade

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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 …

Discourses Of "Cruelty-Free" Consumerism: Peta, The Vegan Society And Examples Of Contemporary Activism, Andrea Springirth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper draws upon the principles of critical discourse analysis in order to examine the production of capitalist and consumerist discourses within contemporary nonhuman animal rights activism. The analysis presents evidence to suggest that the discourses being produced via the websites of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Vegan Society are consistently being constructed through market-centric ideologies that treat activists mainly as middle-class consumers. This paper argues that the consistent presence of neoliberal discourse signals an instructive entanglement with broader sociopolitical issues. Specifically, there are concerns as to how this discourse relates to what is thought …

Lengua Y Racismo-Motivación, Competencia Y Conciencia Lingüística En La Clase De Español Como Segunda Lengua: Integración De Contenidos Relacionados Con La Dimensión Socio-Política Del Lenguaje En Un Acercamiento Content-Based, Jose Magro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dentro de un modelo de instrucción lingüística basado en la transmisión de contenidos (content-based instruction), esta disertación trata de averiguar cómo influye en la conciencia lingüística, motivación y competencia lingüística de estudiantes de cursos avanzados de español como segunda lengua, la integración en el programa de contenidos relacionados con la dimensión socio-política del lenguaje (CSP). Desde la perspectiva epistemológica de la lingüística crítica aplicada, se hará un estudio cualitativo apoyado con componentes cuantitativos. Se desarrollarán e integrarán en el programa del grupo experimental materiales con CSP destinados a observar si influyen en el desarrollo de una conciencia lingüística explícitamente antirracista, …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …

A Diachronic Approach To The Confusion Of B With V In Spanish, Eva Núñez-Méndez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This volume presents specific topics in diachronic Hispanic linguistics. These topics include: lexical survivals in Ibero-Romance, Arabisms, lexical variation in early modern Spain, the origins of the confusion of b with v, Andalusian Spanish in the Americas, the expansion of seseo and yeísmo, processes of koineization, syntactic change in scribal documentation from the Middle Ages, and the semantic changes of the verbs ser, estar and haber. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the Spanish lexicon, phonetics, morphosyntax, dialectology and semantics with the input of ten prominent scholars.

It focuses not only on relevant issues in the evolution of Spanish but …

Blurred Boundaries: Interpreters As Researchers In Cross-Cultural Settings, Jennifer S. Hensley

Journal of Interpretation

This is a study of ambiguities and tensions that occur within the role of the bilingual/bicultural researcher in an ethnographic study. This manuscript presents an analysis of three instances from two interviews in a study on the acculturation of deaf students in deaf kindergarten classrooms in Japan and the US. This is an auto-ethnographic analysis of conflicts found in fluctuating between multiple roles: research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant. In these examples my bicultural knowledge allowed me to identify “hidden” meanings overlooked by other members of the research team. However, my interpreter role at times made it awkward …

A National Bilingual Education Policy For The Economic And Academic Empowerment Of Youth In St. Lucia, West Indies, Gabriella Bellegarde

Capstone Collection

This campaign portfolio argues the case for a national bilingual education policy on the island of St. Lucia, where youth speak both St Lucian Creole and St. Lucian standard English. The portfolio consists of a policy paper and brief, an advocacy plan, a communications plan, monitoring and evaluation plan. The Bilingual Education Taskforce (BET), made up of teachers, parents and principals, is an advocacy organization that discovered the need for a bilingual education intervention when they observed, assessed and analyzed the written work of struggling readers at their school, the Anse la Raye Infant School on the west coast of …

The Politics Of Town Hall Meetings: Analyzing Constituent Relations-In-Interaction, Robert J. Green

Open Access Dissertations

The politics of town meetings proposes that town hall meetings are institutions of representative democracy that present an opportunity for constituents to hold their elected representatives accountable in a public setting. Constituent relations-in-interaction glosses a complex set of interactional practices and procedures through which ensembles of participants bring town hall meetings, as structures of social interaction, into being. This study uses conversation analysis, the study of talk-in-interaction, to show that the politics of town hall meetings orients to three types of accountability: Interactional accountability, political accountability, and public accountability. The articulation of these accountability types provides a sense of overall-structural …

Japanese Dialect Ideology From Meiji To The Present, Nao Okumura

Dissertations and Theses

The intent of this study is to examine the trajectory of ideology regarding standard Japanese and dialects from the historical perspective, and also to discuss the cause of the post-war shift of the ideology. Before the war, the government attempted to disseminate hyojun-go aiming at creating a unified Japan in the time when many countries were developing to be nation states after industrial revolution. After the Pacific war, the less strict-sounding term kyotsu-go was more often used, conveying an ideology of democratization. Yet despite the difference in the terms, speaking a common language continues to play a role of unifying …