Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons^™

An “Other” Tongue: Nadsat As Anti-Language In A Clockwork Orange, Ian Hugo

The Graduate Review

In this essay, I explore how “Nadsat” is used in Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novella A Clockwork Orange. “Nadsat” is a constructed language that suffuses English vernacular with words and phrases of Russian origin, and it can often prove a significant obstacle to reader comprehension of the overall narrative. However, apart from merely acting as a whim of experimentalism, I argue that Nadsat serves a functional purpose in the text, drawing on research from a variety of fields including literary studies, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. I begin by showing how Nadsat excludes those who do not “speak” it or (in …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

The Key To Acquiring The Language Of Law, Science, And Technology In The Esl College Classroom, Patricia George-Hunter

Journal of English Learner Education

Since vocabulary plays a significant role in second language acquisition, expansive vocabulary targets should be set and pursued. This paper explores the results of introducing affixes to develop vocabulary and increase motivation for beginner to intermediate-level English language learners (ELLs) pursuing academic disciplines in law, science, and technology at a New York City community college. Participants included 23 ELLs with diverse linguistic, educational, and sociocultural backgrounds enrolled in an online synchronous Integrative Language Seminar (ILS) designed to develop all areas of English language proficiency. Pre‑, post‑, delayed tests, questionnaires, and post‑intervention interviews were conducted and analyzed to establish the language …

"Our River Is Full Of Trash And Many Fish Die" Children's Voices From Pasuruan, Indonesia: Discursive Strategies In Positive Discourse Analysis For Sustainability, Bambang Prastio, Ahsani Maulidina, Agung Rinaldy Malik, Achmad Tantowi Azis

The Qualitative Report

Addressing river pollution and understanding the role of children in environmental conservation are essential for maintaining ecosystem health and sustainability. This study used positive discourse analysis to explore children's discourse about river pollution in Pasuruan, East Java, Indonesia. Data were collected using walk-and talk ethnographic interviews with 15 children aged 7 to 11 years. The findings reveal that these children employed five discursive strategies: (1) nomination: metaphor, comparison, and cultural practices; (2) predication: positive attitude in the forms of disposition and behavior; (3) argumentation: contrast and parallelism; (4) perspectivisation, involving a type of religious representation that includes references to the …

Academic Dispositions Of Undergraduate Students: A Comparison Of Students With And Without Learning Disabilities, Gabriel Jones

McNair Scholars Research

Students with learning disabilities face complex emotional, psychological, and academic challenges, though prior research presents mixed findings. Some studies highlight negative outcomes, such as heightened shame, emotional distress, and diminished self-efficacy. In contrast, others identify positive traits, including resilience, higher achievement drive, and reduced stress compared to peers without learning disabilities (LDs). The present study aimed to clarify these inconsistencies by employing a mixed methods design to examine differences between undergraduate students with and without learning disabilities. Specifically, the study assessed shame-proneness, self-efficacy, hope, motivation style, and attribution style, while also exploring linguistic patterns through narrative analysis using the Linguistic …

The Label Of Low Effort: Exploring Teachers’ Effort-Related Language, Meritocratic Beliefs, And Attribution-Based Responsibility Assignments, Kelly A. Larson

Doctorate in Education

Educators play an integral role in the academic success and future educational trajectory of their students. Yet, in an unjust, hyper-individualistic education system grounded in a meritocratic myth, even the most well-intentioned teachers have a tendency to explain students’ underperformance through a self-protective, deficit-based attribution process that puts the onus of academic achievement almost entirely on students and their families. This recursive cycle is especially damaging for students who do not exhibit effort in normalized, Eurocentric ways. This study examines how teachers’ attributions and responsibility assignments for students’ perceived low-effort behavior are shaped by inequitable meritocratic beliefs and reinforced through …

Defining Antisemitism Or Activism?: An Analysis Of Congressional Debate Over The Antisemitism Awareness Act Of 2023, John Carpenter

University Honors Theses

Introduced amid widespread campus protests against the Israeli militarys actions in the Gaza Strip, the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (AAA) directs the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism during investigations of potential discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This study investigates congressional debate on the AAA using the Discourse Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis to assess how members of Congress portray the victims and perpetrators of antisemitism and whether these portrayals align with the stated aim to "improve safety and security for Jewish Communities." Findings reveal that …

Rhetorics Of Encounter: Toward A Biocentric Theory Of Discourse, Matthew D. Whitaker

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Encounters with more-than-human identities are transformative moments that stand to affect dispositional and bodily change in individuals. From close brushes with wild animals in National Parks to everyday interactions with local ecologies, encounters invite us to feel and think differently about the nature of our realities. In Rhetorics of Encounter: Toward a Biocentric Theory of Discourse, I draw from interdisciplinary perspectives to disrupt the idea of rhetoric as a representational medium, arguing that rhetoric occurs not just through textual exchanges of words and symbols, but through embodied moments of contact with other responsive beings. Invoking George Kennedy’s theory …

Paradise Lost Thrice: Exile And The Abrahamic Religions In Aciman, Werfel, And Ashour, Malak K. Hosny

Theses and Dissertations

Exile is an integral part of the history of all three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This thesis compares between literary narratives of the exile of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It explores the notion that having been exiled from Eden with the fall of Adam and Eve, and having each religion’s prophet’s story intrinsically tied with exile, the believers’ exile is then the third in a layered cycle of exile. Having lost the paradise, believers tend to search for earthly paradises that they attach themselves to, and then tragically lose those as well. The thesis’ three primary literary texts …

Rationality And Discomfort: Stance In "The End Of The Altaic Controversy" And "In Defense Of The Comparative Method, Or The End Of The Vovin Controversy", Logan Mcdowall

University Honors Theses

This study will use corpus linguistics techniques and Hyland's framework for stance in academic discourse to analyze authors' discoursal roles in different framings of a famous controversy in historical linguistics: the classification of the Altaic language family. Two significant pieces of discourse in this debate include "The End of the Altaic Controversy" by A. Vovin and "In Defense of the Comparative Method, or the End of the Vovin Controversy" by A. Dybo and G. Starostin. Despite the importance of these works, no one has analyzed how these authors use stance to position themselves within it. After performing a corpus word …

Repères Pour L'Étude De L'Émotion Dans La Parole Guidelines For The Study Of Emotion In Speech, Christian Plantin

Dirassat

This article examines the study of emotions in speech and interactions. It highlights the transition from argumentation to emotional analysis, detailing emotional terms and their contexts. Key concepts include emotional actants (experiencer, allocator, orchestrator) and how emotions can be triggered by situations or cognitive representations. The article also discusses the cognitive components of emotions and introduces methods for tracking emotional experiences. Ultimately, it emphasizes the intertwined nature of argumentation and emotion, positioning argumentative situations as inherently emotional.

‘You’ And ‘We’ In #Womanlifefreedom: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis Of Collective Identities And Speech Acts In The Twitter’S Discourse Of Iranian Protests, Kimiya Roohani

Peace and Conflict Studies

This paper applies corpus linguistic discourse analysis to approach the social media discourse of a recent political movement in Iran, known as #WomanLifeFreedom and Mahsa Amini. The movement included vast protests in different parts of Iran and went viral on an international scale. Protesters relied heavily on social media, particularly Twitter, to determine strategies and support each other during the expansive calls. To address the discourse shaped in that platform, a corpus was compiled from the Twitter posts, named Mahsa Amini Tweets Corpus (MATC). Using this data collection and analysis method, the endeavour was to obtain a balance between quantitative …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

Advancing Equity In Financial Aid For Black Students: A Document Analysis Study Of Student Equity Plans In California Community Colleges, Edwina Williams

Dissertations

This study examined how California Community Colleges (CCCs) constructed financial aid discourse in Student Equity Plans (SEPs) and assessed whether these strategies mitigated or perpetuated racial disparities for Black students. Previous scholarship identified racial inequities in financial aid systems and explored how equity planning documents addressed race; yet, the influence of institutional discourse on financial aid access remained underexamined. This study contributed to the literature by applying critical race hermeneutics (CRH) to examine how SEPs outlined financial aid strategies, with particular attention to the framing of work–study opportunities and the extent to which the SEP intended to employ race-conscious approaches. …

Becoming A Beloved Community: A Restorative Reckoning For A Radical Conversion To Transform Discourse In Higher Education, Latasha Tomay Varlack-Butler

Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines the misappropriation of Restorative Justice Discourse (RJD) within three predominantly white institutions (PWIs), analyzing 59 institutional documents through Critical Discourse Analysis, Relational Critical Discourse Analysis, and Rhetorical Criticism (Fairclough, 1995; Vaandering, 2021; van Dijk, 2008). Tribal Colleges and Universities and South African institutions have emerged as exemplars of authentic RJD, countering co-optation within PWIs. The findings demonstrate that RJD as applied in PWIs is framed in ways that attenuate its transformative potential, perpetuating color-evasiveness (Bonilla-Silva, 2017) and obscuring the intersectional experiences of Black, Indigenous, and disabled communities (Crenshaw, 1991; Million, 2009).

Grounded in decolonial praxis (Smith, …

Spoken Philippine English In Professional Contexts: Reflections On Research And The Need For A Targeted Corpus, Eric Friginal

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

This article reflects on nearly two decades of research into spoken communication using corpora, particularly within professional and workplace settings in the Philippines, such as call centers and related industries. Drawing on this extensive body of work, the article explores the potential of corpus-based approaches to enhance our understanding of spoken discourse. A framework for corpus-assisted spoken discourse analysis (Friginal, 2024a) is discussed as a foundation for examining professional communication. Building on these insights, the development of a targeted Spoken Philippine English Corpus (SPEC) is proposed, aiming to systematically document and analyze the unique features of spoken professional English in …

“Let Me Be A Bridge”: Language Brokering Among Emerging Adult Latina Professionals In The Midwest, Elise M. Dubord

Faculty Publications

In immigrant families, bilingual children and adolescents regularly act as translators and interpreters for family and community members who are not fluent in the dominant language. These childhood language brokers later shift the focus of their translation activities as they transition into adulthood and develop professional skills. This research explores narratives of language brokering trajectories of three bilingual Latinas who were emerging adult professionals in three cities in Iowa. Based on a series of interviews collected over a 15 month period, this analysis examines how participants described realigning their family language responsibilities while simultaneously transferring their language brokering skills to …

Toward The Application Of Natural Language Processing In Electronic Health Record Analysis For Taxonomy Development, Latoya Mcdonald

All Dissertations

Electronic health records (EHRs) are pivotal resources for nurse practice because they increase the timeliness and reliability of patient information at the point of care and support access by multiple healthcare providers and the individual patients themselves. However, it is widely recognized that data extraction from EHRs is challenging due to the variability in the language used in clinical care notes and the lack of standardized terminology across healthcare systems. The broad objective of this dissertation is to develop taxonomy-based classification models for nursing care by applying feature engineering approaches to EHRs that include nursing care of ostomy patients following …

A Navajo Corpus Of Historical Narratives, Lukas Denk, Melvatha R. Chee

A Navajo Corpus of Historical Narratives

The Navajo Corpus of Historical Narratives is a digital compilation of morphologically annotated narratives. They were first published by Robert W. Young and William Morgan in the 1950’s in the volumes Navajo Historical Selections (1954) and The Trouble at Round Rock (1952). Nine out of 28 narratives are included in the corpus, totaling over 10,000 Navajo words. The corpus contributes to the understanding of the Navajo language by offering interlinear glosses of words, morphemes, morphs, and a free translation. These different interlinear tiers bridge the gap between the original Navajo text and the free translation provided by Young and Morgan, …

The Semantics Of Sin: Profanity, Reform, And Cultural Authority In Progressive America, Evan J. Christensen

Roland D. Sawyer Scholarship Papers

During the Progressive Era, language reform movements such as the Anti-Profanity League sought to regulate everyday speech as part of broader efforts to preserve public morality and cultural identity. This paper examines the rhetorical strategies and cultural assumptions underpinning the anti-profanity crusade, focusing especially on Reverend Roland D. Sawyer’s leadership. Using historical sources including league literature, newspaper accounts, personal letters, organizational records, and sermons, it argues that profanity was framed not merely as a religious or moral failure but as a threat to social cohesion, character, and national values. Efforts to suppress swearing reveal how language functioned as a marker …