Linguistics Commons^™

Stories They Tell: The Rhetoric Of Recruiting Independent Consultants, Jacob D. Rawlins, Sarah E. Martin

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the themes that drive persuasive recruiting appeals, or stories, designed to attract new, entrepreneurial workers in the direct selling industry. It offers a rhetorical perspective informed by fantasy theme analysis on the themes present in the recruiting content on the corporate Web sites of three direct selling companies (Mary Kay, Stella & Dot, and Scentsy). The analysis indicates that rhetorical agency is a core theme in the persuasive recruiting stories for these companies. Offering a means for business and technical communication scholars to explore agency or other persuasive story themes in context, this study addresses how a …

The Differences Between And Within Beg And Bag: Phonological, Morphological, And Lexical Effects In Prevelar Raising, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Hypotheses

1. Based on my exceptions, BEG-raising is less common when it is followed by a sonorant.
2. BEG- and BAG-raising have different patterns.

Phonological Effects

• No difference between intervocalic /ɡ/ and word-final /ɡ/.
• For BEG only, significantly less raising before sonorants, particularly liquids.

Morphological Effects

• Adding –s was had a negligible effect for both vowels.
• There was more raising reported after adding –ing.
• For BAG only, there was more raising in words with –ed.

Conclusions

Many language-internal factors:

• Despite relatively few words with BEG and BAG, there are phonological, morphological, and lexical effects.
• A small word list may not have captured …

Internal Structure Of Semelfactive Predicates In English, Lynn C. Nelson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents an analysis of the internal structure of semelfactive predicates. I propose that the lexical aspect class of semelfactives consists of three sub-categories: (i) semelfactive predicates with internal plurality, (ii) semelfactive predicates which are uni-directional and (iii) semelfactive predicates with plurality of participants. Based on these sub-categories, I further propose that the feature of instantaneity attributed to semelfactives (Smith 1997), should not be used, as semelfactives are in actuality not instantaneous events. Furthermore, I propose that an additional feature of atomicity, which distinguishes between events with plurality and those without, should be added to the binary features of …

Literacies Of The Disaster Zone: New Media Genres And Participatory Rhetorics After The 2010 Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill, R. J. Lambert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On April 20, 2010, explosions at the British Petroleum (BP) Macondo Project in the Gulf of Mexico initiated what would become the world's largest accidental release of oil into the ocean. This ecological disaster, a unique combination of natural and human causes, is one of many significant traumas over approximately the last two decades that various stakeholders have documented, participated in, and responded to largely through the expanding and increasingly ubiquitous media of the internet, computers, cell phones, and other networked communicative technologies, which both enable and constrain the variety of responses to traumatic events.

This Dissertation improves our understanding …

Voice Onset Time Of Voiceless Stops In The English Of The El Paso Del Norte Region, Kyla Mcmillan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study analyzes the English voice onset time (VOT) for voiceless stops in stressed initial positon in the El Paso del Norte Region and compares the results to those from previous studies. This was done in order to determine if the English in the El Paso area, on the border with Juárez, México is being influenced by Spanish. VOT is a great measure to analyze voiceless stops in initial stressed positon due to the noted short lag of Spanish stops and long lag of English stops in this phonological environment. To test whether the English of this region conformed more …

Reseña De Escritura Académica: De La Teoría A La Práctica, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Language Attitudes Toward Mexican Spanish-Accented And Standard Varieties Of English, Michelle Aguilar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The unique demographics of El Paso, Texas show that it is a site with intense Mexican-American ethnolinguistic contact that creates a co-existence of different English and Spanish varieties. In El Paso, approximately 80 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino and approximately 95 percent of that group has reported to be of Mexican ancestry (Statistical Atlas, 2015). As a result, Spanish is spoken by 68 percent of the population (United States Census Bureau, 2016). Yet, particular Hispanic-accented English varieties spoken in the region, (Chicano English and Mexican Spanish-accented English), are stigmatized. The focus of this study will be …

Aspectos Formales De La Citación En El Discurso Científico Desde Una Perspectiva Diacrónica, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La presente investigación hace una revisión histórica del tratamiento del elemento retórico-discursivo de la citación desde su primera aparición en el ámbito de la comunicación científica en la Philosophical Transaction de la Real Sociedad de Londres para el avance de la Ciencia Natural.

Kratylos: A Tool For Sharing Interlinearized And Lexical Data In Diverse Formats, Daniel Kaufman, Raphael Finkel

Publications and Research

In this paper we present Kratylos, at www.kratylos.org/, a web application that creates searchable multimedia corpora from data collections in diverse formats, including collections of interlinearized glossed text (IGT) and dictionaries. There exists a crucial lacuna in the electronic ecology that supports language documentation and linguistic research. Vast amounts of IGT are produced in stand-alone programs without an easy way to share them publicly as dynamic databases. Solving this problem will not only unlock an enormous amount of linguistic information that can be shared easily across the web, it will also improve accountability by allowing us to verify analyses across …

Empowering Parents To Encourage Children To Read Beyond The Early Years, Margaret K. Merga, Saiyidi Mat Roni

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Enjoyment of reading books is related to reading proficiency, and fostering students’ enjoyment of reading is imperative to support continued reading engagement. However, not all students understand that reading is important, and not all students are regularly engaged in recreational reading. Children typically read for pleasure less often as they age, leading researchers to seek effective ways that social influences can support them to be lifelong readers beyond the early years. Parents can play an important role in communicating the continued importance of reading and fostering positive attitudes toward reading. However, after independent reading skill acquisition, parents may become a …

Describing The Acquisition Of The Passive Voice By A Child Learner Of Japanese As A Second Language From A Processability Theory Perspective, Junko Iwasaki, Rhonda Oliver

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This longitudinal case study reports on the acquisition of Japanese as a second language (L2) by a child learner with English as his first language (L1) who was acquiring Japanese naturalistically. In particular this study focusses on the acquisition by the child of a non-canonical mapping structure, namely the passive voice in relation to canonical mapping structures (e.g., the active voice) within the framework of the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis (UAH) and the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (LMH). These hypotheses are two of the main pillars of the extended Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, Di Biase & Kawaguchi, 2005). When compared to a …

Teaching Writing Through Transformation: Linguistically Diverse Writing Teachers’ Enactments Of Linguistic Diversity, Cristina Sanchez-Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to recent calls for teacher education in a first-year writing context. Studies addressing the intersections between composition and applied linguistics have emphasized the dynamic and situated nature of writing and language practices (Pennycook, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013a, 2013b; Horner, Lu, Royster, Trimbur, 2011; Lorimer-Leonard, 2013; Seloni, 2014); however, it is urgent to investigate how linguistically diverse writing instructors negotiate their teaching strategies across settings to implement pedagogies that accurately reflect writers’ practices in and outside academic contexts and across Englishes. While scholars have proposed terms such as “dialogical pedagogies” (Canagarajah, 2013a) or teaching English as “translingual activism” (Pennycook, …

Investigating The Causes And Cures For Unclear Scholarly Writing, Marlene Ingrid Mahony

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation investigated possible causes and cures for unclear scholarly writing. For this study, a stipulative definition of unclear scholarly writing, or “academese,” is that the language tends to be vague and verbose. The problem, according to the included literature, is that people who use or accept vague language have less academic, social, professional, and civic power. Academese, some say, can detach readers and that can accordingly diminish collective exchange. Because higher education is meant to share knowledge, promote agency, and prepare students to communicate powerfully within and beyond the university, this study researched the causes and cures of …

Strategi Penambahan Dan Penghilangan Makna: Kasus Penerjemahan Teks Hukum Bisnis Dari Bahasa Inggris Ke Bahasa Indonesia, Florence E. Kotambunan

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

To show how important the equivalence of ST and TT in business law text is the main goal of this research. Besides that, the benefit of this research is to motivate a translator to become more critical and accurate in producing more quality translations. The results of research can be utilized as a benchmark to conduct further research in a similar study. The library research and field method are commonly administered in translation research. And the technique of analyzing data exerts comparative and causal model between the Source Text (ST) and the Target Text (TT). It is determined that the …

Karya Tulis Ilmiah Sosial. Menyiapkan, Menulis, Dan Mencermatinya, Rahayu Surtiati Hidayat

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

No abstract provided.

Pilihan Kata Dan Konstruksi Perempuan Sunda Dalam Majalah Manglè: Kajian Linguistik Korpus Diakronik, Susi Yuliawati, Rahayu Surtiati Hidayat, F X. Rahyono, Deny A. Kwary

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Gender identity, one of the most important social categories in people’s lives, is socially constructed, and language is claimed to have a significant role in constructing the gender identity. This paper studies the construction of Sundanese women through five Sundanese nouns referring to women found in the corpus of Manglè magazine, published between 1958–2013. The research employs a mixed-method design in which quantitative analysis is combined with qualitative analysis to investigate how the nouns referring to women are used to construct Sundanese women from the periods of Guided Democracy (1958–1965) to Reform Era (2004–2013). The quantitative analysis is used to …

Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

When Christians in Zambia struggle with witchcraft, they also struggle with African cultural and religious concepts that deal with life’s ambiguities and that require discernment. It is not by working against the cultural and religious heritage, but by working with it, as far as possible, that the pastor can identify the broken relationships towards which many witchcraft discourses point. However, before we place the concepts of witchcraft into the realm of superstition (as are the trends of mission Christianity) or the demonic (as are the trends of charismatic Christianity), the Church has the duty to look at the concepts, stay …

The Devil Of The Missionary Church: The White Fathers And Catholic Evangelization In Zambia, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how Western Catholic missionaries in Zambia dealt with claims of witchcraft and Satanism. Within an analytic frame that draws upon cultural history, theology, and anthropology the article also considers how African Christians appropriated missionary notions of the devil.

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview of African Catholicism. Part Two: Retrospect and Prospect, third issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism. A summary of the work of Bradford Hinze, Mary Gloria Njoku, Matthias Scharer, Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu, and Bernhard Udelhoven. Among the topics considered: African ecclesiology, African wellness and quality of life in Africa, interreligious dialogue in Africa, African Biblical scholarship, witchcraft and the Catholic Church.

Anglo And Hispanic Vowel Variation In New Mexican English, Susan Brumbaugh

Linguistics ETDs

This study examines vowel formant differences between English speakers in New Mexico that self-identify as Anglo versus those that self-identify as Hispanic. Audio recordings were made of 16 New Mexicans reading short stories and carrier phases with embedded target words. F1 and F2 measurements were compared at the 50% point for monophthongs and at the 20% and 80% points for diphthongs. Mixed effects models assessed statistical significance of ethnicity, gender, and interactional effects on vowel formants and trajectory length.

All speakers showed a near-complete overlap of BOT and BOUGHT tokens, supporting a merger. Hispanic men and women patterned together to …