Dissertations / Theses: 'Languages in contact Case studies'

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Briggs, Jessica G. "A study of the relationships between informal second language contact, vocabulary-related strategic behaviour and vocabulary gain in a study abroad context." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e7dc69d9-09e5-4fab-b8fc-fe4682eecdfb.

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This thesis reports on a longitudinal, mixed-methods study of the relationships between informal (i.e. out-of-class) second language (L2) contact, vocabulary-related strategic behaviour and vocabulary gain in a study abroad context. The study addressed three main gaps in knowledge that arose from analysis of the literature: (1) the evidence of informal L2 contact was largely unreliable, ungeneralisable, or both; (2) the evidence of vocabulary-related strategic behaviour in informal L2 contact was neither context nor task specific; and (3) there was no evidence of the interplay between informal L2 contact, vocabulary-related strategic behaviour and vocabulary gain in a study abroad context. The sample (n=241) were adults undertaking a study abroad experience (SAE) in England, who comprised a range of nationalities and first language backgrounds and for whom the majority of the SAE was spent outside of the classroom. A vocabulary test was administered at the beginning and end of the SAE. A questionnaire was administered during the SAE to determine the most highly identified with informal L2 contact scenarios and out-of-class vocabulary-related strategies. Subsequently, an innovative research tool comprising computer-based simulations of the most identified with scenarios was developed and used as the stimulus in semi-structured interviews to capture task and/or context-specific vocabulary-related strategic behaviour. Analysis grouped participants by length of stay and location. The most highly identified with informal L2 contact scenarios involved participants seeking information from external sources, such as interlocutors, posters or websites. The vocabulary-related strategies most highly identified with by the sample pertained to the use of a newly encountered lexical item; that is, they were strategies in which the learner used or prepared to use a lexical item that they had decided to engage with strategically. The strategic behaviour manifested in response to the simulation tool (the 'OWLS') provided strong evidence in support of the fundamental considerations of task, context and intention in strategy-based research. Regression analysis revealed that informal L2 contact scenarios that were less strategically prohibitive and strategies that were less context-dependent were predictors of vocabulary gain. The pedagogical implications of these findings are far- reaching in terms of preparing L2 learners for informal contact on a SAE and guiding their manipulation of that contact for maximum linguistic gain.

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Åberg, Johanna. "Contact-induced change and variation in Middle English morphology : A case study on get." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-191164.

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The present study explores the role of interlingual identification in contact between speakers of Old Norse and Old English. The study focuses on the word get as it occurred throughout a selection of texts in the Middle English period. The Old English and Old Norse words for get were cognate, which meant that some phonological and morphological characteristics of the word were similar when the contact between the two speaker communities occurred. A Construction Morphology framework is applied where inflecting features of words are treated as constructions. Interlingually identifiable constructions in Old English and Old Norse are identified by comparing forms, such as vowel alternations or affixes, with the function (i.e., meaning) which they denote. The Middle English dialectal forms were furthermore compared synchronically, and a sociohistorical perspective was considered to establish whether the areas where the Vikings settled and that came under Scandinavian rule in the Danelaw displayed more advanced leveling and/or conformation with the Old Norse system of conjugation. Additionally, the present study sought to explore cognitive processes involved in letting specific forms remain in a contact situation. It was concluded that there were two interlingually identifiable constructions: the past tense vowel alternation from in the present tense, to in the 1st preterite, and the past participle -en suffix. These constructions had survived in all the Middle English dialects, and they are furthermore what is left in the contemporary modern paradigm of get. Moreover, it is plausible that these constructions survived the morphological leveling because interlingual identification allowed the same form to trigger the same intended cognitive representation in both speaker groups in the contact situation. The results concludingly suggest that morphological constructions that were not interlingually identifiable were discarded in the morphological leveling that resulted from contact between speakers of Old English and Old Norse.

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Moon, Do-Sik. "Impact of contract learning on learning to write in an EAP class : case studies of four international graduate students' experience /." Urbana, Ill. : University of Illinois, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1481657971&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=36305&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Vinall, Kimberly Sue. "The Tensions of Globalization in the Contact Zone| The Case of Two Intermediate University-level Spanish Language and Culture Classrooms on the U.S./Mexico Border." Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10086145.

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This dissertation centrally explores understandings of foreign/second language and culture learning and its potential to prepare learners to participate in a globalized world. More specifically, this study explores the potential of a dynamic or complexity orientation to understand how beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions towards language and culture learning are constructed and negotiated in the relationship between learners and instructors, as complex social beings, and the learning site, as “contestatory discursive site” (Mckay & Wong, 1996).

The site of this ethnographic study can be understood as interconnected contact zones. These contact zones are two Spanish language and Latino cultures classrooms situated at a university in San Diego on the border between the United States and Mexico. Primary participants include two third-semester university level Spanish instructors, Yesenia and Vicente, and their respective students.

I collected data in two learning spaces: the language learning classrooms and the sites where students from Yesenia’s class completed community-service learning (CSL) projects; all of these latter CSL sites involved the students’ engagement with local immigrant populations. In both spaces, I employed qualitative methodology with an ethnographic focus, which involved participant observation, extensive field notes, audio- and video-recordings of classes, and collecting class-related textual artifacts and pedagogical materials. I applied discourse analysis to explore classroom interactions, teaching materials, and interviews with a focal group of students from each class, the instructors, the department chair, and personnel related to the CSL program, including staff, site coordinators, community leaders, and community participants.

My analysis suggests that the two language and culture classrooms not only reflect the larger tensions of globalization, but also produce new tensions. The instructors and the learners have differing perceptions of language and culture and the importance of their learning. These understandings are constructed in relationship to their positionings within the classroom, the university, the community, and the local context. The two instructors struggle with their conflicted positioning within the power structure of the university and in the broader relationship between the United States and Latin America, particularly as they are both Mexican immigrants. They also grapple with the instrumental approach that is imposed through the textbook in which learners accumulate grammatical forms and vocabulary while culture is consumed through superficial representations of “Otherness”, presented as imagined tourists visits and the accumulation of geographical and historical information.

In the first classroom, Yesenia accepts the instrumental approach, encouraging the accumulation of largely decontextualized language forms, and she participates in the construction of what I call a tourist gaze on Latin America, believing that it will facilitate learners’ appreciation of her cultural heritage. In the second classroom, Vicente rejects the instrumental approach: he wants to facilitate language and culture learning through critically understanding, reflecting on, and proposing alternatives to the social, economic, and political realities of the contact zone. In both classrooms, however, learners resent these pedagogical choices, their resistance revealing tensions in their own understandings and goals. Learners express a desire to develop cultural awareness so that they can care about the realities of Latin America yet doing so uncomfortably implicates them in larger global relationships in which they must confront their privileged positionings. This process was particularly evident in their CSL experiences in which “putting a face on it” reproduced problematic binaries, such as that of “us” and “them” and “server” and “served”, and in the process reinforced larger power structures and reproduced privilege. Even though the learners want to engage in more than superficial communication they also recognize the limited role of their language and culture learning in their current lives, namely to successfully complete the language requirement, to engage in tourism, and to compete in the global marketplace.

The findings of this study suggest ever increasing tensions between understandings of learning language and culture in the classroom in contrast to the potentiality of this learning as applied outside of the classroom. In both classrooms, the learners and the instructors demonstrate an awareness of the conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that they bring to the classroom and how these interact with the teaching materials as well as the local context, yet they do not engage in critical reflection on these understandings. Doing so would require engaging with the central question of power, and how their language and culture learning experiences (re)produce social structures both in and outside of the classroom. In this regard, one of the central limitations of the dynamic or complexity orientation (Wesely, 2012) that I have employed is that it does not centrally interrogate this question of power.

This study points to the need for future research in field of second language acquisition. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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Uys, Dawid. "The functions of teachers' code switching in multilingual and multicultural high school classrooms in the Siyanda District of the Northern Cape Province." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/4361.

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Thesis (MPhil (General Linguistics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Code switching is a widely observed phenomenon in multilingual and multicultural communities. This study focuses on code switching by teachers in multilingual and multicultural high school classrooms in a particular district in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. The aims of this study were to establish whether teachers in the classrooms concerned do code switch and, if so, what the functions thereof are. With these aims in mind, data were collected from four high schools in the Siyanda District, during 13 lessons in total. These lessons were on the subjects Economic Management Sciences, Business Studies and Accounting. The participants in the study were 296 learners in Grades 8 to 12 and eight teachers. Data were collected by means of researcher observations and audio recordings of lessons. These recordings were orthographically transcribed and then analysed in terms of the functions of code switching in educational settings as identified from the existing literature on this topic as well as in terms of the Markedness Model of Myers-Scotton (1993). The answer to the first research question 1, namely whether teachers made use of code switching during classroom interactions was, perhaps unsurprisingly, “yes”. In terms of the second question, namely to which end teachers code switch, it was found that the teachers used code switching mainly for academic purposes (such as explaining and clarifying subject content) but also frequently for social reasons (maintaining social relationships with learners and also for being humorous) as well as for classroom management purposes (such as reprimanding learners). The teachers in this data set never used code switching solely for the purpose of asserting identity. It appears then that the teachers in this study used code switching for the same reasons as those mentioned in other studies on code switching in the educational setting. The study further indicated that code switching by the teachers was mainly an unmarked choice itself, although at times the sequential switch was triggered by a change in addressee. In very few instances was the code switching a marked choice; when it was, the message was the medium (see Myers-Scotton 1993: 138), code switching functioned as a means of increasing the social distance between the teacher and the learners or, in one instance, of demonstrating affection. Teachers code switched regardless of the language policy of their particular school, i.e. code switching occurred even in classrooms in which English is officially the sole medium of instruction. As code switching was largely used in order to support learning, it can be seen as good educational practice. One of the recommendations of this study is therefore that particular modes of code switching should be encouraged in the classrooms, especially where the medium of instruction is the home language of very few of the learners in that school.

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Meakins, Felicity. "Case-marking in contact : the development and function of case morphology in Gurindji Kriol, and Australian mixed language /." Connect to thesis, 2007. http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00003898.

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Dastoor, Tehnaz Jehangir. "Regionalism in India: Two Case Studies." W&M ScholarWorks, 1989. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625532.

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Vilakati, Annah Phindile. "Language purism and prescriptivism in an African context : a case study of a siSwati radio programme 'Nasi-ke siSwati'." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10815.

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Bibliography: leaves 85-91.
The study aims at assessing purists' and prescriptivists' concerns about language as reported in Western and non-Western settings, as to find out whether they share the same views about language correctness. The data base is a series of a siSwati radio programme, called Nasi-ke siSwati 'Here is (genuine) siSwati' hosted by Jim Gama, known as 'Mbhokane'. I try to assess his attitudes to what he considers 'inferior' use of the language, with the aim of understanding what issues are at stake when African prescriptivists make their pronouncements.

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Zografos, Christos. "Environmental governance and languages of valuation: two European case studies." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/316215.

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El análisis de políticas ambientales mediante el uso de homo economicus ha sido criticado por no tomar en cuenta la multiplicidad de valores ambientales y bases éticas en las cuales se basa la motivación humana. Esta limitación es importante, dado que puede resultar en excluir algunas preferencias ambientales y así generar políticas ambientales inefectivas y de poca legitimidad. Esta tesis considera las implicaciones de la racionalidad comunicativa para formar y analizar políticas ambientales, dado que esa pretende ser no solo un modelo alternativo a homo economicus sino también un modelo capaz de integrar múltiples lenguajes de valoración en la governanza ambiental. La tesis primero examina temas conceptuales y teóricos relacionados al uso de racionalidad comunicativa como modelo analítico y luego considera de forma empírica, implicaciones de usar este modelo para analizar la governanza ambiental por medio de dos estudios de caso. El primero, emplea la metodología Q para analizar discursos de ‘ruralidad’ que son la base de percepciones sobre el papel de empresas sociales operando en áreas rurales de Escocia. El segundo, analiza la formación política de disputas sobe el valor paisajístico que fomentan conflictos ambientales sobre parques eólicos en Cataluña rural. La tesis concluye que la racionalidad comunicativa es un concepto útil para analizar y mejorar la governanza ambiental, aunque con sus limitaciones. En términos normativos, el concepto permite conectar con el paradigma de democracia deliberativa que ofrece un marco potente para entender y evaluar aspectos relacionados a la legitimidad de governanza ambiental, particularmente en términos de justicia social y ambiental. Analíticamente, la acción comunicativa permite conceptualizar conflictos ambientales como retos de governanza y no meramente como fallos de politica ambiental, lo cual ayuda entender políticas ambientales que promueven tomas de decisiones participativa en la emergente sociedad de redes. Una limitación básica es que conceptualizando las acciones de agentes como acciones basadas en la racionalidad comunicativa, la investigación científica puede acabar ignorando contextos de poder que rodean la governanza ambiental. La tesis sugiere que el campo de economía ecológica adopte como un principio normativo la creación de esferas públicas de deliberación sobre decisiones ambientales y que enfoque al estudio del potencial deliberativo de configuraciones actuales de toma de decisión participativa. Esto ayudaría mejorar su capacidad de efectuar cambio y comprobaría si dichos procesos se transformen en mecanismos de legitimación de políticas que promueven desigualdades en el uso y reparto de recursos ambientales y desigualdades de poder. Tal visión investigadora podría también avanzar el estudio de poder que esta relativamente atrasado en economía ecológica, por medio de mejorar vínculos entre esta disciplina y la ecología política.
The application of the homo economicus model of human action for analysing environmental policy has been consistently criticised for ignoring the multiplicity of environmental values and ethical bases that underlie human motivation, which may result in undesirable crowding out and voice silencing effects that generate ineffective and legitimacy-deficient environmental policies. This thesis considers policy implications of communicative rationality as an alternative model of human action capable to integrate multiple environmental languages of valuation in environmental governance. The thesis first examines conceptual and theoretical issues relating to the adoption of communicative rationality as an analytical model and then moves on to empirically explore implications of employing that model for analysing environmental governance by means of two case studies. The first employs Q methodology to analyse ‘rurality’ discourses underlying stakeholder perceptions regarding the role of a sustainability institution (social enterprise in rural Scotland), while the second analyses the politics of landscape value that underlie environmental conflict in a case of wind farm siting conflict in rural Catalonia. Communicative rationality is found useful for analysing and indeed improving environmental governance, albeit with limitations. Normatively speaking, the concept allows connecting with the paradigm of deliberative democracy that offers an elaborated framework for understanding and assessing legitimacy aspects of environmental governance, particularly in terms of social and environmental justice. Positively speaking, communicative action allows conceptualising environmental conflicts as governance challenges and not merely as cases of government policy failure, which proves useful for analysing emerging policy arrangements promoting participatory decision-making in the network society. A main limitation is that by conceptualising stakeholder action embedded on communicative rationality research may develop a soft spot by ignoring the practical context of power that surrounds environmental governance. It is suggested that ecological economics adopts the creation of public spheres for deliberation of sustainability matters as a distinct policy objective and the study of the deliberative potential of actual participatory decision-making arrangements. This will help improve their capacity to effect change and test the danger of them becoming legitimising mechanisms for policies that promote existing resource inequities and power relations. Such a research outlook could also advance the relatively undeveloped study of power in ecological economics by furthering links with political ecology.

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Abe, Megumi. "L2 writers' perspectives on writing in the L2 context : six case studies of Japanese Students /." The Ohio State University, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1371043978.

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Wong, Tai-yuen Albert, and 黃大元. "A study of cognition in context: the composing strategies of advanced writers in an academic context." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31242443.

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Long, Nana. "Teacher autonomy in a context of Chinese tertiary education: case studies of EFL teachers." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2014. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/103.

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This thesis reports on a multiple case study of four EFL teachers’ long-term development of autonomy in a particular Chinese mainland university. Each teacher was selected as a holistic case because of their variations in dispositions, backgrounds, experiences, and trajectories of development. It addresses three major research questions: 1) How do the teachers control over the multiple aspects of their teacher work across time and contexts? 2) What are the major individual and contextual factors that facilitate and constrain the development of teacher autonomy? 3) How do teacher identities affect the development of teacher autonomy? The study adopted many narrative forms of data collection instruments, including (auto)biographies, interviews, casual conversations, questionnaire, complemented by classroom observations, staff meeting observations, and documents, in order to understand teacher autonomy from the lived experiences of the four teacher participants throughout their careers and lives. By examining the concept of teacher autonomy through the lens of teacher identity, this study analyzed how four teacher participants exercised different degrees of autonomy at different stages of their teaching, research, and administrative roles. It provides a holistic picture of zigzagging pathways towards teacher autonomy across the whole course of their careers. It then discussed how the teachers’ autonomy was facilitated and constrained by contextual and individual factors across time. Based on the findings, this study proposes a conceptual framework to illustrate the close relationship between teacher identity and teacher autonomy, and this relationship’s dynamic and unstable nature across time and contexts. It also suggests there is an urgent need for teacher autonomy scholarship to broaden its scope by moving beyond language teaching and learning to more crucial aspects of language teachers’ daily work and to explore the development of teacher autonomy in a long-term process.

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Heffner, Lori. "Heritage Languages: The Case of German in Kitchener-Waterloo." Thesis, University of Waterloo, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10012/751.

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This thesis investigates the assimilation and/or integration of German families in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario into Anglo-Canadian culture. By administering questionnaires to and interviewing members in three three-generational families (n=29), different factors involved in an effort to ascertain what factors, if any, determine one's decision to pass on or continue learning German. The thesis proposes that if participants have a positive attitude towards German, i. e. , they see some use or value in it, then they will pass it on to the following generation. The first chapter outlines the aims of the study, methodology, and important terms. The second chapter describes previous research on the topic of immigrant integration in more detail, explaining the influences of external agents such as the government, school system, and media, and more 'internal' agents such as one's circle of friends and other social contacts as well as the family. The third chapter describes the three families and summarizes the main characteristics of each generation. Chapter four reports the results of the questionnaires and interviews. Chapter five, the conclusion, suggests which individual factors need to be studied further. The findings in this study suggest that there is no single factor which decides if those of German heritage decide to pass on their language or continue learning/using it themselves, or if they prefer to assimilate into Anglo-Canadian culture. Two factors did prove to be very important, namely the practicality of learning German, and how important one's heritage was to a participant. However, not even the presence of these two variables guaranteed a desire to continue learning German, demonstrating that numerous variables are taken into consideration when deciding whether to continue learning German and/or to pass it on to the next generation.

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Zhang, Jia Yun. "Coming alive in context : a case of idiom translation in Camel Xiangzi." Thesis, University of Macau, 2012. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b2586618.

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Torres, Rubio Juan Antonio. "DDR, Social Contact and Reconciliation : A case-study on Colombian former combatants." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Hugo Valentin-centrum, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-297181.

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As part of the peacebuilding measures in scenarios of transformation from civil conflict to a state of post-conflict, the control of hostile forces constitutes a risky, yet necessary process. In such contexts there is also a concern to generate strong ties and incentives that minimize the recurrence of violence. For this purpose reconciliation emerges as a condition for long-lasting peace. This concept eventually requires that armed actors, victimized subjects and society in general agree on critical points and become able to live together. For former combatants these steps are especially challenging since they are confronted by an adverse environment that requires the assumption of new codes of conduct that are no longer ruled by any sort of weaponry. With this puzzle in mind, this study enquired about the extent to which social contact is likely to influence the perspectives of reconciliation held by demobilized combatants immerse in an institutional scheme of DDR. In order to gather a comprehensive discussion around this question, this thesis observed the Colombian DDR process, gathering unique empirical data from individuals exposed to varying degrees of contact. From the information collected and its qualitative analysis, it was found that inter-group interactions are able to promote deep understanding about out-groups; nonetheless, extended contact along ongoing hostilities does not ensure complete transformation of misperceptions, even among subjects coming to the end of their reintegration process.

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Ahlbrecht, John James. "College Student Rankings of Multiple Speakers in a Public Speaking Context: a Language Attitudes Study on Japanese-accented English with a World Englishes Perspective." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4334.

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This language attitudes study used a matched guise technique to compare participant reactions of American-accented English to Japanese-accented English. Participants (n = 40) were college educated adults living in the Portland area who completed an online survey which measured characteristics related to Status, Solidarity, and Dynamism using semantic differential Likert scales. Results showed that while Japanese-accented English received less favorable ratings on the Status and Solidarity dimensions on a statistically significant level, the small effect size may have indicated that the differences were negligible. Interpreting the results from the data through the World Englishes Kachruvian paradigm, it is argued that English learners and users would benefit by focusing more on achieving intelligibility than on attaining perfect control of an idealized variety of English.

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Aswani, Niraj. "Designing a general framework for text alignment : case studies with two South Asian languages." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2012. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2618/.

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Building machine translation systems for many South Asian languages (such as Hindi, Gujarati, etc.) using statistical methods is problematic. The primary reason is insufficient parallel data to learn accurate word alignment. Additionally, these languages are morphologically rich and have free word order. When it is difficult to rely purely on statistical methods due to insufficient data, research shows that better performance can be obtained by building hybrid systems that rely on language specific resources, such as morphological analysers or dictionaries, as well as statistical methods. However, it is difficult to find such language specific resources for many South Asian languages. Since languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi are all very similar in structure and the main differences lie in the script and vocabulary used for these languages, we hypothesise that it is possible to develop resources for one of these languages and generalize the approach to allow rapid bootstrapping of similar resources for the other closely related languages -- with minimal effort and similar accuracies. To verify this, we develop a few resources for the Hindi language, including a sentence alignment algorithm, a morphological analyser and a transliteration similarity component and generalize the approach to allow rapid bootstrapping of similar resources for the Gujarati language. We show that the approach works on both the Hindi and Gujarati languages and achieves results that are comparable to similar state-of-the-art (SOA) resources available for these languages. We also hypothesise that it is possible to develop a high performance hybrid word alignment algorithm that relies on such language specific resources. To verify this, we design, implement and evaluate a novel English-Hindi hybrid word alignment system that uses the Hindi specific resources developed by us. Not only do we show our word alignment system outperforms other SOA English-Hindi word alignment systems, but also how simple it is to adapt it to the English-Gujarati language pair.

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Ng, Sheung-pui, and 吳尚珮. "Language and identity: the case of the Zhuang." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2010. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B44524110.

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El, Masri Yasmine Hachem. "Comparability of science assessment across languages : the case of PISA science 2006." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f0115f5f-4642-43b5-a3e3-b4dd0d8e324a.

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In this research, I investigated the extent to which language versions (English, French and Arabic) of the same science test were comparable in terms of item difficulty and demands. I used PISA science 2006 data from three countries (respectively, UK, France and Jordan). I argued that language was an intrinsic part of the scientific literacy construct, be it intended or not by the examiner. The tight relationship between the language element and the scientific knowledge makes the language variable inextricable from the construct. This argument has considerable implications on methodologies used to address this question. I also argued that none of the available statistical or qualitative techniques were capable of teasing out the language variable and answering the research question. In this thesis, I adopted a critical evaluation and empirical methods, using literature from various fields (cognitive linguistics, psychology, measurement and science education) to analyse the test development and design procedures. In addition, I illustrated my claims with evidence from the technical reports and examples of released items. I adopted the same class of models employed in PISA, the Rasch model, as well as differential item functioning (DIF) techniques to address my question empirically. General tests of fit suggested an overall good fit of the data to the model with eleven items out of 103 showing strong evidence of misfit. Various violations to the requirements of the Rasch model were highlighted. The DIF analysis indicated that 22% of the items showed bias in the selected countries, but bias balanced out at test level. Limitations of the DIF analysis to identify the source of bias were discussed. Qualitative approaches to investigating question demands were examined and issues with their usefulness in international settings were discussed. A way forward incorporating cognitive load theory and computational linguistics is proposed.

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Feger, Mary-Virginia. "Multimodal Text Designers: A Case Study of Literacy Events in a Multicultural Context." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://digital.lib.usf.edu/?e14.2816.

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Duke, Janet. "The development of gender as a grammatical category five case studies from the Germanic languages." Heidelberg Winter, 2005. http://d-nb.info/989735095/04.

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O'Shannessy, Carmel Therese. "Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition: learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia." University of Sydney, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1303.

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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri. The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not. Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age.

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Raymond, Hilary C. "Learning to teach foreign languages : case studies of six preservice teachers in a teacher education program /." The Ohio State University, 2000. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1242747968.

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Raymond, Hilary C. "Learning to teach foreign languages : case studies of six preservice teachers in a teacher education program /." Connect to resource, 1999. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1242747968.

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Barzamini, Roya. "Languages for All, Languages for Life? : A Case Study of Multilingualism and Educational Provision in One Local Education Authority in England." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-62801.

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The focus of the thesis is on the Language Policy in the English education system for bilinguals by looking at texts such as official documents (Languages for All: Languages for Life A Strategy for England and Every Language Matters) and the inspection reports of several schools and identifying discourses and then considering the consequences of these discourses (what are these discourses reveal) for education.

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Ojewale, Olugbenga Samson Mr. "America’s Inconsistent Foreign Policy to Africa; a Case Study of Apartheid South Africa." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3439.

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This study lays bare the inconsistencies in the United States of America’s Foreign Policy, and how it contributed to the longevity of apartheid in South Africa. Michael Mandelbaum opined that America’s foreign policy post-Cold War era drifted from containment to transformation.1 America became involved with transferring their democracy and constitutional order to the countries they entangled with in running those countries’ internal governance. Instead of war, America preached and practiced proper, organized governance. Thus, America’s foreign policy to Europe and Asia post-Cold War was all about democracy and protection of fundamental human rights. However, the role of America’s Foreign Policy in Africa took a turn in Africa, with Congo in 1960, Ghana in 1966 and Nigeria with their successive military regimes. This study intends to make sense of it all.

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Moloney, Adrianne. ""Family" as Constructed by Adoptees After Making Contact with Their Birth Families." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 1998. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/238.

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Legislative changes during the 1980s and 1990s opened confidential adoption files of the past enabling many adoptees and relinquishing parents to establish contact. This study examines the way in which the meaning of family is constructed by adoptees who have made contact with their birth relatives, and how these constructions were altered after contact. The ways in which biological and social definitions of family are constructed and contested in these settings is explored. Sociological definitions of family are discussed and the gap between ideal notions of 'family' and the lived experience of 'family' is explored. The study focuses on the process by which people are assigned as family. It explores what 'family' means to those involved in the study and the criteria they employ to construct their meanings of 'family'.

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Hamilton, Sarah A. Braun. "Writing Chinuk Wawa: A Materials Development Case Study." PDXScholar, 2010. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2875.

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This study explored the development of new texts by fluent non-native speakers of Chinuk Wawa, an endangered indigenous contact language of the Pacific Northwest United States. The texts were developed as part of the language and culture program of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon for use in university-sponsored language classes. The collaborative process of developing 12 texts was explored through detailed revision analysis and interviews with the materials developers and other stakeholders. Fluent non-native speakers relied on collaboration, historical documentation, reference materials, grammatical models, and their own intuitions and cultural sensibilities to develop texts that would be both faithful to the speech of previous generations and effective for instruction. The texts studied were stories and cultural information developed through research-based composition, translation from interlinear and narrative English in ethnographic sources, and editing of transcribed oral narrative. The revision analysis identified points of discussion in the lexical development and grammatical standardization of the language. The preferred strategy for developing new vocabulary was use of language-internal resources such as compounding although borrowing and loan translation from other local Native languages were also sometimes considered appropriate. The multifunctionality of the lexicon and evidence of dialectal and idiolectal usage problematicized the description of an “ideal” language for pedagogical purposes. Concerns were also expressed about detailed grammatical modeling due to potential influence on non-native speaker intuitions and the non-utility of such models for revitalization goals. Decisions made in the process of developing texts contributed to the development of a written form of Chinuk Wawa that would honor and perpetuate the oral language while adapting it for the requirements of inscription. The repeated inclusion of discourse markers and the frequent removal of nominal reference brought final versions of texts closer to oral style, while inclusion of background information and the avoidance of shortened pronouns and auxiliaries customized the presentation for a reading audience. The results of this study comprise a sketch of one aspect of the daily work of language revitalization, in which non-native speakers shoulder responsibility for the growth of a language and its transfer to new generations of speakers.

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Nodoba, Gaontebale Joseph. "A qualitative study of language preferences and behaviours of selected students and staff in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town, in the context of the university's implementation of its 2003 language policy and plan." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14267.

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Includes bibliographical references.
This dissertation seeks to answer the question: What are the language contexts, preferences and behaviours of EAL students and staff in the Faculty of Humanities at UCT? The language contexts EAL students and staff find themselves in are either formal or informal. The former refers to domains such as the classroom and administration offices, while the latter alludes to student residences and generally out-of-class social interaction. Language preferences refer to attitudes of both EAL students and of staff towards language(s) that are used in their linguistic context. The language behaviours of EAL students and of staff are their language practices in the various social contexts within which they find themselves. The following research instruments were used to collect data in order to answer the research question: questionnaires, interviews and observations. I opted for self-administered questionnaires and conducted semi-structured interviews to validate questionnaire responses. Both the questionnaires and interviews had closed-ended and open-ended questions to accommodate a variety of responses. I observed a group of respondents, who were part of purposive samples of convenience (snowball samples), for three months and subsequently processed data qualitatively through thematic analysis. The first finding of this study is that EAL students find the UCT language context to be different to their home language context. In the home context they use their PLs more while on UCT campus the institutional culture forces them to use mainly English. The second finding is with regard to their language preferences. EAL students show an ambivalent attitude towards English and their own primary languages in teaching and learning programmes. This attitude of EAL students towards English at UCT is also documented in research by Bangeni (2001), Bangeni & Kapp (2005), and Thesen & van Pletzen (eds.) (2006). This attitude is in tandem with their language behaviour. EAL students shuttle between their PLs and English. The data show that EAL students code-switch in conversations outside class and in their residences. They mainly use English for instrumental reasons (see also De Klerk & Barkhuizen 1998: 159-160). As for staff members they use English inside and outside class. ix The language contexts, preferences and practices of EAL students constitute part of the UCT institutional culture. This institutional culture is the social context within which institutional policy documents such as the UCT Language Plan (2003) are to be implemented. Implications for the implementation of the UCT Language Policy and Plan could be drawn from the language preferences and behaviours discussed above. The study concludes by making recommendations for the implementation of the UCT Language Policy and Plan. The study recommends that the Multilingualism Education Project (MEP) collaborate with language departments so as to explore possibilities of designing programmes that target EAL students and staff for postgraduate certificate courses. Such courses could focus on workplace-oriented communicative skills. Renewed marketability of African languages, as well as reviewing how they are taught and used within the UCT speech community, should be considered. Though the small sample sizes underpinning this study do not justify generalisation on the UCT community, its findings could nonetheless serve as preliminary evidence of significant language contexts, preferences and behaviours of EAL students and of staff in the Faculty of Humanities at UCT. The outcome of this research could be invaluable for language planning at UCT and similar institutions.

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Rönnqvist, Hanna. "Fusion, exponence, and flexivity in Hindukush languages : An areal-typological study." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Avdelningen för allmän språkvetenskap, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-120357.

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Surrounding the Hindukush mountain chain is a stretch of land where as many as 50 distinct languages varieties of several language meet, in the present study referred to as “The Greater Hindukush” (GHK). In this area a large number of languages of at least six genera are spoken in a multi-linguistic setting. As the region is in part characterised by both contact between languages as well as isolation, it constitutes an interesting field of study of similarities and diversity, contact phenomena and possible genealogical connections. The present study takes in the region as a whole and attempts to characterise the morphology of the many languages spoken in it, by studying three parameters: phonological fusion, exponence, and flexivity in view of grammatical markers for Tense-Mood-Aspect, person marking, case marking, and plural marking on verbs and nouns. The study was performed with the perspective of areal typology, employed grammatical descriptions, and was in part inspired by three studies presented in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). It was found that the region is one of high linguistic diversity, even if there are common traits, especially between languages of closer contact, such as the Iranian and the Indo-Aryan languages along the Pakistani-Afghan border where purely concatenative formatives are more common. Polyexponential formatives seem more common in the western parts of the GHK as compared to the eastern. High flexivity is a trait common to the more central languages in the area. As the results show larger variation than the WALS studies, the question was raised of whether large-scale typological studies can be performed on a sample as limited as single grammatical markers. The importance of the region as a melting-pot between several linguistic families was also put forward.
Språkkontakt och språksläktskap i Hindukushregionen, Vetenskapsrådet, Projektnummer: 421-2014-631

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Young, Catherine Elizabeth Crutchfield. "Case studies the effect of an autobiographical writing project on student self-perceptions of motivation and attitude in the L1 and L2 foreign language classroom /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2003. http://www.tren.com.

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Wilson, Jordan. "Access, Gender, and Agency on Study Abroad: Four Case Studies of Female Students in Jordan." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2015. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5775.

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This qualitative study follows the experiences of four female students as they sought to gain access to native speakers and the L2, engage with the culture, and fulfill program speaking requirements (two hours of speaking the second language outside of class per weekday) in Amman, Jordan. The research explores the following questions: what challenges did female participants on BYU's intensive Arabic study abroad (SA) program face as they accessed native speakers and the L2 outside of the classroom, how were participants able to persevere through and overcome these challenges, and how were program interventions set up to help participants persevere and overcome these challenges? Data include a pre-study abroad questionnaire, daily/weekly reports, semi-structured interviews, and an exit survey. Through the lens of the Ecological Approach to Language Learning, findings reveal how students worked alongside the study abroad program to access native speakers and the L2 within the sociocultural environment.

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Ntete, Susan. "Case studies of second language learners who excel at writing in English." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003310.

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This study, which was carried out in Mdantsane township in the Eastern Cape, attempts to explain why some learners from the former Department of Education and Training, and whose mother-tongue is Xhosa, are more proficient English Second Language (ESL) writers than others. As one who grew up as an ESL learner, and has taught as an ESL teacher in this area, my interest in this field of study has been triggered by the concern of one who has experienced educational disadvantage. My understanding of what it means to be an ESL writer, given the status that English enjoys in South Africa presently, has been the motivating force behind this study. The study focuses on competent ESL writers. It is hoped that other researchers, teacher educators and teachers will learn something from the practices and strategies used by the learners in this study. In its investigation this study employs case studies. For purposes of triangulation, multiple sources of data collection have been used. The major areas of focus are on the learners and their ESL writing practices. Collection of data includes formal interviews with both ESL learners and their teachers, informal interviews with the learners' Xhosa teachers, observation as well as text analysis. The findings of the study suggest, among other things, that more often than not, it is learners who are motivated extroverts, ambitious go-getters and uninhibited survivors who become excellent ESL writers. Like any study, this has certain limitations. As a result the interpretation of data has been expressed in tentative terms. This does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from a study of this nature. Instead, the aim is to challenge more researchers to take up this issue, so that generalis ability across case studies can be achieved.

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Tobor, John Oghenero. "Urhobo Culture and the Amnesty Program in Niger Delta, Nigeria: An Ethnographic Case Study." ScholarWorks, 2014. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/128.

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Despite abundant oil resources, the residents of the Niger Delta endure extreme poverty, polluted environments, poor infrastructure, and high unemployment. In the early 1990s, these problems led to a violent uprising against oil exploration. In 2009 the government of Nigeria attempted to end the uprising by implementing an amnesty program for the militants that was designed to address the region's problems. The amnesty program resulted in suspending the violence but so far has not resolved the region's problems. If these problems are not addressed, the uprising may resume. Although the Urhobo people comprised the largest number of militants from the Western Niger Delta, there has been no research on whether there are aspects of the Urhobo culture that may be helpful for strengthening the amnesty program and preventing a return to violence by Urhobo ex-militants. Benet's polarities of democracy model served as the theoretical framework for this ethnographic study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations of 20 Urhobo ex-militants to learn what might prevent their return to violence. Content analysis was used to identify significant themes. Findings indicated that aspects of the Urhobo culture, such as communal obligations, respect for elders, and commitment to social justice and equality, may contribute to strengthening the amnesty program and preventing a return to violence. Recommendations include incorporating meaningful participation of Urhobo elders in the further development and implementation of the amnesty program. Implications for social change include informing policy makers of the importance the Urhobo culture may play in strengthening the amnesty program.

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Cribbs, Heather. "Humor and Attitude Toward Homosexuals: The Case of Will & Grace." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0003131.

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Lo, Bee Hong. "Indeterminacy in first and second languages: Case studies of narrative development of Chinese children with and without language disorder." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2000. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1353.

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Bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) from non English speaking background (NESB) present a major diagnostic problem to speech pathologist and educationist in an English speaking country. There has been no known study on the simultaneous narrative development involving bilingual Chinese children with and without SLI. This longitudinal case study examined the relationship of Chinese (L1) and English (L2) in narrative development in a child with no language difficulty (Child LN) and a child (Child L1) diagnosed as having SLI. The hypothesis posed for this study was that Child L1 has the same developmental profile for narrative skill in L1 and L2 as Child LN, but at a slower rate of progression and there was no within subject difference in the narrative development between L1 and L2. The narrative characteristics of L1 and L2 of these two children were studied over a twelve months period between the age of six and half and seven and half years. A total often recordings of the children's retelling and generation of stories in both L1 and L2 were made, using various bilingual and text less children's books and pictures. The narratives were analysed with regard to their form and content. The narrative form was measured by T-unit/utterance ratio, the cohesive score and the number of complete episodes. The narrative content was analysed according to the total number of story grammar components (measuring content amount), the types and frequency of grammar components, and the developmental staging (measuring narrative maturity). For each child, the narrative characteristics of L1 and L2, with regard to the indices studied, were closely linked. Both children showed a similar developmental pattern in their narrative production, and parallel progression with age in the narrative production of coherence score, total grammar components, and number of complete episodes. However, Child L1 generally performed at the lower level than Child LN in both his Chinese and English languages for T-unit/utterance ratio, developmental staging, coherence, and number of complete episodes The study also confirmed the past findings of the important influence of age, topic and communicative context on the production of narratives of young children. Whilst Child LN was developing culture related narrative characteristic in the way of using different constituents for his grammar components, Child Ll was yet to do so. The frequent sequence of "initial event", "attempt" and "consequence" was found in Child LN's Chinese narratives, indicating the "cause-effect" discourse pattern of Chinese culture. This was in contrast to his English narratives where "setting" was found to be more frequent than "consequence". No difference in the frequency of common grammar components between L1 and L2 of Child L1 's narratives was found. They were "attempt", "initiating event" and "internal response". The preponderance of "internal response" in Child LI's narrative was in contrast to past studies on children with SLI. The outcome of this study indicates that the indices used in this study may be culturally relevant for analysing the narrative structure of bilingual Chinese children. The results indicated that simultaneous analysis of L1 and L2 narratives of these children may help to differentiate SLI from ESL (English as second language). In this respect, gaining access into L1 data through linguistically competent transcriber may be crucial to accurately identify narrative difficulties of children from non English background. This study, although descriptive in nature with only a single representative case, raised a number of questions that need to be addressed in future research. They will be discussed in the thesis. Further research to see if the same characteristics could be isolated among most bilingual Chinese children is necessary for cross-cultural study of children with SLI.

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Chimezie, Raymond Ogu. "A Case Study of Primary Healthcare Services in Isu, Nigeria." ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1057.

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Access to primary medical care and prevention services in Nigeria is limited, especially in rural areas, despite national and international efforts to improve health service delivery. Using a conceptual framework developed by Penchansky and Thomas, this case study explored the perceptions of community residents and healthcare providers regarding residents' access to primary healthcare services in the rural area of Isu. Using a community-based research approach, semistructured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 27 participants, including government healthcare administrators, nurses and midwives, traditional healers, and residents. Data were analyzed using Colaizzi's 7-step method for qualitative data analysis. Key findings included that (a) healthcare is focused on children and pregnant women; (b) healthcare is largely ineffective because of insufficient funding, misguided leadership, poor system infrastructure, and facility neglect; (c) residents lack knowledge of and confidence in available primary healthcare services; (d) residents regularly use traditional healers even though these healers are not recognized by local government administrators; and (e) residents can be valuable participants in community-based research. The potential for positive social change includes improved communication between local government, residents, and traditional healers, and improved access to healthcare for residents.

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Bernhard, Irene. "E-government and e-governance : Swedish case studies with focus on the local level." Licentiate thesis, KTH, Urbana och regionala studier, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-133773.

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The concepts of e-government and e-governance are used interchangeably in most research and there is no single definition of these terms. The objective of this licentiate thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of these concepts through empirical studies in a Swedish context. Further, it aims to analyse whether – and if so in what way – the implementation of local contact centres (CC) affect conditions for local planning. This is reported in three articles. In this thesis e-government is defined to as the use of tools and systems by governmental bodies made possible by ICT that affect the organization of public administration. E-governance is defined as the ICT-based networks of services and administration in New Public Management settings including both public and private actors. Case study methodology is used as research method, including interviews, focus group studies, document studies, and some participatory observations. The analysis is partly built on an inductive methodological approach, since this is a new, emerging field of innovative policy and practice. Based on a theoretical discussion of New Public Management in the digital era, findings show that there is a difference between the concepts of e-government and e-governance from the perspective of e-administration and e-services and that the terms should not be used interchangeably. The study indicates that there are examples of implementation that are referred to the e-governance setting. Further the study indicates that local municipal contact centres may be referred to not only as an implementation of e-government but as a combination of e-governance and e-government. The findings indicate that there is a potential for positive impact on the conditions for local planning through the implementation of municipal contact centres.

QC 20131111

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Petzold, Thomas. "The uses of multilingualism in digital culture : the case of inter-language linking." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2011. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/49757/1/Thomas_Petzold_Thesis.pdf.

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Language-use has proven to be the most complex and complicating of all Internet features, yet people and institutions invest enormously in language and crosslanguage features because they are fundamental to the success of the Internet’s past, present and future. The thesis takes into focus the developments of the latter – features that facilitate and signify linking between or across languages – both in their historical and current contexts. In the theoretical analysis, the conceptual platform of inter-language linking is developed to both accommodate efforts towards a new social complexity model for the co-evolution of languages and language content, as well as to create an open analytical space for language and cross-language related features of the Internet and beyond. The practiced uses of inter-language linking have changed over the last decades. Before and during the first years of the WWW, mechanisms of inter-language linking were at best important elements used to create new institutional or content arrangements, but on a large scale they were just insignificant. This has changed with the emergence of the WWW and its development into a web in which content in different languages co-evolve. The thesis traces the inter-language linking mechanisms that facilitated these dynamic changes by analysing what these linking mechanisms are, how their historical as well as current contexts can be understood and what kinds of cultural-economic innovation they enable and impede. The study discusses this alongside four empirical cases of bilingual or multilingual media use, ranging from television and web services for languages of smaller populations, to large-scale, multiple languages involving web ventures by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service Australia, Wikipedia and Google. To sum up, the thesis introduces the concepts of ‘inter-language linking’ and the ‘lateral web’ to model the social complexity and co-evolution of languages online. The resulting model reconsiders existing social complexity models in that it is the first that can explain the emergence of large-scale, networked co-evolution of languages and language content facilitated by the Internet and the WWW. Finally, the thesis argues that the Internet enables an open space for language and crosslanguage related features and investigates how far this process is facilitated by (1) amateurs and (2) human-algorithmic interaction cultures.

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Howell, Anna Summerhayes [Verfasser]. "Alternative Semantics Across Languages : Case Studies on Disjunctive Questions and Free Choice Items in Samoan and Yoruba / Anna Summerhayes Howell." Tübingen : Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, 2020. http://d-nb.info/1221597418/34.

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Torres, Sandra. "Towards an understanding of the relationship between teachers' beliefs and their thinking about the use of generic tools in language education : Three case studies in a Colombian context." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.516795.

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Lidbäck, Jonathan. "Functions of taboo expressions in YouTube discourse: The case of iDubbbzTV." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur (from 2013), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-77931.

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The purpose of this study is to identify relationships between usage of taboo expressions in a selected YouTube clip, and how the audience of iDubbbzTV react to these taboo expressions and how they use them themselves. The data used in this study is in the form of spoken and written language which is transcribed and collected from a selected iDubbbzTV YouTube clip and its comment section. This qualitative study of the usage of taboo expressions in YouTube discourse shows that many cases of taboo expressions are used together with jokes and also sometimes serve as call-backs. Some taboo expressions are also used as intensifiers, which can feature in both negative and positive contexts. The study also finds that interpretations of taboo expressions can vary depending on co-text and contextual knowledge.
Syftet med denna studie är att identifiera samband mellan användandet av tabuuttryck i ett valt YouTubeklipp samt publikens egna respons och användande av dessa uttryck. Datan som används i denna studie är både muntligt och skriftligt språk. Denna data hämtas från videoklippet samt kommentarsfältet från den valda videon. Denna kvalitativa studie av tabuordsanvändande i YouTubediskurs visar att flera fall av tabuuttryck används i samband med skämt eller återkopplingar. Vissa tabuuttryck används i ett förstärkande syfte som både kan användas i negativ och positiv bemärkelse. Det har också visat sig att tolkningar av tabuuttryck kan variera beroende på förkunskap angående kontext och co-text.

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Beard, Alexander Charles. "Narconovela : four case studies of the representation of drug trafficking in Mexican fiction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7eb6c837-cb79-4625-86dc-38267d36047a.

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In addition to coverage in the national and international media of the ongoing violence in Mexico related to the drug trade, there has been growing interest in fictional representations of the Mexican drug trade, its origins and social context. There is now a considerable body of written narratives that have been christened narconovelas. A small number of academic works has charted the emergence of the narconovela and sought to examine how drug traffickers have been represented and evaluated in fiction. However, very little attention has been paid to the aesthetic qualities of ‘narco-literature’. This study examines four of the most highly-regarded works in detail: Balas de plata (2008), by Élmer Mendoza; Los minutos negros (2006), by Martín Solares; Contrabando (2008), by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda; and Trabajos del reino (2004), by Yuri Herrera. So embedded is the phenomenon of drug trafficking in northern Mexican culture, so suffused with cliché is its representation in other media, that to write about the topic with originality and ethical nuance is difficult. This thesis accounts for the distinct choices made by the four authors in question to address this difficulty of representation in the structure, style and tone of their novels. The self-awareness exhibited by these works of fiction regarding the challenges of representing their subject matter render them the most sophisticated examples yet created of the so-called narconovela.

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Pecore, Abigail Elaina. "Motivation in the Portland Chinuk Wawa Language Community." PDXScholar, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/806.

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Throughout the world, languages are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. Perhaps half of the 6,000-7,000 languages worldwide will go extinct in the next 50-100 years. One of these dying languages, Chinook Jargon or Chinuk Wawa, a language found in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, is in the process of being revitalized through the concerted efforts of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR). Reasons to revitalize endangered languages often seem irrelevant to our modern daily lives, and revitalizing these languages is a difficult process requiring much dedication, commitment, and persistence. In light of this significant struggle, understanding people's motivations could contribute to a better understanding of how to involve more people in language revitalization. Ideally, such an understanding would contribute to strengthening a community's efforts to revitalize their language. This exploratory, ethnographic case study explores the motivations of eight participants in the Portland Chinuk Wawa language community involved in revitalizing Chinuk Wawa over a nine-month period in 2011. The results of the study showed that seven major themes of motivation were prevalent for the participants: connections made through Chinuk Wawa, preservation of Chinuk Wawa, relationships, instrumental motivation, affective motivation, identity motivation, and demotivation.

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Söderberg, Benny. "The Double Passive in Swedish : A case of creating raising verbs in the Scandinavian languages." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Avdelningen för allmän språkvetenskap, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-90903.

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The primary aim of this thesis is to map the syntactic and semantic nature, and the frequency of the Double Passive in Swedish. The results showed that the Double Passive is a control construction where the internal argument (OBJ) of the embedded verb is raised to subject of the s-passive matrix verb, and the verb of the infinitival complement co-occurs as an s-passive infinitive. In the thesis Lexical functional grammar (LFG) is used as a model for semantic and syntactic analysis. The analysis showed that when the AGENT in a Double Passive construction is suppressed, it creates an argument structure that triggers an equi verb to occur as a raising verb (cf. Ørsnes 2006:404). Overt agents within constructions containing the Double Passive showed an even lower frequency than the low frequencies documented in previous research of passive constructions by Silén (1997) and Laanemets (2010). The lower frequency is partly a result of the fact that agents in a Double Passive construction are suppressed twice. The results of a corpus study showed a frequency of 3.57 % of overt agents within constructions containing Double Passives. The complementizer att ‘to’ in the subordinated infinitive clause of a Double Passive is overtly expressed, partly depending on the degree of modality of the matrix verb (cf. Sundman 1983; Teleman 1999; Lagerwall 1999), and the degree of semantic bonding between the matrix verb and the complement (Givón 2001b). The data (matrix verbs) collected in the corpus study were analysed according to a categorising-system in SAG (Teleman et al. 1999) and in Givón (2001a) and Givón (2001b). The matrix verbs with strong nominal (lexical) properties, e.g. planera ‘plan’, showed a high frequency of co-occurrence with full infinitives, as compared to matrix verbs with largely grammatical meaning, e.g. avse ‘intend’.
Det primära syftet med denna uppsats är att kartlägga dubbelpassiv-konstruktionens syntaktiska och semantiska natur samt frekvens i det svenska språket. Resultaten visade att dubbelpassiven är en kontrollkonstruktion där det inbäddade verbets interna argument (OBJ) lyfts till positionen som det s-passiva matrisverbets subjekt, och där verbet i infinitivsatsen uttrycks som en s-passiv infinitiv. I uppsatsen används Lexical functional grammar (LFG) som modell för semantisk och syntaktisk analys. Analysen visade att då AGENTEN undertrycks, så skapas en argumentstruktur som får ett equi-verb att framträda som ett raising-verb (jmfr Ørsnes 2006:404). Explicita agenter, i konstruktioner med dubbelpassiver, visade en ännu lägre frekvens än den redan låga frekvens som dokumenterats i tidigare forskning om passiv-konstruktioner av Silén (1997) och Laanemets (2010). Den lägre frekvensen, är delvis ett resultat av faktumet att agenterna i en dubbelpassiv-konstruktion undertrycks två gånger. Resultaten av en korpusstudie visade att frekvensen av explicita agenter, i konstruktioner som innehåller dubbelpassiver, uppgick till 3.57 %. Komplementeraren "att" i den underordnade infinitivsatsen i en dubbelpassiv uttrycks explicit – delvis beroende på matrisverbens modala egenskaper (jmfr. Sundman 1983; Teleman 1999; Lagerwall 1999), samt beroende av grad av semantisk länkning mellan matrisverbet och komplementet (Givón 2001b). Den insamlade datan (matrisverb) i korpusstudien analyserades enligt ett kategoriseringssystem hämtat ur SAG (Teleman et al. 1999), Givón (2001a) och Givón (2001b). Matrisverb med starka nominella (lexikala) egenskaper, till exempel planera, visade en högre frekvens i förekomst med fullständiga infinitivsatser, i jämförelse med mer funktionella matrisverb som avse.

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Bropleh, Minger. "Incongruent Premodern and Modern Beauty Ideals: A Case Study of South Korea and India's Reconciliation of Current Beauty Trends With Foundational Religious Ideals." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/810.

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This thesis is an in-depth analysis of beauty ideals in South Korea and India. These two countries have recently turned to skin lightening and cosmetic surgery in order to achieve their new beauty standards. Not only do these two countries share a propensity for those two trends, but they also have an overwhelming majority of the population that identifies with a specific religion; Hinduism in the case of India and Confucianism in the case of South Korea. However, it is not clear that the current beauty ideal in each country aligns with the beauty ideal set out in the respective foundational religion.

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Gadacha, Ali. "Language planning and language conflict : the case of multilingual Tunisia : aspects of status, function and structure of the languages and language varieties used and sociolinguistic implications of the language shift on the new century's eve : thèse." Nice, 1998. http://www.theses.fr/1998NICE2030.

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48

Taylor, Gregory. "The impact of a telephone contact program on physical and psychological functioning : level of pain and perceived social support among elderly females with arthritis." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29704.

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Having identified the need to provide services to elderly, homebound people with arthritis, the Social Work Department at the Vancouver Arthritis Centre initiated an Arthritis Telephone Contact Program in Autumn, 1989. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not a weekly telephone call from volunteers would impact positively on subjects' physical and psychological functioning, level of pain and perceived level of social support. The 11 subjects in this study were elderly, Caucasian women identified by health care professionals as being socially isolated due, in part, to the limits placed on them by either osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. The one-group pretest-posttest research design was employed for this study. Quantitative measures used were the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales (AIMS) and the Perceived Social Support From Friends and From Family Scale (PSS-Fr & Fa). Interviews of subjects were conducted in order to describe the efficacy of the Telephone Contact Program from more than one perspective. Over 16 weeks, paired t-test found that the physical functioning of subjects had improved significantly. It was noted that there was a trend towards improved health status for the experimental group in that seven out of the eight subscales of AIMS measured improvement, while one subscale showed no change. Contrary to prediction, perception of social support from family members decreased significantly, as measured by the PSS-Fa scale. Pearson correlation coefficients found no association between changes in perception of social support and changes in health status. Interview data suggests that callers were perceived as sources of social support. Specifically, callers seemed to provide participants with emotional support, informational support, and positive social interaction. Overall, the data suggested that the Telephone Contact Program had the capability to evoke small, but clinically meaningfully improvements in the health status of elderly women with arthritis. Further investigation into the use of telephone contact programs as a minimal intervention is advised.
Arts, Faculty of
Social Work, School of
Graduate

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Cullen, Suzanne. "Language utilisation in an international business organisation a New Zealand case study : thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Arts (Applied Language Studies), 2005." Full thesis. Abstract, 2005.

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50

Ström, Anni-Ruffina. "Difficulties of Coming Out Amoung Japanese Elite Athletes : A media-studies inquiry into the case of soccer player Shiho Shimoyamada." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för Asien-, Mellanöstern- och Turkietstudier, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-191129.

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The 2020 Summer Olympicsand the Paralympic Games were scheduledto take placein Tokyo. This sporting mega-event has affected change in the public and social spheres of the host country, Japan, but with regard to athletes’ gender and sexual orientation Japan’s mainstream media seem still considerably biased. Little has been reported on openly LGBTpro athletes from Japan and their involvement in advocating the Olympic values:diversity, inclusiveness and equality.This thesis investigates howLGBTiconsare portrayed by the media, or more specifically,the national newspapers, LGBTcommunity sources and social media, and withregard to the first it questions whetherthere are differences in the portrayalof Shiho Shimoyamada, the first openly homosexual female soccer athlete fromJapan, between Japanese and English language media.In the attempt to interrelate sports studies, queer studies and media studies, this thesis investigates in the main the representationof Shiho ShimoyamadainAsahi Shimbun, Japan’s second largest newspaper, and inthe English-language newspaperThe Japan Times. It also provides an overview of the athlete’s self-representation on Twitter which relates closely to her LGBT activism.Investigation of the media sources is executed by qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected within 13 months(January 1, 2019 -February 28,2020). Categorizing tweets bygroups, the findingsdemonstrategaps in media representation ofsociallyimportant activism and presents the social media self-promotion strategies used by the athlete.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Languages in contact Case studies'

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