Browsing by Subject "Sociolinguistics"

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A multidisciplinary approach to studying language attitudes and language use in the Ottawa-Gatineau region
(2020-03-25) Neupané, Rozen; Bullock, Barbara E.; Blyth, Carl S; Epps, Patience; Li, Junyi J; Toribio, Almeida J
This dissertation focuses on the language behavior of individuals from the Ottawa– Gatineau metropolitan region (OGR) and the ways in which it correlates with their language attitudes as expressed in social media and in person. Although attitudes are believed to be intrinsically related to behavior, there is a lack of consensus among social psychologists regarding the nature of this relationship. Furthermore, there is a paucity of work exploring the link between language attitudes (LA) and language behavior. I intend to address this gap through my dissertation. The OGR is a fertile ground for such a study. It is a largely stable bilingual region where a total of 48.5% of the population speaks English and 30.3% speaks French as their mother tongue (Statistics Canada, 2016). However, the region is not a homogenous linguistic community. It is linguistically divided by the Québec-Ontario provincial border with the largely francophone Gatineau on the Québec side and the mainly anglophone Ottawa on the Ontario side of the border. The two cities are also different in terms of language policies and language planning measures adopted by their respective municipal and provincial governments. In this study, I established language use patterns through ethnographic observations in local cafés, farmer’s markets and grocery stores and through people’s use of French and English on Twitter. Language attitudes were assessed through a language attitude questionnaire (Kircher, 2009) distributed among people in different public spaces in the OGR and through a study of tweets from individuals in the region. The analysis reveals important differences in language attitudes and language use among francophones and anglophones. We also noticed that the two official languages do not enjoy the same status and that attitudes towards Québec/Canadian French (QF/CF) are more negative than attitudes towards European French (EF) or the French language in general. Finally, we discovered that language attitudes and language use had an important influence on each other, but this relationship was dependent on other factors as well.
Applying corpus and computational methods to loanword research : new approaches to Anglicisms in Spanish
(2017-08) Serigos, Jacqueline Rae Larsen; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara E.; Koike, Dale; Erk, Katrin; Gries, Stefan
Understanding both the linguistic and social roles of loanwords is becoming more relevant as globalization has brought loanwords into new settings, often previously viewed as monolingual. Their occurrence has the potential to impact speech communities, in that they have the capacity to alter the semantic relationships and social values ascribed to individual elements within the existing lexicon. In order to identify broad patterns, we must turn towards large and varied sources of data, specifically corpora. This dissertation aims to tackle some of the practical issues involved in the use of corpora, while addressing two conceptual issues in the field of loanword research – the social distribution and semantic nature of loanwords. In this dissertation, I propose two methods, adapted from advances in computational linguistics, which will contribute to two different stages of loanword research: processing corpora to find tokens of interest and semantically analyzing tokens of interest. These methods will be employed in two case studies. The first seeks to explore the social stratification of loanwords in Argentine Spanish. The second measures the semantic specificity of loanwords relative to their native equivalents.
Aswan Arabic : negotiating identity in a provincial capital
(2017-05) Schroepfer, Jason William; Brustad, Kristen; Al-Batal, Mahmoud; Bullock , Barbara E.; Atwood, Blake
This dissertation aims to shed light on the sociolinguistic identity of the historically maligned speakers of Aswan Arabic. Although scholars have comprehensively documented much of Upper Egypt’s (southern Egypt’s) linguistic variation, Aswan Arabic remains a lacuna. Additionally, only three sociolinguistic studies cover Upper Egyptians’ language attitudes. On the other hand, much of the known sociolinguistic stigma and disparagement associated with Upper Egyptians and their dialects can be found in popular Cairene serials. I assert that several Cairene television series further stigmatize the historically marginalized Upper Egyptians and misrepresent some linguistic features. In response to this misconception, I present an empirical study of complex sociophonetic variation of three linguistic features represented in spoken Aswan Arabic and interpret the variable pronunciations in their contemporary context. To that end, I conducted sociolinguistic interviews of 33 speakers of Aswan Arabic during several trips to Aswan from 2012-2015 where I observe unusual, systematic, and variable pronunciations of ṭ, j, and ā, (which are respectively /tˤ/, /d͡ʒ/, and /æ:/). The project also acoustically describes the unorthodox pronunciations of the respective sounds as well as pinpoints the effects of factors like sex, ethnicity, and age on pronunciation choice in Aswan Arabic. Some of these pronunciation choices signify ethnic membership, masculine toughness, and urbane refinedness. These findings endeavor to help provide acoustic descriptions of an under-documented Arabic dialect, and contribute to issues in Arabic Linguistics.
Audience design and code-switching in Bayside, Texas
(2009-12) Dahl, Kimberly Lynn; Crowhurst, Megan Jane; Hinrichs, Lars
This study casts the code-switching patterns observed among Spanish-English bilinguals in Bayside, Texas within the framework of Bell’s (1984) theory of audience design, which is claimed to apply to both monolingual style-shifting as well as bilingual code-switching. The latter part of this claim has been little explored. The intent of this study, then, is to determine if the explanatory power of audience design, as demon¬strated in studies on style-shifting, does indeed hold when applied to cases of language alternation. Analysis of the data from Bayside generally supports Bell’s theory as it shows speakers adjusting their use of Spanish and/or English to suit their audience. The study will highlight a less frequently analyzed aspect of Bell’s model, i.e., the role of the auditor, and will call for the auditor to be classified as a primary influencer of lin¬guistic choice in bilingual contexts, alongside the addressee. The code selection patterns exhibited by a pair of Bayside residents in a series of interviews and in conversations videotaped at the local general store will be com¬pared to illustrate the effects of addressee and auditor. A qualitative analysis will dem¬onstrate that differing determinations regarding the linguistic repertoires of the auditors led to contrasting linguistic choices on the part of the study’s subjects. The data collected will show that, when selecting a language of communication, as opposed to a register, style, or dialect, a speaker may be more greatly affected by an auditor than by the addressee. The methods used in collecting the data will also support an expan¬sion of Bell’s model to include an additional participant category suitable for capturing the effect of the recording device, as per Wertheim (2006).
Behind the Linguistic Landscape of Israel/Palestine : exploring the visual implications of expansionist policies
(2014-05) Carey, Shaylyn Theresa; Brustad, Kristen
The concept of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new and developing field, but it is already proving to illuminate significant trends in sociocultural boundaries and linguistic identities within heterogeneous areas. By examining types of signage displayed in public urban spaces such as street signs, billboards, advertisements, scholars have gained insight into the inter and intra-group relations that have manifested as a result of the present top-down and bottom-up language ideologies. This paper will apply LL theory to the current situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories through a discussion of the various policies that have shaped the Linguistic Landscape. It will begin by examining the Hebraicization of the toponymy after the creation of Israel, then discuss the conflict over the linguistic landscape, which can be seen in several photographs where the Arabic script has been marked out or covered. Moving forward, this work will address the grammatical errors on Arabic language signs, which reflect the low priority of Arabic education in Israel. Finally, this project will expand upon the LL framework by looking at the economic relationship between Israel and the Palestinian territories and how it is reflected in public places, such as supermarkets, which display an overwhelming presence of Hebrew. Through the use of photographic evidence of the LL from the region, which shows the prevalence of Hebrew place names, Israeli economic goods, and negative attitudes towards the use of Arabic on signage, this paper will take a multidisciplinary approach at examining the history and policies that shape the language used in public urban spaces. The relationship between the state and the Linguistic Landscape sheds light on the power dynamics of a multilingual space. As Hebrew is given preferential treatment, despite the official status of both Arabic and Hebrew, Israel continues to dominate the social space with the use of Hebrew in order to assert their claims to the land. In addition to investigating the power dynamics that are reflected on visual displays of language in this region, this work serves as a meaningful contribution to the Linguistic Landscape by expanding its methodology and units of analysis.
Between worlds: the narration of multicultural/transnational identities of women working in a post-national space
(2003) Pierce, Alice Elizabeth; Brooks, Ann
This dissertation explores the question: What does it mean to live in-between as an accelerated flow of people moves between worlds? The high-speed of Internet connections, cellular communications and air travel are redefining the traditional notion of a shared history, memory, national identity and language. By using Bakhtin’s literary tools of analysis, the author captures the complexity that characterizes the narration of identities in multicultural/transnational women living in a post-national space during the beginning of the twenty-first century. Few studies in the field of multicultural/bilingual education have applied Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia and chronotope to make meaning out of the complexities in multicultural/transnational identities. Using life history methods as a means of gathering the stories of thirteen multicultural/transnational women who lived in El Cachimbazo, Guatemala, for six months during 2002, the author not only provides a qualitative, alternative perspective on bilingual education but also a new tool to understanding the multiple dimensions of identity construction in multicultural/transnational individuals.
Cross contextual meaning making : a study of children's talk within and across literacy contexts in one multiage classroom
(2014-05) Peterson, Katie Elizabeth; Roser, Nancy; Worthy, Jo
In this embedded case study, I examined and documented discussions of literature across two literacy contexts within one multiage classroom. Further, I explored the experiences of four focal students within and across the two contexts, highlighting the affordances of each space and considering the implications of tacit rules of participation for individual students. I employed ethnographic data collection methods including field notes, audio and video recordings, semi-structured interviews, and student and teacher created artifacts. Data analysis drew on constant comparative methods as well as traditions of interactive sociolinguistics. Drawing on sociocultural theories of learning and transactional theories of reading response, the study demonstrates the ways in which talk is used as a tool for meaning-making tasks including comprehension, argumentation, and identity construction. The study highlights the purposeful and strategic instructional moves made by the classroom teachers in discussion that facilitated more complete and complex interpretations of texts. The cases of the focal students illustrate the affordances of each context as well as demonstrating the ways in which responses to literature might be leveraged to claim identity positions within the classroom. The study cultivates deeper understanding about the importance of individual contributions within discussion contexts, as well as demonstrating the ways in which children and teachers mediate meaning making in collaborative contexts. The findings suggest implications for the ways in which educators might support and draw on individual approaches to response to facilitate divergent meaning making and expansion of repertoires of response for students. In addition, the study suggests implications for the careful design and development of contexts in which children are granted interpretive authority and encouraged to engage in collaborative meaning-making.
The cross-cultural classroom in the context of radical language shift : humor, teasing, and the ethnolinguistic repertoire in the Blackfeet Nation
(2013-05) Seifert, Nicole Rae; Woodbury, Anthony C.
In this dissertation, I analyze classroom interactions between a White, nonlocal high school English teacher and American Indian students on the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. I focus on the participants' strategic use of humor and distinctive linguistic features in these interactions, particularly teasing as a cultural activity among the students, the teacher's immersion and adaptation to that culture, and the affective and sociocultural importance of the ethnolinguistic repertoire to the students. I argue that the main functions of the humor and teasing are threefold: (a) to build rapport, (b) to accomplish interactional goals in the classroom, and (c) to negotiate teacher-student power struggles in a socioculturally acceptable way. I show that the students' humor and discourse is constitutive of local culture and often counterhegemonic, implicitly and at times explicitly critiquing mainstream educational practices and the marginalized status of the students. My analysis considers the data from a discourse level as well as examines the indexical and patterned use of microlevel linguistic resources from the student's ethnolinguistic repertoire--specifically, distinctive interjections and scooped-accent intonation. The primary data is naturally occurring classroom discussions, complemented by individual and group interviews and ethnographic observations. This study points to the importance of sociocultural factors in language variation and change in communities undergoing or having undergone radical language shift. It thus adds to the literature that considers how cultural practices are disrupted and may be restructured as the linguistic code changes. This research also contributes to the research that details the difficulties nonmainstream students face in public schools when their home culture and language practices are at odds with those of the school, and it examines humor and teasing as student strategies to navigate these differences. This study aims to help paint a more complete picture of the contemporary social and linguistic contexts in which American Indian speakers live, with a mind toward how this understanding can be applied to the real-world circumstances of these youth.
A descriptive grammar of Yongning Na (Mosuo)
(2010-12) Lidz, Liberty A.; Woodbury, Anthony C.; England, Nora; Epps, Patience; Zhang, Qing; Thurgood, Graham; Crowhurst, Megan
This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Yongning Na (Mosuo), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in southwestern China. The theoretical approaches taken are functional syntax and the discourse-based approach to language description and documentation. The aim of this dissertation is to describe the ways that the language's features and subsystems intersect to make Na a unique entity: analyticity; zero anaphora; OV word order; topic/comment information structure; a five-part evidential system; a conjunct/disjunct-like system that intersects with evidentiality and verbal semantics; prolific grammaticalization; overlap between nominalization and relativization and associated structures; representation of time through aspect, Aktionsarten, adverbials, and discourse context; and the Daba shamanic register.
Explaining orthographic variation in a virtual community : linguistic, social, and contextual factors
(2010-05) Iorio, Joshua Boyd; Epps, Patience, 1973-; Erk, Katrin; Hinrichs, Lars; Keating, Elizabeth; Sussman, Harvey
The purpose of this project is to investigate factors that can be used to explain orthographic variation in City of Heroes (CoH), a virtual community based in an online role-playing game. While a number of models of variation exist for speech, to date, no statistical models of orthographic variation in virtual communities exist. By combining traditional variationist methods with computational text processing, this project documents socially meaningful alternations in the linguistic code regarding two types of sociolinguistic variables, namely spelling and use of abbreviations. For each of the two variable types, two dependent variables are posited, i.e. the alternation between: 1) –ing and –in in durative verbal aspect marking in forms such as coming and comin, 2) –s and –z markers of plurality in words such as cats and catz, 3) abbreviated and full forms for referential abbreviation in terms such as Atlas Park and AP, and 4) abbreviated and full forms for conative abbreviations in terms such as looking for team and lft. The study investigates the role that the following factors play in explaining orthographic variation in CoH: 1) message length, 2) standardness of the immediate linguistic environment, 3) cognitive load, 4) relative proximity in the virtual space, 5) degree of message publicness, 6) experience in the community, 7) avatar gender, and 8) social group affiliation. Through mixed-effects, multivariate models, the study demonstrates that each of the predictors has some role in explaining the orthographic variability observed in the textual record of the community. Moreover, interactions between some of the predictors prove to be significant contributors to the models, which highlight the importance of addressing interaction terms in models of language variation. The findings from the study suggest that the socio-contextual meaning of particular structures in the CoH community lead authors to make linguistic choices, which are realized as alternations in the linguistic code. Finally, implications for the study of language variation in general are discussed.
Expressing emotions in a first and second language : evidence from French and English
(2010-12) Paik, Jee Gabrielle; Birdsong, David; Blyth, Carl; Donaldson, Bryan; Meier, Richard; Schallert, Diane
This dissertation presents results from a study on the expression of emotions in a second language in order to address two overarching research questions: 1) What does the acquisition of L2 emotion lexicon and discourse features tell us about the pragmatic and communicative competence of late learners and the internalization of L2-specific concepts, and 2) Knowing that expressing emotions in L2 is one of the most challenging tasks for L2 learners (Dewaele, 2008), what can late L2 learners do at end-state, with regards to ultimate attainment and the possibility of nativelikeness? Narratives of positive and negative emotional experiences were elicited from late L2 learners of English and French at end-state, both in their L1 and L2. First, the acquisition of L2 emotion words was analyzed through the productivity and lexical richness of the emotion vocabulary of the bilinguals. Analysis of L2 emotion concepts was also conducted through the distribution of emotion lemmas across morphosyntactic categories. Lexical choice of emotion words was also investigated. Results showed that although L2 English and L2 French bilinguals' narratives were shorter than the monolinguals' and the proportion of emotion word tokens were fewer than that of monolinguals', bilinguals showed greater lexical richness than the monolinguals. In terms of morphosyntactic categories, bilinguals behaved in a nativelike pattern such that L2 English bilinguals favored adjectives and L2 French bilinguals preferred nouns/verbs. This pattern was held constant across the first languages of the bilinguals. With respect to lexical choice, bilinguals used the same emotion lemmas used the most by monolinguals. On occasion, non-nativelike patterns also emerged, suggesting both L1 transfer on L2 (L2 English bilinguals favoring nouns/verbs) and L2 transfer on L1 (L1 English bilinguals favoring nouns/verbs). However, these rare instances could be explained by individual and typological variability. The findings suggest that late L2 learners can achieve nativelike levels of attainment in L2, providing evidence against the existence of a critical period for the acquisition of L2 pragmatics and culture-specific L2 lexicon. In a separate analysis, the L2 discourse of emotion was investigated under a corpus linguistic framework, in order to shed some light into the ways late L2 learners of English and French talk about emotions in narratives of personal stories. The use of stance lemmas and tokens, and the distribution of these stance markers across categories of certainty and doubt evidentials, emphatics, hedges, and modals, as well as lexical choice of stance were analyzed. This was followed by an analysis of discourse features, such as figurative language, reported speech, epithets, depersonalization, and amount of detail. Results showed that although bilinguals produced significantly less stance lemmas and tokens than monolinguals, in terms of the distribution of stance categories, the French group (L2 French and L1 French bilinguals) behaved in a nativelike pattern, favoring emphatics, certainty evidentials, doubt evidentials, hedges, and modals. The English group's results, on the other hand, were somewhat inconsistent, in that neither L2 English bilinguals, nor L1 English bilinguals followed the distribution pattern of English monolinguals. In terms of nativelike performance, we conclude that the L2 French bilinguals did perform nativelike with regards to stance marking, and that L2 English bilinguals also performed nativelike, but only for certain categories of stance. Also, L2 English transfer on L1 French was evidenced for L1 French bilinguals. Analysis of discourse features revealed between 1 up to 10 bilinguals (L2 English or French) out of 31 who used those features which were only evidenced in native speech in previous research. The findings here, once again suggest that late L2 learners can acquire aspects of L2 discourse to a nativelike degree.
Gender roles and language loss : a new perspective from Texas German on language attitudes
(2022-05-26) Jones, Ellen, M.A.; Pierce, Marc
While biological gender does not determine a speaker’s ability to learn a language cognitively, there has been plenty of evidence for differences between men and women’s speech socially (Pavlenko, 2010; Winter & Pauwels, 2005). In the case of a dying dialect like Texas German (Gilbert 1972, Boas 2009), how might gender roles in TxG society be affecting how the dialect is maintained and by whom? This paper provides new insights based on data from the Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP) (Boas et al. 2010) (https://tgdp.org), which records and archives interviews with some of the remaining speakers of Texas German, a moribund dialect spoken since the 1840s. More specifically, I analyze the biographical questionnaires of the speakers interviewed by the TGDP in order to determine the speakers’ language attitudes and identity. For the purpose of this paper, gender is defined as biological gender, not gender identity, due to the fact that the question of a speaker’s gender (biological or otherwise) is not currently a part of the biographical questionnaire utilized by the TGDP. This paper analyzes parts of these biographical questionnaires from 60 speakers (30 female and 30 male) to do a quantitative and qualitative comparison of language attitudes and identity. Boas & Fingerhuth (2017) address similar questions about language maintenance and attitudes using both biographical questionnaires and open-ended interviews, however that study does not look at the role of gender within the community. This paper’s analysis seeks to determine if gender roles could be affecting the process of individual language loss among TxG speakers, as well as offer a short comparison between the language maintenance in Texas German and Low German in Northern Germany and finally to discuss areas for further research.
Gender variation in writing : analyzing online dating ads
(2017-05) Schultz, Patrick, Ph. D.; Hinrichs, Lars; Blockley, Mary; Henkel, Jacqueline; Erk, Katrin
This dissertation presents a study of gendered language variation and linguistic indexicality in computer-mediated communication. A two-pronged approach combining the analysis of language production in a corpus of 103,000 English-language online dating ads with a language perception study (891 participants) is taken towards identifying the usage patterns and social meanings of nine features of e-grammar (Herring 2012). The indexicalities of features exhibiting gendered patterns in production as well as perception, emoticons (e.g. : ) ) and prosodic items (e.g. haha), are discussed in light of their linguistic and social context. Drawing on empirical research on American gender ideologies, the study argues that they index characteristics such as friendliness and emotional expressiveness, both stereotypically associated with women. In an instance of indirect indexicality (Ochs 1992), they are then linked to femininity in this type of computer-mediated communication. In production, the same features exhibit a strong audience effect (Bell 1984): women, for instance, use them more frequently in ads directed at other women. Throughout the analysis, the study makes use of and illustrates use cases for computational tools such as machine learning algorithms or automatic part-of-speech tagging in sociolinguistic research. At the same time, it attempts to strike a balance between a quantitative, data-driven approach and the nuanced analysis of gender identities and linguistic indexicality in the performance of gendered identities
Greeting and leave-taking in Texas : perception of politeness norms by Mexican-Americans across sociolinguistic divides
(2014-05) Michno, Jeffrey Alan; Koike, Dale April
The present study sheds light on how 16 Mexican-Americans residing in Texas perceive and follow politeness norms (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Fraser, 1990; Terkourafi, 2005) related to greetings and leave-takings in different cultural and linguistic contexts. Data from online questionnaires identify a significant difference in perceived level of social expectation (i.e. politeness) for employing the speech acts with Spanish- versus non-Spanish speakers. The data support previous research in identifying a sense of solidarity among Mexican-American extended families, but go further in suggesting that this bond extends to other Spanish-speaking acquaintances. Better understanding of these norms should facilitate inter-cultural exchanges between linguistic in- and out-group members.
The impact of social factors on the use of Arabic-French code-switching in speech and IM in Morocco
(2015-05) Post, Rebekah Elizabeth; Bullock, Barbara E.; Blyth, Carl; Wettlaufer, Alexandra K; Brustad, Kristen; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline
The use of French in code-switching (CS) with Moroccan Colloquial Arabic (MCA) has been explored qualitatively in a number of studies, but quantitative methods have rarely been applied to CS in this language pair. Research on CS patterns as a function of extra-linguistic factors has similarly received little attention, despite the implication in many studies that these factors are significant in the use of CS. This dissertation seeks to address these gaps in the literature by quantitatively examining the use of Arabic-French CS by young adult speakers of MCA in spoken and written information communication. This study examines three extra-linguistic factors in speech and Instant Messaging (IM): Sex, French Proficiency, and Language Attitude. The analysis reveals that male speakers are significantly more French in written IM. Positive attitude toward French and MCA-French CS has a highly significant impact on the rate of French employed in spoken conversation. Meaningful results are also found for the French constituents employed in CS with regard to each of the extra-linguistic factors. Notable differences are found between sexes in the types of French constituents used in both communication modes, as well as for speakers of different French proficiency levels. The categorization of French-origin nouns as instances of CS or borrowing is also explored by considering multiple aspects of use of these lexical items. A number of French-origin nouns, absent from dictionaries of MCA, are proposed to now be borrowed into the dialect. The analysis also reveals a number of French-origin words that are used by a number of speakers, but remain instances of CS. The results of this investigation highlight the importance of quantification in studies of CS and provide data for comparison with other corpora from this and other language pairs. The differences identified in CS by communication mode indicate that there is a need for a model of written CS that accounts for the unique characteristics of this mode. Finally, little work has been published on the relationship between extra-linguistic factors and structural patterns in CS, but the current results suggest that the impact of social factors should not be ignored when considering structural aspects of CS.
Language, culture and ethnicity : interplay of ideologies within a Japanese community in Brazil
(2011-05) Sakuma, Tomoko; Hancock, Ian F.; Epps, Patience L.; King, Robert D.; Nishida, Chiyo; Traphagan, John W.
This dissertation is a sociolinguistic study of the ideologies about language, culture and ethnicity among Japanese immigrants and descendants in Brazil (hereafter, Nikkeis) who gather at a local Japanese cultural association, searching for what it means to be “Japanese” in Brazil. This study focuses on how linguistic behaviors are ideologically understood and associated with cultural activities and ethnic identities. Using the language ideologies framework, it seeks to describe the ways in which Nikkeis negotiate and create social meanings of language in both local and transnational contexts. Nikkeis are an overwhelmingly celebrated minority group in Brazil. In this context, the cultural association serves as a site where symbolic cultural differences are constructed by those Nikkeis who strive to identify themselves as a prestigious minority. This study demonstrates that the Japanese language is one of the important resources in performing the Nikkei identity. At the same time, due to an on-going language shift, Portuguese as a means of communication is becoming increasingly more important for cultural transmission. Thus, the members of the association, which include both Japanese monolinguals and Portuguese monolinguals, are in constant negotiation, trying to strike a balance between symbolic values of Japanese, pragmatic values of Portuguese, as well as their own language competencies. The goal of this project is to answer the following three research questions: 1) What social meanings do Nikkeis assign to Japanese and Portuguese, and how does this perception affect Nikkeis’ identity formation? 2) What are the characteristics of linguistic practices in the association and how do the speakers use available linguistic resources to construct identities? 3) How can this study inform us about the transforming reality of the Japanese Brazilian community in this global age? Contributions of this study include furthering of the sociolinguistic research on language ideologies, linguistic practices and identity construction in an immigrant community. It also contributes to the study of language shift, by underscoring the role of language ideologies in rationalizing language choices. This project is also significant for the study of Japanese diaspora in Latin America, providing the first sociolinguistic investigation of a Japanese cultural association in Brazil.
Patterns of dialect accommodation to phonology and morphology among Sudanese residents of Cairo
(2014-05) Leddy-Cecere, Thomas Alexander; Brustad, Kristen
This study analyzes the accommodation strategies of Arabic-speaking Sudanese immigrants to Cairo toward the dominant Cairene Arabic variety. Accepted wisdom across much of variationist sociolinguistics views phonology in dialect contact scenarios as highly mutable and readily altered, while imputing to morphology a far greater degree of “staying power;” however, analysis of the Cairo-based fieldwork reveals a situation in which speakers freely accommodate to morphological forms, while adapting in only minimal and restricted ways to phonological differences. This finding, discussed in relation to both structural and social motivating factors, has the potential to inform conceptions of both the synchronic mechanics of dialect interaction and diachronic understandings of inheritance and stability across linguistic domains.
Perceptions of variation in second-generation Montrealers' speech : methods for remote ethnolinguistic research
(2022-07-21) Adams, Tracey Gail; Bullock, Barbara E.; Villeneuve, Anne-José; Remysen, Wim; Blyth, Carl; Epps, Patience
This dissertation assesses if and how ethnicity plays a role in speech perception amongst French speakers in Montreal, Quebec. Is ethnolinguistic variation present, and is it noticeable to Montrealers? In so doing, this work highlights the conflicting nature of two bodies of work: ethnographic and cultural studies research on immigrant communities in Montreal and sociolinguistic research on the region. The former underscores the importance of ethnic and cultural heritage in second-generation speakers’ self-presentation and speech, while the latter assumes that these same speakers have uniformly assimilated to a regional norm. For this dissertation, I aimed to collect and analyze data to better adjudicate between these hypotheses. As such, I created a new corpus, featuring women from the three largest ethnic / cultural communities in Montreal: Haitian, North African, and Quebecker, and experimented with techniques for running an exploratory perceptual experiment remotely. This study speaks to (i) methods of recruitment for remote sociolinguistic interviews, (ii) methods of conducting experiments online, (iii) techniques used in the free classification approach to perception tasks (Clopper & Pisoni, 2007), (iv) how second-generation Montrealers’ speech is perceived, and (v) why disciplines contradict each other with regard to these communities.
Pourquoi 'pas' : the socio-historical linguistics behind the grammaticalization of the French negative marker
(2008-12) Boerm, Michael Lloyd, 1977-; Bauer, Brigitte L. M., 1961-; Montreuil, Jean-Pierre
This study is an examination of the role of sociolinguistics in the process of grammaticalization. The modern French negative pas outlasted its competitors among postverbal negators to be selected for inclusion in the modern language. This dissertation seeks to explain why that is so by using the sociolinguistic framework of social network theory. Social network theory postulates that linguistic variables are spread by means of weak, uni-dimensional social links between individuals. Using this framework, it is postulated that medieval Jewish merchants from southern France were responsible for the spread of pas from its area of dialectal predominance in the south to other regions of the country. Dialectological, historical and sociological support for that hypothesis is presented as evidence of the plausibility of the hypothesis.
Pus ‘ta cabrón : variation of pues in the Spanish of southern San Diego
(2023-07-27) Avilés González, Luis Felipe; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara E.; Koike, Dale A; Moyna, Maria I
This dissertation documents linguistic variation in the Spanish of the border community of Southern San Diego. A diverse community that comprises recent migrants, established immigrant communities, and heritage speakers, it is an ideal area for linguistic inquiry. This work explores the discourse marker pues, which is ubiquitous in Mexican Spanish, where it is variously translated as 'well', 'so', 'since', and 'then' and presents a wide range of variation in its production. The present study focuses on a four-way distinction, contrasting standard pues [pwes] and three forms that carry social stigma: the archaic pos [pos], the vowel-raised form pus [pus], and the devoiced p's [ps]. The study entertained the following questions: (i) Do the various forms of the discourse marker pues in the Spanish of Southern San Diego differ in frequency of occurrence? and (ii) What are the linguistic (internal) and social (external) factors that condition the various realizations of pues in the Spanish of Southern San Diego? I sought to answer these questions following a quantitative variationist methodology. For that purpose, I analyzed forty-seven (47) sociolinguistic interviews collected between January and June 2022. These interviews were transcribed using Automatic Speech Recognition technology and the resulting transcripts yielded 4,431 tokens of the discourse marker. The study examined the variation in the production of the discourse marker pues as [pwes], [pos], [pus], and [ps] by considering a series of linguistic and social variables. The independent variables: position in the utterance and pragmatic function as internal variables, and gender, generation, social class, and ethno-racial identity as external variables. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out in R. The packages used for random forest and conditional inference trees was party, and the packages ggplot and VGAM were used for visualization and multinomial regression as required. The results show that the variant with the highest frequency in production was [pwes] at 44.93%, closely followed by [pus] at 37.26%. The data further reveal that this variation is conditioned by the social variables of gender, class, and self-reported ethno-racial identity. In particular, gender was a strong indicator for variation, as female speakers overall tended to default to the the standard [pwes], whereas male speakers produced [pus] at higher rates. However, socioeconomic class was seen to condition this variation, with women from the higher class also favoring pus over pues. This dissertation project offers insight into linguistic variation and vitality in an understudied region in Southern California as and contributes to growing research on the sociolinguistics of the borderlands.