This thesis examines the discourse of intra-national charitable giving in the UK. I combine a rhetorical discourse analysis of Children in Need (CiN), a popular charity telethon for ‘disadvantaged’ British children, with that of six focus groups carried out with people who have different relationships with charities (student volunteers, a local Amnesty International group, bereavement counselling volunteers, non-charity related office workers, employees of different charities, and academics). Although the focus group discussions all included some consideration of CiN and its methods, they were primarily concerned with broader issues to do with disadvantage, fairness and, where relevant, charitable giving more generally. Boltanski’s (1999) seminal idea of ‘the politics of pity’ holds that relationships between those who suffer and those who observe their suffering are radically altered by distance. Seeing suffering people face-to-face is not the same as seeing them via the mass media because of the actions that are or are not possible in relation to them. This idea has been utilised in numerous studies of international charity, but so far no one has applied it to situations in which the viewed are in the same country as the viewers. I argue that the sort of (social, perceived) distance that may exist between citizens who live in the same country has similar consequences for their relationship as actual physical distance has. Indeed, representing others as if they were distant means that charity comes to be seen as the only way to relieve suffering, even though in this instance there are, in fact, many other available options. The central tension I highlight in the CiN data is that, on the one hand, British beneficiaries of charitable aid are represented as socially distant from the rest of the population, which makes the mediation that CiN offers seem necessary, while on the other hand their experiential closeness is constantly being highlighted by appealing to a particular (nostalgic) ideal of Britishness. This tension is also reflected in the focus group data: although the recipients of intra-national charitable giving are typically talked about as members of the speakers’ own in-group, there is also a lot of scepticism regarding the truthfulness and reliability of the spectacle of suffering that is presented on television screens and that does not always match up with people’s own experiences.

In this thesis, the digital writing practices of two 2nd year undergraduates are examined in terms of the functions and structures of their revision activity. Using systemic functional linguistics as an underlying framework, the project takes a first step toward to a dynamic description of written text in functional terms. To date, research into dynamic descriptions of language (i.e. the logogenesis, or unfolding of meaning in a text) has been almost entirely based upon data related to the spoken mode. Furthermore, research into revision activity has tended to ignore the functionality or meaning inherent in such revisions. The existing research has, instead, primarily focused on cognitive processes (for e.g., pause times) or which language structures, such as parts of speech, are more frequently involved in revisions that others. Ultimately, this thesis works toward providing a dynamic description of the language functions and revisions involved in revision activity in two student writers. To do this, it makes use of software called keystroke logging to record how two writers compose four academic essays on their computers. Such technology allows us to model the unfolding of a written text in much the same way as a tape recording allows researchers to model the unfolding of a speech. By examining how these writers revise text in light of academic expectations (a 'valued' configuration of field, tenor, and mode register variables present in language choices) and digital mediation (computer afforded composing practices), the thesis shows how certain language functions and structures may play a key role when it comes to shaping an academic essay. In this light, this thesis takes a first step to providing a dynamic description of what is usually analysed solely in synoptic terms, by showing how we can analyse written text as process (an evolving entity) rather than just a product (a static entity). Because of this, a new model of analysis – a combination of keystroke data and functional systemics – is proposed, which can provide an additional perspective to the already existing methods of examining writer behaviour by looking at meaning making practices in revision activity.

Polysemy is a challenge for L2 learners because it confounds the mapping of form to meaning. We can therefore consider learners' capacity to manage polysemous words as an indication of their L2 lexical and conceptual knowledge. To investigate what factors affect L2 learners' knowledge of polysemous meanings, a test was created in which Arabic learners of English judged whether various meanings of polysemous words were used acceptably in sentence-length contexts. Analysis of the results revealed that two key factors determined learner responses. First, learners were more likely to respond that a polysemous sense was acceptable if it was more frequently used in English. Second, learners were more likely to judge a polysemous sense as acceptable if was semantically closer to the core sense, such as when head is used in the test item, “I went to sleep early to have a clear head for the exam,” in contrast to this less closely related use, “The president sat at the head of the table.” Semantic similarity was further addressed through distractor items that were unacceptable to native English speakers but logically related to the core sense, such as this use of head, “I thought she was upset because she had a sad head,” in contrast to the illogical use, “Come through into the dining head.” Again, L2 learners generally judged the distractor items as more acceptable if the usage of the polysemous word was semantically related to the core sense. Further analysis revealed that learners with high scores on a receptive vocabulary size test were more likely to correctly reject distractor items; however, there was little indication that L1 form-meaning mappings affected perceptions of L2 polysemy. The implications of these findings for theories of lexical processing, and for the teaching of polysemous words in the classroom, are considered.

This is a sociolinguistic investigation that examines variation in the use of two Ḥōrāni traditional features in the dialect of Saḥam in Jordan. The first sociolinguistic variable is (U). Traditional northern Jordanian Ḥōrāni dialects generally prefer [u] to [i] in words such as: zubde ‘butter’ and dʒubne ‘cheese’. On the other hand, the central and southern Jordanian dialects have [i] in similar environments; thus, zibde and dʒibne. The second sociolinguistic variable is (L). Traditional Ḥōrāni dialects generally prefer the dark variant [ḷ] to the light variant [l]. In other words, while the traditional Ḥōrāni dialects often realise /l/ as [ḷ] in words like: xāḷ ‘uncle’ and g̣āḷ ‘he said’, other dialects realise it as [l], and thus: xāl and gāl. These variables are studied in relation to three social factors (age, gender and amount of contact) and three linguistic factors (position in syllable, preceding and following environments). The sample consists of 60 speakers (30 males and 30 females) from three age groups (young, middle and old). The data were collected through sociolinguistic interviews, and analysed within the framework of the Variationist Paradigm using Rbrul statistical package. The results show considerable variation and change in progress in the use of both variables, constrained by linguistic and social factors. As for the linguistic constraints, the innovative variant [i] was found to be favoured in the environment of a preceding or following coronal sounds. The traditional variant [ḷ] was found to be most favoured when preceded or followed by a back vowel. For both variables, the young female speakers were found to lead the change towards the non-local variants [i] and [l]. The interpretations of the findings focus on changes that the local community have experienced as a result of urbanisation and increased access to the target features through contact with outside communities.

The present study investigates the rhetorical acts employed in classical concert reviews (CR) in British English and Hong Kong Chinese newspapers. It focuses on the uses of praise and criticism of different strength levels, targeting various aspects of the concert. It also explores the views of British and Hong Kong music critics on writing CRs, and factors which might affect their evaluation. This study adopted a mixed-method approach which consisted of textual analyses of CRs and semi-structural interviews with music critics. Drawing on a modified version of Hyland’s (2000) framework for evaluation in academic book reviews, 150 CRs selected from each language were examined in terms of dimensions and structural patterns of evaluation, and types of praise and criticism differentiated by their strengths. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 British critics and 12 Hong Kong critics, which revealed their evaluative styles and factors that might affect their evaluation. Textual analysis results indicated more similarities than differences cross-culturally. Both groups were predominantly evaluative and contained more praise than criticism; more CRs opened and closed positively; evaluation focused primarily on performance; praise was less mitigated than criticism; Booster was the most frequently applied strategy to emphasise praise and criticism; Hedge was the predominant evaluation strategy, though each group also had their own favoured individual strategies to mitigate praise and criticism. Cross-cultural differences were observed upon more detailed examination. Chinese reviews contained more rhetorical acts while English reviews praised more. More English reviews were framed with praise. Only Chinese reviews commented on Concert Management. Interview results showed that British and Hong Kong critics shared more common than different views on evaluation. Cross-cultural differences were nevertheless observed concerning their understanding of the role of the critic and consideration for the readers. In closing, a range of implications regarding the analysis and teaching of evaluation were presented.

Eye movement studies (e.g., lexical ambiguity and semantic plausibility studies) suggesting that word meaning can influence lexical processing relied on contextual information. Therefore, these studies provide only a limited insight into whether the semantic characteristics of a fixated word can be accessed before the completion of its unique word identification. The present thesis investigated the effect of the semantic characteristics of a word in its lexical processing during normal reading. In particular, four experiments were carried out to examine the effects of semantic neighbourhood density (SND, defined by mean distance between a given word and all its co-occurrence neighbours falling within a specific threshold in semantic space, Shaoul & Westbury, 2010a) in normal reading. The findings indicated that the SND characteristics of the fixated word influenced the lexical processing of the fixated word itself and the subsequent words, as evident in early reading time measures associated with lexical processing. These results suggest that a word’s semantic representation can be activated and can influence lexical processing before the completion of unique word identification during normal reading. The findings were discussed in terms of Stolz & Besner’s (1996) embellished interactive-activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981) and the models of eye movement control during reading.

This thesis presents a new study on the L2 acquisition of pronominal binding in Korean and English in order to examine accessibility to Universal Grammar (UG) (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 2000, 2001) in adult L2 acquisition. Specifically, the study examines the L2 acquisition of grammatical knowledge of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti 1984) by English learners of Korean and the L2 acquisition of anaphoric binding by Korean learners of English. The first study investigates L2 speakers’ knowledge of the OPC, typically regarded as a universal constraint and a poverty-of-the-stimulus phenomenon. Previous L2 acquisition studies have only explored OPC effects when the pronoun is in subject position but not in object position. The current study aims to address this gap by investigating whether English learners of Korean can obtain nativelike knowledge of the OPC in subject and object positions. 41 English learners of Korean (intermediate and advanced) completed a co-reference comprehension task and a story-based translation task. Results from the experiment show that L2 speakers can successfully achieve nativelike knowledge of the OPC regardless of pronoun position and the study confirms the prediction that universal constraints need not be learnt. The second study focuses on L2 speakers’ knowledge of feature-based languagespecific constraints of anaphoric binding, following Hicks (2009), to examine the L2 acquisition of locality and orientation. 70 Korean learners of English (low-intermediate, intermediate, and advanced) completed a picture verification task and the results show that neither locality nor orientation constraints are properly acquired by most learners. This finding reveals that L2 speakers have difficulty in acquiring new feature configurations of the target grammar. This study also provides new evidence to support the view that cross-linguistic differences in this domain are derived from the interaction between language-specific feature specifications and universal reflexivisation mechanisms. In accordance with the results from the two studies, this thesis argues that while UG plays a significant role in explaining L2 speakers’ convergence to the L2 grammar, consistent with Full Access to UG (Schwartz & Sprouse 1994, 1996), divergence in L2 acquisition is caused by a failure to reconfigure new feature specifications. This is a result which supports the relevant role that Feature Assembly plays in second language acquisition (Lardiere 2008, 2009).

In the field of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research, an overarching question is why native English should be exclusively followed by all users around the world regardless of their purposes of communication and identity projection. This provides the starting point of my investigation into Chinese speakers’ perceptions of their English in intercultural communication, which is traditionally considered as ‘learner English’ due to its difference from native English. Influenced by the ELF perspective, I consider Chinese speakers’ English as both fluid and subject to Chinese speakers’ appropriation according to their purposes in engaging intercultural communication, and label it as Chinese speakers’ English as a Lingua Franca (CHELF). Four dimensions of CHELF are considered in this research: linguistic creativity, community, identity and attitude, while the empirical data focuses on CHELF users’ perceptions in order to offer an insight into their attitudes, identities, beliefs, and contextual factors related to their perceptions. The research findings illuminate contrast, complementation, uncertainty and conservation in the participants’ attitudes towards, and identities in, their use of English, and reveal an interplay between a traditional EFL perspective and the ELF perspective that underlined their attitudes and identities. The data highlights contextual factors as playing a key role in influencing, shaping and developing the participants’ perceptions of ELF. Importantly, a good understanding of the concept of ELF makes a difference in the participants’ confidence in their ELF use. The findings thus suggest the possibility of CHELF developing legitimacy, as well as the challenges involved in such a development. This study thus provides a fresh insight into Chinese speakers’ English and contributes to ELF research at large. In particular, the establishment of contextual factors to CHELF users adds to the growing evidence of the necessity of including ELF in pedagogy.

This thesis explored cognitive and metacognitive strategy use in first and second language reading comprehension (RC) among Igbo native speakers who are English as Second Language (ESL) learners in Nigeria. The RC of ESL readers in Nigeria has not previously been investigated. The three studies presented in this thesis explored cognitive and metacognitive strategy use in RC performance in Igbo (study 1), the effect of L2 language proficiency and vocabulary size on the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in ESL reading (study 2), and the effect of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use on ESL RC (study 3), respectively. To explore cognitive and metacognitive strategy use on first language RC performance (study 1), participants did RC tasks in Igbo and completed a reading comprehension strategies (RCSs) questionnaire. Participants reported a medium usage level for ten out of the fourteen reading strategies shortlisted for the investigation. Regression analysis suggests that their RC strategy use explained a significant variance (28.6%) in the Igbo reading scores of the students. No significant difference was recorded in the participants’ reported use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies during the reading task. In study 2, in addition to doing RC tasks in English and completing an RCSs questionnaire, participants sat English language proficiency and vocabulary size tests. High vocabulary size was significantly related to high use of cognitive reading strategies, while low vocabulary size was related to low use of cognitive reading strategies. L2 language proficiency had no effect on RCS use, and reading comprehension strategy use had no effect on RC performance. In study 3, participants did another set of reading tasks and completed a RCSs questionnaire. Cognitive and metacognitive strategy use jointly had a significant positive effect on RC performance, but only metacognitive strategy use uniquely contributed significantly to RC performance. The usage levels for cognitive and metacognitive strategies distinguished high performers from low performers in the RC test, but the cognitive strategy of translation was hardly used by this group of ESL readers. The study finally drew some general conclusions by comparing results from the various studies. This study is an attempt to create awareness among teachers and students in Nigerian schools, on the effect of reading strategies on reading comprehension performance. The findings in the study may therefore contribute in changing how teachers in Nigeria teach reading, and how readers undertake the processing of written text, since it makes it clear that reading strategies, particularly metacognitive strategies substantially facilitate RC. From a theoretical point of view, this study examines the role of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use within the compensatory model of L2 reading, and assesses how they relate to knowledge sources like vocabulary knowledge in the model.

This thesis investigates name giving in early modern Scotland through the collection and analysis of a corpus of 63,460 baptismal records from the Old Parish Registers of eleven parishes between 1680 and 1839. Some use is also made of marital and burial records. Parishes were chosen to represent a range of geographical, linguistic, and social variables, and comprise Auchtermuchty, Dundonald, Durness, Govan, Holm, Kilmallie, Kilrenny, Longside, Saltoun, Tiree, and Tongland. While large collections of first names from both mediaeval and modern Scotland have recently been made available, a dataset of early modern names has not previously been produced. The lack of such data and subsequent lack of analysis are particularly important to redress due to both the political and social upheaval in Scotland during this time, and the development of naming systems in contemporary Europe. This thesis therefore contributes both a dataset of early modern names and preliminary analysis of these names, allowing Scotland to be situated within the wider European context. The principal methodology is quantitative. By this means, the study establishes and compares the name-stock in the different parishes. It also investigates sources of names, such as first names derived from surnames, and female names derived from male names, and highlights regional and other patterns. Naming motivations are investigated through close analysis of name-sharing. Records for 16,426 families are used to establish the incidence of name-sharing with parents, maternal and paternal grandparents, deceased elder siblings, other relatives, and non-relatives such as godparents, landowners, and ministers. Birth order and unusual names are used to investigate the likelihood of name-sharing being deliberate. Rates of name-sharing are also used to demonstrate the varying incidence of conformity to the so-called Scottish ‘traditional’ naming pattern (naming after relatives in fixed sequence). For all naming practices, regional differences between these geographically disparate communities are examined, with particular focus on the Highland/Lowland divide. Although the thesis focuses primarily on first names, middle names are also examined, in terms of the name-stock, the influences behind naming, and the upward trend of this emerging practice throughout the period studied. The research establishes the primacy of mothers’ maiden names in this position, and also investigates the incidence of other types of commemorative middle names. In addition to quantitative analysis, complementary qualitative analysis of 12 case studies is presented. Each case study comprises one extended familial group, making it possible to explore in greater detail how various naming practices were used within individual families.