International migration is growing continuously. The cultural contact this entails has profound effects on groups and people, known as acculturation. For individuals migrating, these encounters lead to challenges connected to identity and sense of belonging. Scholars call for qualitative studies with an individual perspective and a process focus to collect unique experiences of acculturation, addressing constructions and identity. The aim of this thesis is to explore the developing constructions of identity and belonging in one acculturation process. Using a Grounded Theory approach and a constructivist/symbolic interactionism framework, this case study will exemplify these constructions as fundamental elements of acculturation as a process, through an analysis of one personal weblog. It was found that identity and belonging are interrelated and deeply entwined in relation to the acculturation process. Constructions of these phenomena are continuously contested, negotiated and reconstructed in diverse contexts and multiple social encounters.

Kan., Kansas State Univ., Dep. of Agricultural Economics, Diss.--Manhatten, 2003. / Kopie, ersch. im Verl. UMI, Ann Arbor, Mich.

School of Economics, Diss.--Helsinki, 2008.

Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (M.A.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2006. / Available electronically via the Internet. Includes bibliographical references.

Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2009--Frankfurt (Main).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Münster, 2005.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Münster, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 407-444).

La littérature scientifique dédiée à l’accentuation en anglais australien standard contemporain (SAusE) est, contrairement à celle qui concerne la prononciation de ses voyelles, peu étendue. Après un chapitre introductif proposant le contexte historique dans lequel le SAusE est né et a été décrit, sa définition actuelle ainsi que sa description phonologique, notre étude est consacrée à un examen systémique de l’accentuation lexicale en SAusE. Un corpus test a été mis en place spécifiquement, qui comporte la quasi-totalité des verbes dissyllabiques, des préfixés pluricatégoriels et des exceptions aux règles d’accentuation des mots de deux syllabes et plus, ainsi qu’un large échantillon d’emprunts aux langues aborigènes. Ces quelques 3500 items ont été choisis précisément parce qu’ils font partie des mots les plus susceptibles de connaître une variation accentuelle en anglais contemporain. Notre approche se situe dans la lignée de Lionel Guierre et propose un traitement dictionnairique dans lequel les éléments du corpus sont tous étudiés au travers des données de chacune des éditions les plus récentes des Longman Pronouncing Dictionary, Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary et Macquarie Dictionary qui constituent les dictionnaires de références dans le domaine de la prononciation de l’anglais. Ces données ont été complétées, lorsque cela était nécessaire, par des données fréquentielles issues du Corpus of Contemporary American English et par des données orales enregistrées spécialement pour cette étude, selon une démarche similaire à la première partie du protocole du projet Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain. Notre analyse met en évidence une grande stabilité accentuelle intervariétale entre le SAusE, l’anglais britannique standard et l’anglais américain standard et propose un relevé étayé et détaillé des spécificités accentuelles lexicales du SAusE contenues dans le corpus étudié. / The scientific literature dedicated to word stress in contemporary standard Australian English (SAusE) is not very extensive contrary to the one dealing with the pronunciation of vowels in this variety of English. We will introduce the historical context in which SAusE first emerged and was described, its current definition as well as its phonological description. Our study is then devoted to the systemic study of lexical word stress in SAusE. A corpus was specifically put together for this particular research : it includes most of the dissyllabic verbs, of the prefixed multicategorial words and of the words that are exceptions to the rules of word-stress assignment in English, as well as a large sample of borrowings from Aboriginal languages. These 3500 items were not chosen randomly : they are words which specifically tend to show word-stress variation in contemporary English. Our approach follows Lionel Guierre’s and offers a dictionary treatment in which all the elements of our corpus are studied using the data of each of the most recent editions of the Longman Pronouncing Dictionary, the Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary and the Macquarie Dictionary, all reference books on English pronunciation. Frequency data extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and oral data recorded for this study (following a protocol similar to that which is applied in the first part of the project Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain) were added to the dictionary data when necessary. Our analysis brings to the fore a great accentual intervarietal stability between SAusE, standard British English and standard American English, and offers a detailed and complete list of the lexical accentual specificities of SAusE ascertained through our study.

This degree project shows how four language teachers teach foreign languages with focus oncommunicative competence, and how their vision of teaching correspond to their reality in the classroom. How do they motivate the students in class and are the conditions good enough tohelp the teachers reach the national goals? A teacher’s vision is formed by his or her education and experiences. However, there are a number of factors which can help or hinder a teacher to reach his or her ideal teaching. Among these factors are the curriculum, the preknowledgeof the students and available technical resources. The method used in this thesis is qualitative interviews with two Australian and two Swedish foreign language teachers. This method was chosen in order to give the interviewees the possibility to speak more freely about their vision compared to their reality. The results show that there are more similarities than differences between Sweden and Australia when we look at the teachers’ ideals. There are anumber of factors why the teachers do not reach their ideals. The findings show that it is necessary with adequate teacher training to uphold qualitative language teaching corresponding to continuously changing curriculums. Moreover, the curriculum mentions communicative language teaching more and more today, but the teachers experience difficulties when teaching and evaluating communicative competence. Another important issue is the lack of money and time for starting and maintaining international exchanges.