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Research paper (M.A.) -- Cardinal Stritch College -- Milwaukee, 1980. / A research paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education (Reading Specialist). Includes bibliographical references (105-108 p.).

The introduction of English as 'high' language and the designs to reshape the 'native vernaculars' under its influence through colonial educational policy altered the universe of communicative and cultural practices on the subcontinent. Colonial bilingualism also introduced hierachical and ideological divisions between the newly-educated and 'illiterate', 'English-knowing' and 'vernacular-speaking' sections of native society. On the basis of an analysis of the possibilities for a laicised literate order opened up through the severely elitist project of colonial education, the thesis proposes an argument about the structural links between these crucial cultural shifts and the strategies adopted by the colonial intelligentsia in western India to achieve a hegemonic position. The main argument of my thesis is set against a discussion of the relations between linguistic hierarchies, textual practices and power in precolonial western India. My thesis is a study of the bilingual relation between English and Marathi and it traces the hierarchical relation between the English and vernacular spheres in the Bombay-Pune region between 1830-1880. The initiatives to establish the first native Marathi newspaper, the Bombay Durpan. a bilingual weekly, in 1832 signified the beginning of the intelligentsia's efforts to disseminate the new discourses among wider audiences and to establish a sphere of critical exchange through the vernacular. Later attempts, from the 1860s onwards, to aestheticise vernacular discourse by creating 'high' 'modern' literary forms were undoubtedly important in enhancing the intelligentsia's hegemonic claims, but they also corresponded with crucial shifts in their self-perception and their ideological orientation. The emergence of Kesari and the Maratha in early 1881 indicated that the bilingual relation that structured the colonial-modern public sphere had, by this time, yielded two separate, largely monolingual literate communities within native society. Concomitantly, by the early 1880s, the upper-caste intelligentsia had renounced even the minimal scope that had existed for them to act as agents for a more egalitarian cultural and social order. In analysing the conditions under which the colonial intelligentsia in western India were able to achieve a position of ideological influence, the thesis also aims to raise questions about the displacement of the meanings and spaces for hegemonic articulation within colonial modernity.

Prominent views in second language acquisition suggest that the age of L2 learning is inversely correlated with native-like pronunciation (Scovel, 1988; Birdsong, 1999). The relationship has been defined in terms of the Critical Period Hypothesis, whereby various aspects of neural cognition simultaneously occur near the onset of puberty, thus inhibiting L2 phonological acquisition. The current study tests this claim of a chronological decline in pronunciation aptitude through the examination of a key trait of American English – reduced vowels, or “schwas.” Groups of monolingual, early bilingual, and late bilingual participants were directly compared across a variety of environments phonologically conditioned for vowel reduction. Results indicate that late bilinguals have greater degrees of difficulty in producing schwas, as expected. Results further suggest that the degree of differentiation between schwa is larger than previously identified and that these subtle differences may likely be a contributive factor to the perception of a foreign accent in bilingual speakers.

The purpose of this research was to explore perceptions among 9th through 12th grade students from Brazil, Haiti and Jamaica, with respect to their heritage languages: Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Jamaican Patois. An additional purpose was to understand in greater detail possible variations of perception with respect to heritage language maintenance (or loss) in relation to one’s gender, first language, and place of birth. The research implemented semi-structured interviews with male and female adolescents with these heritage language backgrounds. Participants’ responses were recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions were analyzed via a categorizing of themes emerging from the data. Data were analyzed using inductive analysis. Three categories emerged from the inductive analysis of the data: (a) heritage language, (b) bilingualism, and (c) English as a second language. The analysis reveals that as participants learn English, they continue to value their heritage language and feel positively toward bilingualism, but differ in their preference regarding use of native language and English in a variety of contexts. There seems to be a mismatch between a positive attitude and an interest in learning their heritage language. Families and teachers, as agents, may not be helping students fully understand the advantages of bilingualism. Students seem to have a lack of understanding of bilingualism’s cognitive and bi-literacy benefits. Instead, employment seems to be perceived as the number one reason for becoming bilingual. Also, the students have a desire to add culture to the heritage language curriculum. The study was conducted at one of the most diverse and largest high schools in Palm Beach, in Palm Beach County, Florida. The results of this study imply that given the positive attitude toward heritage language and bilingualism, students need to be guided in exploring their understanding of heritage language and bilingualism. Implications for teaching and learning, as well as recommendations for further research, are included.

This work is concerned with the way that official bilingualism emerged as a part of English-Canadian values in the 1960s. Much of this work is about the effort in the 1960s to change the federal public service from a stronghold of English-speaking Canada to an organisation where English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians could work in their own language on an equal footing. The archival records of the Professional Institute of the Public Service provide detailed insight into this change and the resistance to it. It is the thesis of this work that the adaptation to official bilingualism in the Public Service of Canada played a key role in setting English-speaking attitudes to bilingualism. The struggle to define and impose official bilingualism in the federal public service was a testing ground for the evolution of bilingualism in English-speaking Canada as a whole. As much of English-speaking Canada accepted the value of bilingualism in principle, the public service worked out the practical ramifications of this culture change. The result was a slow and only partial progress toward effective bilingualism in the federal public service and in Canada as a whole.

In attempting to illustrate between-language semantic transfer French-English bilinguals were trained under a conditioning paradigm basically analogous to that used in unilingual semantic generalization studies. The major difference lay in the testing phase. That is, testing for conditioned responses (CRs) to the translations of the stimuli replaced testing for CRs to synonyms of the stimuli. Eight two-syllable nouns in both French and English were presented, with half the stimuli in each of the two languages paired with shock. Following the conditioning procedure shock was withheld and the translation of each of the stimuli was presented. Measures of Galvanic Skin Responses (GSRs) and digital and cephalic vasomotor activity were recorded during both training and testing. The results clearly indicated greater occurrence of GSRs to the translation of the words paired with shock than to the translation of the neutral words. There was no significant difference in the occurrence of digital vasomotor activity; however, cephalic readings suggested significant constriction to the translation of the stimuli which had been paired with shock. The occurrence of CRs to the translation of verbal stimuli suggests a form of mediated transfer from one language to another. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Infant word recognition is sometimes hindered by variability in the speech input. Previous research has shown that, at 9 months, monolinguals do not generalize wordforms across native- and accented-speakers (Schmale & Seidl, 2009). In the current study however, it was predicted that bilingual infants would be advantaged in accommodating for accented speech due to experience with phonetic variability across their two phonological systems. It was also predicted that this hypothesized ability would be restricted to accommodating for an accent derived from a familiar language (e.g., French-English bilinguals would accommodate for French-accented English but not Mandarin-accented English), since this type of variability would be consistent with the language sounds to which infants were regularly exposed. Study 1 set the experimental stage by identifying native and non-native speakers with similar voices, as perceived by a group of adults. This was done in order to restrict variability across speakers to differences in accent, rather than biological differences in voice (e.g., a higher or lower pitched voice). Following speaker selection, acoustic measurements of vowels and word stress placement were taken to compare native and non-native speakers and confirmed several expected deviations between native and accented speech. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that bilingual infants would be advantaged in accommodating for these deviations when the accent is derived from a familiar phonology. Using a headturn preference procedure (HPP), 9- and 13-month-old English-learning monolinguals and French-English learning bilingual infants were tested on their ability to recognize familiarized English wordforms across a native- and French-accented speaker. Bilinguals in both age groups succeeded in generalizing wordforms across speakers, however monolingual infants failed regardless of age. Study 3 tested whether bilinguals’ success would persist when the accented speaker’s first language was unfamiliar. Infants in this study failed as a group to generalize across native- and Mandarin-accented productions of English wordforms. However, bilinguals who received balanced exposure to their two languages performed better in accommodating for Mandarin accented speech than unbalanced bilinguals. This hints at a general ability to ignore irrelevant phonetic information, perhaps due to an advantage in cognitive control.

Fourteen-month-old infants raised in a monolingual English environment confuse phonetically similar words in a word-object association task (Stager & Werker, 1997); however, older infants, who are more proficient at word learning, do not (Werker, Corcoran, Fennell, & Stager, 2000). This temporary confusion of phonetic detail occurs despite the fact that 14- month-old infants still have the ability to discriminate native language phonemes in speech perception tasks not involving word learning. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that 14- month-olds fail because linking words to objects is difficult at the beginning stages of word learning, leaving infants with insufficient attentional resources to listen closely to the words. Extending this hypothesis to infants raised in a bilingual environment generates two possibilities. (1) Bilingual infants will not show the temporary deficit at 14 months. As a function of growing up with two languages, they will have already developed a greater awareness of the sounds of words because more detail is needed to discriminate words in two languages. (2) Bilingual infants will perform at least as poorly as infants being raised with only English because of the cognitive load of learning two languages. Bilingual infants of 14 months were tested in the word-object association task using the phonetically similar labels 'bih' and 'dih' paired with two distinct and colourful moving objects. Following habituation, infants were tested on their ability to detect a 'switch' in the word-object pairing. Bilingual language exposure was assessed with a structured parental interview. The 16 infants included in the sample had been exposed to two languages from birth and had at least 30% exposure to one language and no more than 70% to the other. The results showed that, like the monolingual-learning infants of the same age, the 14-month-old bilingual-learning infants confused similar sounding words. These data are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis, and argue against the proposition that early bilingual exposure facilitates metalinguistic awareness. Future research with slightly older bilingual word learners who have reached the age at which monolingual infants can successfully learn phonetically similar words will help to clarify if these bilingual infants maintain, or diverge from, a monolingual pattern of development. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

archives@tulane.edu / As bilingual populations continue to increase in the US, more research is needed to understand how multilingual language learning may affect child development, especially when developing early literacy skills. To address this question, the current study investigates the differences between monolingual and French-English bilingual children’s handwriting through the use of eye-tracking technology. A sample of 39 second-grade students participated in the study, in which they copied a series of French, English, and nonsense stimulus words of varying lengths. Eye-tracking videos were coded frame-by-frame to assess differences in copying times, reading fluency defined by lookbacks, and motor continuity defined by pen lifts. GLMM analyses suggested evidence for bilingual code switching in which the bilingual group showed increases in stimulus looking times and writing times compared to the monolingual group. As language familiarity increased for the bilingual group, writing became more efficient as evidenced by shorter lookback durations. Furthermore, French and nonsense words were found to require more lookbacks and longer lookbacks than English words across the two groups, suggesting the more familiar English words led to more efficient writing in this particular sample. Further research is needed to determine if these results translate to other languages or if they may change across development. / 1 / Riana Gaudet