Although critics believe the language variety Spanglish to be a corruption of one or both of the standard languages with which it is associated as well as a language of inadequacy spoken by the poor and uneducated, this thesis seeks to support the idea that it is used by Hispanics in the United States as a marker of identity. An examination of previous studies shows that it is not associated with a lack of linguistic ability on the part of its speakers. Demographic information provided by two Tejano stations that broadcast in Spanglish, KQQK of Houston and KXTN of San Antonio, demonstrates that listeners, when compared to the national averages among Hispanics, actually live under better socioeconomic circumstances. Interviews with radio station personnel reveal that, in their opinions, Spanglish is related to the identity of the Tejano, differentiating him or her from the Anglo as well as the recently-arrived immigrant.

<p> L'&eacute;tude pr&eacute;sente se contre sur la question identitaire aux sujets de la langue et de la culture cadienne au sud de la paroisse Lafourche ; un paroisse du sud-est de la Louisiane. Donnant qu'il y avait peu de recherches venant de cette r&eacute;gion de la Louisiane fran&ccedil;aise, cela serait in&eacute;ressant de voir des avis aux sujets de la langue et la culture cadiennes de vue des gens de cette petite partie.</p><p> Des questionnaires a &eacute;t&eacute; distribu&eacute;s aux lyc&eacute;ens de South Lafourche High School, et des entrevues a &eacute;t&eacute; faits avec des locuteurs natifs du fran&ccedil;ais cadien de la meme r&eacute;gion. </p><p> Avec les r&eacute;sultats, l'auteure examine les r&eacute;ponses des questionnaires des jeunes lyc&eacute;ens et les r&eacute;ponses des entrevues avec les locuteurs du fran&ccedil;ais cadien sont consid&eacute;r&eacute;es s&eacute;par&eacute;ment. Aussi, les r&eacute;ponses des deux groupes sont consid&eacute;r&eacute;es ensemble pour trouver s'il y a des similarit&eacute;s ou des diff&eacute;rences.</p><p> Ce projet cherche de parler des sujets ou de r&eacute;pondre aux questions suivants : Pour les jeunes, Quel est leur niveau de contact avec le fran&ccedil;ais hors de la salle de classe, et Quel est le role du fran&ccedil;ais dans leur vie ? Quelles id&eacute;es et quelles connaissances ils ont du fran&ccedil;ais cadien ? Quels sont les aspects saillants de l'identit&eacute; et de la culture cadiennes pour ces lyc&eacute;ens ?</p><p> Pour les locuteurs natifs de fran&Atilde;&sect;ais cadien, quel est le role du fran&ccedil;ais dans leur vie pr&eacute;sente et pass&eacute;e ? Quels sont les aspects de l'identit&eacute; et de la culture cadiennes qu'ils trouvent le plus importants ? Et qu'est-ce que ces locuteurs pensent de l'enseignement du fran&ccedil;ais par rapport aux plus jeunes g&eacute;n&eacute;rations de la r&eacute;gion ?</p>

<p> From a critical race theory perspective, this study examined how leaders in a California public school district support English language learners (ELLS) while implementing Proposition 227, a policy that strengthened the structures of inequality by imposing English as the language of instruction. The problem this study addressed was the effect Proposition 227 has had on school leaders' capacity to support the needs of ELLs. A qualitative multiple-case study, this study examined inconsistencies among tiers of leadership with regard to support systems for ELLs, irregular monitoring practices, and a lack of language resources. These findings also reveal a focus on oral and academic language development and outline professional development and review of ELLS' data as best practices.</p><p> This study employed nine semistructured interviews. Analysis is presented through a tiered leadership model that includes perceptions from board members, district administrators, and school principals. This study is vital to informing the literature on how leaders understand instruction for ELLs and implement support services in public schools.</p>

<p> The purpose of this quantitative descriptive dissertation study was to examine teacher perceptions of instructional issues and delivery and working environments of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs. Data were collected from ESP teachers at 12 universities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam through an online survey. This study was significant since the results might benefit the design, development, and evaluation of ESP curriculums to reduce significant problems and enhance ESP teaching quality. Also, the exploration of teacher perceptions can help school administrators work around the limitations of their contextual conditions and impose a higher level of impact on transformation and development of ESP programs.</p><p> The collected data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The questionnaire included 32 items that were rated on a four-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Descriptive statistics including means and standard deviations were used to answer Research Question 1. Independent samples t-tests and ANOVAs were used for research question 2 to determine how the groups were different from one another. The results pointed out aspects of ESP programs that were perceived similarly and differently by groups of respondents based on the gender, age, educational backgrounds, and ESP teaching experience.</p>

<p> Research on age and second language acquisition (L2A) is vast, but inconclusive. Such research has mainly been motivated by the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), which postulates that language acquisition becomes extremely difficult after the onset of puberty. Also, there is a lack of research on age and third/additional language (L3/Ln) learning. To fill this gap, this dissertation examines differences in morphosyntactic knowledge between early and late learners of English as a L3/Ln. In this study, `early' and `late' learners are those participants first exposed to English as a medium of instruction (MOI) in 1st and 11th grades, respectively. Participants' morphosyntactic knowledge was assessed based on two tasks: (a) a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and (b) an editing task, which required participants to correct morphosyntactic errors. Three hundred and thirty five undergraduate and graduate students from two universities in Pakistan voluntarily participated in the research. </p><p> Results of the group comparisons showed no statistically significant differences between early and late learners on the GJT; however, on the editing task, a modest but significant difference was observed between the two groups, with late learners scoring higher. This finding contradicts the predictions of the CPH. </p><p> On individual morphosyntactic features in the GJT, a significant difference was observed between the two groups on past tense and third person singular. The effect sizes supported an edge for late learners. In contrast to the GJT, on the editing task all morphosyntactic features (a total of eight features) except adverb suffix, present progressive, and past tense showed a small but significant difference, again favoring late learners. In terms of task difficulty, both groups attained higher scores on the GJT and lower scores on the editing task. Also, a strong and statistically significant correlation was found between scores for grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli on the GJT, but a very weak and statistically non-significant correlation between the grammatical and ungrammatical halves of the GJT and the editing task. </p><p> Results showed that early L3/Ln learners did not have an edge over late L3/Ln learners in their morphosyntactic proficiency in this English as an additional language context. This dissertation explored L3/Ln learning by predominantly Urdu and Punjabi bilingual speakers, a previously unexplored population. The two measures used provided complementary perspectives on grammatical knowledge. Future research should also examine early and late proficiency differences using a more ecologically valid measure (e.g., a writing task). </p>

<p> The promotion of language is considered to be the one of the ways to increase the state's soft power. Taking this into account, Soviet leaders used the Russian language as a tool to create a new identity to consolidate the Soviet republics. After the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, the majority of the countries started the de-russification process which was a part of their own nation-building process. However, in the case of Central Asia, the variation of language policies is observed: some of the states, such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, still use Russian as the official language, while other countries, such as Uzbekistan, adopted strong anti-Russian language reforms. This thesis presents the analysis of the cultural and material factors which may influence the status of the Russian language by testing a hypothesis deduced from the Rational Choice Theory. After examining the data by means of Mill's methods of agreement and difference, the research concludes that the preservation of the Russian language and its use depends mostly on the number of Russian nationals and Orthodox adepts living in the country of the region under analysis.</p>

<p> Chethiya is a brown, gay, disabled (ultimately), abused young man from Sri Lanka, who comes to the U.S. on a full scholarship. His dream is to be a Broadway star, but after coming out of his first relationship with an emotionally abusive, alcoholic man, he is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic, degenerative neurological disease that results in demyelination, causing progressive debilitation. The story is divided into six chapters that narrate his life under various marginalizations he is subjected to, culminating in traumatization. The story, however, ends on a positive note of redemption with the narrator looking forward to his days to come.</p>

<p> In the current global business environment many endeavors are undertaken as projects. Translation, localization and other language services are no exception and must be viewed and studied as services performed in a projectized environment. If they are not, there will continue to be gaps between the way translation is taught and researched (as an isolated activity) and how it is performed in the business world (as part of projects). The existence of these gaps not only prevents translation practitioners from recognizing and communicating the value of the service that they provide, but also diminishes the value of the training that future translators receive. Lack of understanding of the context in which translation is performed limits the opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation between translation studies and other disciplines in the academic environment, and between organizations and divisions within a given organization in the business environment. </p><p> This study proposes to contribute to the research on translation in project contexts by examining risk management, which is an important area of focus for organizations and professionals in many sectors, but which is largely ignored in the language industry. </p><p> This study first provides an overview of the language industry, explores key concepts, such as risk, uncertainty, project management, risk management and maturity model, and explains the role and relevance of risk management in the language industry. It then reviews existing risk management frameworks developed by project management and risk management practitioners, including the framework developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Next, a model of risk sources developed specifically for application in translation and localization projects is presented and discussed. The theoretical discussion is followed by a case study in which PMI's project risk management framework is implemented and the proposed model of risk sources is applied in a real-world translation company. The description of the case study methodology is followed by observations of how the study was carried out and by a presentation and analysis of the results of the case study. The dissertation concludes by offering recommendations based on the findings of the case study and by examining possible future avenues of research.</p>

<p>This dissertation examines the linguistic practices 9&ndash;13 year-old African American students who attended an after school program in Washington, D.C. used to negotiate schooling and achievement. It builds on existing anthropological research on how young people are socialized into their communities, classrooms, and the wider society via language. It renders this process particular to the students&rsquo; lived experiences of race, poverty, and contemporary schooling reform. By focusing on linguistic practice and the language ideologies held by the students, the dissertation explores the difficulties racially identified minority students face in school when they are asked by the wider society&rsquo;s major socializing agents and institutions to exchange cultural identity for academic success. </p><p> The dissertation is based on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted from October 2010&ndash;June 2011. During these months, over 108 hours of data were recorded from 30 preadolescents who served as research subjects. Informal interviews with after school staff and adults from the local community were also conducted. In the third and final phase (April&ndash;June 2011), focus groups were conducted with 12 of the students. </p><p> The dissertation provides evidence that among same- and similar-age peers, the students often repurposed the linguistic practices they learned from adults, and in ways that did not always align with the dominant expectations of the more socially powerful members of either the community or the after school program. It argues that the types of AAVE-based &ldquo;conflict&rdquo; talk students test in peer contexts perform positive socializing functions but that these discourse styles were nevertheless often interpreted, by adults as well as the students themselves, as unpreparedness or unwillingness to achieve in school. </p><p> This study revisits major theorizing of hegemony, critical consciousness, and &ldquo;the Black underclass.&rdquo; It suggests that while preadolescent-age African Americans try to construct &ldquo;achievement&rdquo; on their own terms via linguistic practice, they are not always successful because they are not empowered in the classroom, situationally or in the long term. It concludes by recommending ways in which educational practitioners and theorists can better understand how academically marginalized students engage with schooling and how they can support these students&rsquo; negotiated achievements. </p>

This thesis is a study of language use and language socialization practices in Northern Quebec. The focus is on families with children between 9 and 24 months of age, particularly bilingual families, living in predominantly Inuit communities. Interviews with 11 families were examined to determine the major issues concerning language use, beliefs, and relationships. Two bilingual families were then examined in-depth over one year to gain a clearer understanding of their language behaviours and how they related to the cultures present in the homes and communities. Results of the study indicate that there is variation across bilingual families in many aspects related to language. Syncretism and dissociation of language and culture and their effects on the Inuit, educators, and speech-language pathologists are discussed.