<p> Using a convenience sampling of 10 eighth-grade language arts students, this exploratory case study examined in depth the literacy processes used by ten 8^th grade students to generate various multimodal artifacts that comprise their final projects and the nature of the literacy transactions that fostered these processes over the course of one year in this language arts classroom. Following closely (via the case studies in Chapter Five) how four of the ten students used the literacy events of the classroom to claim spaces to perceive and perform their voices and visions, the study revealed how these students were able to turn away from a specific form of silencing, both on and off the page, and reclaim a lost voice that helped them better navigate their lives and their literacies. This navigation transcended classroom walls to encompass larger social arenas in which students continued to perform and practice their literary and living choices.</p><p> I conducted three focus group interviews with all ten students. The purpose of these interviews was to define, from these students&rsquo; perspectives, the literacy practices they engaged in over the course of the 2012-2013 academic year as part of their eighth-grade language arts class. In studying how these transactions helped shape these students&rsquo; literate thinking, my intent was to investigate ways in which both local and global contexts interact to help students promote or resist social and political trends. The study brought into question and deconstructed the grand narratives surrounding our American identity and the traditional literacies that serve to define and legitimize them.</p><p> My findings revealed that the literacy events in the classroom, facilitated and negotiated by an interested and knowledgeable adult, offered these ten students a wide range of personal ways to practice, in new and innovative ways, both academic and personal choices.</p>

<p> Since the early 2000s, foreign language practitioners and researchers have shown an increasing interest in exploring the affordances of multimodal telecollaborative environments for the linguistic and intercultural development of their students. Due in part to their inherent complexity, one-on-one desktop-videoconferencing contexts have not been widely explored. To this end, this study investigates if and how American students of French engaged in a telecollaborative exchange with a class of French students are able to develop their Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) through online interaction and the completion of a collaborative task. Adopting a case study approach, the video-recorded sessions of three dyads are analyzed in conjunction with data from background surveys, autobiographies, journal entries, and email exchanges. To observe ICC development, we use a combination of a priori categories based on the &laquo; Attitude &raquo; component of Byram's (1997) model and a set of emerging themes (Boyatzis, 1998) gathered from the data. This choice of methodology provides an in-depth picture of the participants' production of Attitudes, that is, the willingness to show value to their partners or prioritize self over the course of the exchange. The results of the study indicate that one-on-one desktop-video conferencing can support the development of ICC and that task work bears upon the types and production of Attitudes. In addition, it is found that the production of Attitudes is not proficiency-dependent. The results also further suggest that there are differences in the way male and female participants engage in intercultural interaction.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the acquisition of Spanish diphthongs by adult native speakers of English. The following research questions will be addressed: 1) How do adult native speakers of English pronounce sequences of two vowels in their L2 Spanish at different levels of acquisition? 2) Can OT learnability models, specifically the GLA, account for the pronunciation of L2 diphthongs? If so, what constraints do learners use and how do these constraints interact? If not, what other model(s) might offer an improved analysis of L2 diphthongs? Participants completed two production tasks, a Nonsense Word task and a Question &amp; Answer task. The participants were divided by level of acquisition &ndash; Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced &ndash; and there was a Native Speaker Control group. After the data was collected, F2 values and duration of vowel sequence were measured and used to categorize the pronunciations as monophthongs, diphthongs, or hiatus. It was found that the use of diphthongization increased with level of acquisition in the data for the Question &amp; Answer task. Data from the Nonsense Word task did not reveal the same pattern; instead, the level of diphthongization was more or less equal across all levels of acquisition and with the Native Speaker Control group. The OT account was able to explain most of the data in this study. The GLA proved successful in demonstrating how constraints interact in the pronunciation of L2 diphthongs. However, there were L2 pronunciations for which OT could not account. It is suggested that linguistic models based on lexical frequency may offer insight into how to account for these pronunciations. </p>

<p> This study examines proposals made during planning talk&mdash;a speech act that has received little attention in previous literature&mdash;to determine the applicability of the stages of second language (L2) pragmatic development posited by Kasper and Rose (2002). Although Kasper and Rose suggest that formulas play a prominent role in L2 pragmatic development, few studies have considered the applicability of their stages to a non-formulaic speech act. The current study investigated proposal production in the planning talk of 69 participants: 46 learners of Spanish enrolled at five levels of instruction in a seven-week Spanish immersion program, 12 native Spanish speaking instructors in the same program, and 11 native English speaking undergraduate students at the same institution enrolled during the academic year. The L2 learners worked in groups of two or three as they planned three different role-plays during the seventh week of instruction. The native speakers met with the researcher in groups of two or three to complete the same role-plays in their first language (L1). A total of 1809 proposals and 351 supporting moves were produced in approximately four hours of planning talk. Analysis of transcriptions focused on the realization of the head-act strategies, deictic centering, internal and external modification, and the influence of the conversational context on the production of proposals. Results of this cross-sectional analysis suggest that learners do not pass through a formulaic stage when producing proposals in planning talk. The results also suggest that the learners' production of proposals exhibits a u-shaped curve as they adhere to L1 English norms at intermediate levels of proficiency before reflecting L1 Spanish norms at more advanced levels of instruction. L1 English influence was observed in the level of directness of the head-act strategies, the use of deictic centering, internal and external modification, and the influence of the conversational context. Results point to a new framework involving three universal stages of L2 pragmatic development in which L1 influence and pragmatic expansion are more salient. </p>

<p> Researchers of super-diversity, a state of intense cultural heterogeneity common mostly in urban centers across the globe, have strongly emphasized the potential for rigorous qualitative studies of this social phenomenon to supplement perspectives in the field of linguistic anthropology by focusing on "what is lived and expressed in the everyday" (Blommaert &amp; Rampton, 2011, p. 11) and analyzing "the degree to and ways in which today's migrants maintain identities, activities, and connections linking them with communities outside" (Vertovec, 2007, p. 1043). Moreover, in studies of language and literacy socialization in contexts of super-diversity, it has become highly significant to explore the patterns of "inter-generational language socialization within families" (Blommaert &amp; Rampton, 2011, p. 14), focusing on the direction of influence (parent to child, child to parent, grandparent to child, sibling to sibling, etc.), as well as the context of its occurrence (whether in domestic, recreational, community, or religious circles). </p><p> This study contributes to the growing literature on super-diversity and more specifically to the field of linguistic anthropology and research on immigrant mothers. Bringing the Pakistani immigrant community in Toronto into focus, the present study demonstrates how Pakistani immigrant mothers, who are themselves in the midst of negotiating linguistic and cultural transitions, negotiate and construct their familial identities, while living in an increasingly diverse city like Toronto in a time when notions of diversity, multiculturalism, and multilingualism are themselves shifting. </p><p> Analysis of multiple dimensions of immigrant mothers' stories highlights the relational aspect of identity negotiation (Bucholtz &amp; Hall, 2005) in the context of immigration. Attending closely to the narratives of their past and present experiences with language learning and use, this study demonstrates how these mothers have negotiated their familial identities in relation to both their own positioning (Davies &amp; Harr&eacute; 1990) as immigrant mothers, as well as through the positioning of others' in their stories. </p><p> Moreover, close analysis of the multiple instances of identity negotiation through the way immigrant mothers talk about language and the socialization of their children confirms their own as well as their children's fluid, multiple and hybrid identities. Their negotiations of `new' immigrant identities into `a third space' draw on an amalgam of cultural and linguistic resources available in a city like Toronto. These findings on one hand problematize and transgress traditionally held notions of language and identity that have been focusing on English versus ethnic language and culture debate; on the other hand, they offer us a window into how immigrant identities are negotiated in superdiverse contexts. </p><p> Finally, I consider how the narratives constructed in an interactional context like the focus group discussions that constituted an important methodological tool in this study offer broader options for analysis of identity negotiation by providing special insights into how perspectives can be negotiated collaboratively among group members.</p>

Thesis (M.Ed. (Education)) - Rhodes University, 2007.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 145-159.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Linguistics, 2006. / Adviser: Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig.

Thesis (M.A.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2008. / "SA 6903 MAPPM dissertation." "A dissertation undertaken in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the M.A. in Public Policy & Management, City University of Hong Kong." Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Sept. 24, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-219). Also available in print.