Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Zhongguo wen hua xue yuan. / Photreproduction of typescript. Bibliography: ℓ. 80-83.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study concerning language maintenance efforts at a Chinese heritage language school in a North American community. This research employs the construct of language ideology—members' common sense notions about language and language learning—to explore important aspects of what it means to speak, act, think, and feel like a member of the community. It is argued that the heritage language school is the center of a moral project helping to mediate cross-cultural experience so that children maintain positive social identities. Methodology involves discourse analysis and ethnographic observation. Interviews and texts are transcribed and analyzed to suggest structure and pattern. The analysis finds evidence to support the conclusion that notions of language and language learning reflect traditional patterns of Chinese thought and culture but that these are reconfigured to suit American circumstances. It is suggested that the subject position of Overseas Chinese helps members maintain stable notions of self as Chinese.

The objective of this study is to identify factors influencing language planning decisions in Mozambique by analyzing the relationship between official language policy and popular language practice. The study presents a macro perspective by examining historic and current accounts of the formulation of national policies, the official discourse, and focuses on a micro perspective by revealing ethnic and linguistic realities facing adults in Maputo, the popular consciousness. An ethnographic approach is used to gather artifacts, documents, in-depth interviews, and participant observations which together formulate the official and popular discourses. In the analysis, the promotion of a national ideology in a newly formed multilingual state is related to the realities of a multiethnic, multicultural community. During the struggle for independence, the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) promoted Portuguese as the language of liberation, due to Mozambique's diverse linguistic composition of more than thirteen major languages and their many dialects. Since independence in 1975, Portuguese has been used as the official language, promoting national unity with the explicit intention of eliminating tribalism, regionalism and racism. However, fourteen years after independence, an estimated 70% of the population remains illiterate in Portuguese as Mozambique faces war and political and economic change. Participants in the study identify three major areas of conflict regarding current popular uses of Mozambican languages versus Portuguese: the maintenance of traditional knowledge, language strategies for survival in the Mozambican state, and perceptions of Mozambican identity. The official discourse indicates that the national ideology, which mandates unity and modernity, has not promoted language policy accommodating ethnic and linguistic diversity. Language planning theory, especially related to the promotion of nationalism, is examined and discrepancies between language policy and language practice are identified. The study reveals that language planning necessitates historic and ethnographic accounts of official and popular discourses to arrive at new appropriate language planning strategies meeting official and popular needs.

This work concerns how information structure is signalled prosodically in English, that is, how prosodic prominence and phrasing are used to indicate the salience and organisation of information in relation to a discourse model. It has been standardly held that information structure is primarily signalled by the distribution of pitch accents within syntax structure, as well as intonation event type. However, we argue that these claims underestimate the importance, and richness, of metrical prosodic structure and its role in signalling information structure. We advance a new theory, that information structure is a strong constraint on the mapping of words onto metrical prosodic structure. We show that focus (kontrast) aligns with nuclear prominence, while other accents are not usually directly 'meaningful'. Information units (theme/rheme) try to align with prosodic phrases. This mapping is probabilistic, so it is also influenced by lexical and syntactic effects, as well as rhythmical constraints and other features including emphasis. Rather than being directly signalled by the prosody, the likelihood of each information structure interpretation is mediated by all these properties. We demonstrate that this theory resolves problematic facts about accent distribution in earlier accounts and makes syntactic focus projection rules unnecessary. Previous theories have claimed that contrastive accents are marked by a categorically distinct accent type to other focal accents (e.g. L+H* v H*). We show this distinction in fact involves two separate semantic properties: contrastiveness and theme/rheme status. Contrastiveness is marked by increased prominence in general. Themes are distinguished from rhemes by relative prominence, i.e. the rheme kontrast aligns with nuclear prominence at the level of phrasing that includes both theme and rheme units. In a series of production and perception experiments, we directly test our theory against previous accounts, showing that the only consistent cue to the distinction between theme and rheme nuclear accents is relative pitch height. This height difference accords with our understanding of the marking of nuclear prominence: theme peaks are only lower than rheme peaks in rheme-theme order, consistent with post-nuclear lowering; in theme-rheme order, the last of equal peaks is perceived as nuclear. The rest of the thesis involves analysis of a portion of the Switchboard corpus which we have annotated with substantial new layers of semantic (kontrast) and prosodic features, which are described. This work is an essentially novel approach to testing discourse semantics theories in speech. Using multiple regression analysis, we demonstrate distributional properties of the corpus consistent with our claims. Plain and nuclear accents are best distinguished by phrasal features, showing the strong constraint of phrase structure on the perception of prominence. Nuclear accents can be reliably predicted by semantic/syntactic features, particularly kontrast, while other accents cannot. Plain accents can only be identified well by acoustic features, showing their appearance is linked to rhythmical and low-level semantic features. We further show that kontrast is not only more likely in nuclear position, but also if a word is more structurally or acoustically prominent than expected given its syntactic/information status properties. Consistent with our claim that nuclear accents are distinctive, we show that pre-, post- and nuclear accents have different acoustic profiles; and that the acoustic correlates of increased prominence vary by accent type, i.e. pre-nuclear or nuclear. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of our theory compared to previous accounts using examples from the corpus.

This thesis investigates language variation among a group of young adults in Beijing, China, with an aim to advance our understanding of social meaning in a language and a society where the topic is understudied. In this thesis, I examine the use of Beijing Mandarin among Beijingborn university students in Beijing in relation to social factors including gender, social class, career plan, and future aspiration. Language variation in this context can further our understanding of Chinese culture in a newlyreformed society while exploring important constructs such as gender and aspiration in China, in part by establishing the social meaning of the local vernacular and its role in identity construction among speakers. The study presents data from both sociolinguistic interviews, conducted with 21 Beijingers who have di erent class backgrounds, career plans, and future aspiration, and self-recordings, from a subset of 10 Beijingers in conversation with their family and/or friends. I focus on three thus far under-examined linguistic variables { neutral tone, classi er omission, and intensi er te { while incorporating an additional variable { erhua (word- nal rhotacisation) in the discussion of stylistic variation in Beijing Mandarin. The results rst provide an overview of language variation in Beijing Mandarin, as shown in the use of di erent features and their linguistic and social constraints. We observe familiar patterns often found in sociolinguistic literature for some social factors (e.g. gender), while more complex interactions exist for others (e.g. aspiration and career path). The ndings suggest that Beijing Mandarin conveys localness and masculinity which is expected for a vernacular variety. Finer distinctions in the social meanings of these variables are found in sub-groups of Beijingers with di erent gender, future career path and/or aspiration. Moreover, speakers are seen to utilise these variables and their meanings in the construction of personae.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.