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Statement of the Problem: Specifically, how suitable is a textual language in communicating “irrational concepts” and religious myths designed to explain the irrational? Furthermore, how important is the mastery of a textual language apropos of our conceptual processes and in what ways can the structure of a specific language-game impact on a person’s conceptual abilities? To undertake this enquiry, certain assumptions will have to be made. For example, it is accepted that everything we interpret and ultimately understand is mediated solely through language in the broad sense (which includes visual cognition or literacy). Here it is accepted that without language we cannot think. Indeed, even our most private thoughts are based on a language, which embodies communally sanctioned criteria. Hypothesis: It is then the premise of this dissertation that the very architecture of a person’s mother-tongue has a profound influence on the worldview and perception of a particular person. Also it is possible to consider that certain languages, by virtue of their very structure, either hinder or facilitate certain cognitive development or potential. Further, if we could but increase the linguistic proficiency of our citizens, we will be better positioned to develop a critical mass of people who are problem solvers, mathematicians and conceptualizers; and who will address the shortfall of graduates in science, engineering, technology and business in South Africa. If in any way accurate, this would tend to imply that (inter alia) the retention rate of potential graduates in the SET and business disciplines will be significantly improved if educational policy-makers embraced even the most basic tenets of the linguistic paradigm.

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The Paper Machine is a collection of narrative and contemplative poems whose speakers explore the significance of domestic relationships that shape everyday life. Works in this series of poems engage rural and urban southern settings in which the traditional abuts the contemporary--sidewalks against crop fields, dance clubs beside pulp mills. Recurrent throughout the collection are inquiries into hunger, labor, family, and longing. Additionally, poems in this collection embrace poetic forms as settings, not only in the sense of structured rooms inhabited by language but also as industrial--a set of operable controls to be tweaked and altered towards divergent results. Similarly, poems in The Paper Machine use found lines as fibers, exploring the potential of salvaged language to become composite components of other works through rearrangement and reuse. Poet and philosopher Georges Perec once pointed out the conceptual echoes between sheets of paper and bedroom sheets, that people use both spaces to define, record, and remake identity. In a similar thread, The Paper Machine enters into conversation with the places people occupy--geographic, psychosocial, economic and familial--in an effort to understand how bedrooms, landscapes, arts and the people who engage them retain and reconstruct the slurry of daily American culture. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 6, 2015. / Creative, Florida, Palatka, Paper, Poetry, Southern Literature / Includes bibliographical references. / James Kimbrell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Juan Carlos Galeano, University Representative; David Kirby, Committee Member; Virgil Suarez, Committee Member.

Learning to read is a major developmental achievement with wide ranging societal, educational, and economic costs associated with low literacy attainment. A robust body of literature has documented the stability and persistence of reading difficulties in early elementary school, underscoring the importance of identifying and intervening with children at risk early in development, before they enter formal education. Current efforts to identify children early in development who will require specialized educational support are missing a significant segment of children, and in turn, the opportunity to intervene early. This study evaluated competing models of the factor structure of emergent literacy skills and examined predictive relations between social communication skills in the second year of life and later emergent literacy skills using structural equation modeling (SEM) within a longitudinal sample of preschool children (4–5 years) with diverse early developmental skills. A similar latent structure of emergent literacy skills was found for children with typical development (TD) and early developmental delay (EDD), yet differences in how specific emergent literacy skills relate to one another were documented between groups, possibly reflecting differences in emergent literacy development between children with TD and EDD. Analyses also documented predictive relations between early social communication and preschool emergent literacy skills, supporting the characterization of literacy development as a continuous developmental process beginning early in life. This study extends the current literature by documenting relations between early social communication skills in the second year of life and later preschool emergent literacy skills using a well-characterized longitudinal sample of young children with diverse early developmental abilities. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2016. / October 19, 2016. / Includes bibliographical references. / Amy Wetherby, Professor Directing Dissertation; Hugh Catts, University Representative; Christopher Lonigan, Committee Member; Christopher Schatschneider, Committee Member; Jeanette Taylor, Committee Member.

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