Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 1993. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Ruprecht-Karl-Universität zu Heidelberg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-212).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 1993. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 192 p.; also includes graphics Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-192). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

This thesis aims to contribute to the study of workplace talk, language and gender, and the sociolinguistics of globalization by exploring the phenomenon of ‘linguistic regulation’ in call centres. ‘Linguistic regulation’ refers to the practice, now widespread in the globalized service economy, of codifying and enforcing rules for employees’ use of language in service interactions with customers. Drawing on authentic service interactions from call centres in the UK and Denmark, and interviews and communication material from both those countries as well as Hong Kong and the Philippines, this study shows that linguistic regulation exerts a significant influence on the language used by call centre agents, and suggests that this has implications for all three areas of inquiry. In relation to the study of workplace talk, the findings raise questions about the degree of local management and individual speaker agency that has often been asserted in previous work. In the area of language and gender studies, the finding that female speakers in both countries show a higher degree of compliance with linguistic regulation than male ones is related to ongoing debates about the local variability of gender. It is argued that the field may benefit from supplementing the currently favoured locally-based methods with one which seeks to link linguistic behaviour with supra-local systems of inequality. Finally, in relation to the sociolinguistics of globalization, this thesis documents the existence of a distinct, globally prescribed, call centre style which is culturally marked as North-American. In practice, this style is locally inflected, with British agents exhibiting greater conformity to the prescriptions than their Danish counterparts. It is argued that this may be because the prescribed style conflicts with the Danish cultural preference for ‘getting to the point’. These findings highlight the importance of considering language in the context of a global system. The thesis concludes by considering what the research it is based on may contribute, not only to academic debates in sociolinguistics and the sociology of work, but also to professional discussions within the call centre industry.

This thesis examines evidence for language contact between Oscan and Greek in the corpus of Oscan inscriptions from Lucania, Bruttium and Messana. These inscriptions were written in an adapted form of the Greek alphabet from around the fourth to first century BC, with a few of the latest texts written in the Latin alphabet; as a group, these texts are referred to as ‘South Oscan’. The work draws on modern sociolinguistic theory of bilingualism and language contact alongside previous scholarship on ancient linguistics, epigraphy and archaeology. It also suggests a series of general principles for dealing with small epigraphic corpora from a sociolinguistic viewpoint. After laying out these frameworks, this work gives an introduction to the sites of the region and past scholarship on language contact in this corpus. The main body of the thesis deals with the corpus of texts from a number of complementary angles. Firstly, the adaptation of the South Oscan alphabet from the Greek alphabet is explored in detail. In particular, the development of various signs for /f/ and the use of ‘extra’ Greek characters like chi, theta and phi are investigated as evidence of ongoing contact between the languages. The rest of the thesis deals with the corpus by genre or inscription type: this includes dedications, curse tablets, legal texts, official texts (including coin legends) and funerary texts. While some types of text, such as curse tablets, show pronounced influence and borrowing from Greek, other genres such as legal or official texts show far fewer contact phenomena, even within the same community. In other instances, language contact appears to have resulted in regional linguistic developments: for example, some of the formulae used in South Oscan dedicatory and funerary texts appear to be creative adaptations arising from a combination of influences from both Oscan and Greek, without fully adopting existing models from either language. This thesis therefore stresses that communities developed norms about the appropriateness of borrowing from Greek in various kinds of texts. In many instances, linguistic and epigraphic borrowing from Greek in written texts seems to be determined by individual choice and variation within these community norms, rather than the result of incompetence.

No description available.

This thesis examines the use of non-standard language, more specifically non-standard vocabulary (i.e. slang, verlan, colloquialisms, vulgarities, foreign borrowings, and abbreviations), in a corpus of selected francophone rap tracks in order both to quantify its use and to investigate what determines its variation, focusing on the impact of diachronic, diatopic, gender and diaphasic determinants. The methodology relies on a lexicographic analysis to produce quantitative results which are then analysed qualitatively by means of extract analyses and semi-structured interviews with francophone rappers. To answer the research questions, the thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter presents the aforementioned methodology and the overall quantitative results from the thesis, while also introducing the notion of variation, which is then tackled in the last four chapters. The second chapter investigates diachronic determinants from two perspectives: different generations of rappers (1990/1991, 2001 and 2011) and one artist throughout his career (Akhenaton in 1991, 2011 and 2011). The third chapter looks at diatopic determinants, analysing the impact of ethnic and spatial origins. Three ethnic origins are compared (rappers of French, Algerian and Senegalese origin), together with three cities (Marseille, Paris and Brussels) and three departments (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne). The fourth chapter focuses on gender determinants, with a comparison of male versus female rappers that also takes broader gender performativity into account. Finally, the fifth chapter examines the impact of diaphasic determinants. It analyses three rap genres (jazz/poetic, ego trip and knowledge rap), which then form the foundation for qualitative discussions of the effect of aesthetics, figures of speech, themes and performance. In conclusion, the contribution to knowledge of this work is the observation that the main determinant of high use of non-standard vocabulary is the performance of modern ego trip. The other determinants do not impact non-standard vocabulary to the same extent quantitatively or systematically, due to the complexity of the contextual and fluid identity performances involved with these determinants.

No description available.