The thesis investigates ways of communicating gratitude are perceived and realised in Jordan and England. It focuses on the impact of several variables on the expression of gratitude and examines the differences between the data elicited by pragmatic research instruments (DCT and role-play). Data were collected from native speakers: 46 Jordanian Arabic, 46 English natives using DCTs, role-plays and interviews. Slight similarities and significant cross-cultural differences were revealed in terms of gratitude expressions’ perception, number and strategy type. This cultural contrast reveals differences in the sociolinguistic patterns of conveying gratitude in verbal and nonverbal communication. The most important theoretical finding is that the data, while consistent with many views found in the existing literature, do not support Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim that communicating gratitude intrinsically threatens the speaker’s negative face. Rather, it is argued that gratitude should be viewed as a means of establishing and sustaining social relationships. The findings suggest that cultural variation in expressing gratitude is due to the high degree of sensitivity to the interplay of several social and contextual variables. The findings provide worthwhile insights into theoretical issues concerning the nature of communicative acts, the relation between types of communicative acts and the general principles of human communication, especially rapport between people in social interaction, as well as the relation between culture-specific and universal features of communicative activity types. Differences were found between pragmatic research instruments. The outcomes indicate that using a mixture of methods is preferable as long as this serves the aim of the study as it merges their advantages by eliciting spontaneous data in controlled settings. The ramifications of this study for future multi-dimensional investigations of the contrasts between Arabic and English speaking cultures are expected to prove particularly significant in virtue of corroborating or refuting existing findings and in this way paving the way for new research.

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.

The North-East of Scotland and Altbayern (Old Bavaria) have long been perceived as the heartland of the respective linguistic varieties. Due to their association with a largely rural lifestyle the associated regional vernaculars, the Doric and Old Bavarian, are often regarded as the “purest” forms of the local variety. Considering that these regions are regarded as prominent, this study investigates what the speakers think of their varieties and how they construct their identity in the light of these perceptions. Using mainly qualitative data, gathered in the small towns of Peterhead and Aichach, the study explores the attitudes towards the varieties and its speakers as perceived by themselves. Issues, such as age-related competence, positive and negative discrimination, are one aspect of the investigation. Another focal point are the strategies employed by the participants to construct their identity as vernacular speakers. Drawing on methods connected to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), themes, such as character traits and the relationships in the community between locals and incomers, are studied. The status of the standard variety and the vernacular and the relationship between them is investigated; the concepts of Abstand and Ausbau languages and diglossia also inform the assessment.

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

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-162).

Thesis--University of Michigan. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-151).

<p> This dissertation study investigated the extent to which formulaic sequences that were manipulated for mutual information (MI; the strength of co-occurrence) and congruency (the existence of equivalent forms between languages) are holistically stored and processed in reading aloud by Korean learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) as well as English native speakers. Despite the claims made for the role of formulaic sequences (e.g., idioms, collocations, and lexical bundles) in saving processing effort as ready-made chunks, little is known about second language (L2) on-line processing (Siyanova-Chanturia &amp; Martinez, 2014). </p><p> To advance our understanding of this research domain, a read-aloud task was developed and administered to the two language groups of students in lab-based, individual settings. A total of 225 spoken verb-noun sequences were used as stimuli: 180 collocations and 45 noncollocations. A total of 12 collocation sets contained 15 items each (high vs. low MI; congruent vs. incongruent; high, mid, and low frequency bands), and 3 noncollocation sets contained 15 items from each of the three frequency bands. The numbers of letters and syllables, the whole sequence frequency, and the bigram frequency were matched across the sets. Using DMDX (Forster &amp; Forster, 2003), the read-aloud task was administered to each participant who read aloud each sequence as quickly and accurately as possible. A translation task of the target stimuli was additionally administered to the L2 speakers so that only known stimuli were included in the analyses. Linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) were used to answer the overarching question: <i>Are advanced Korean learners of English likely to process collocations and noncollocations in the same ways native speakers?</i> </p><p> Results of the analyses showed that: (a) the L2 group as well as the L1 group read the collocations more slowly than the noncollocations; (b) MI level had no effect on both group&rsquo;s collocation processing; (c) congruency had no effect on L2 students&rsquo; collocation processing; and (d) using LMMs to analyze the read-aloud time data was challenging but powerful. It was concluded that, when reading aloud, collocations were not holistically stored or retrieved based on a comparison with noncollocations. A few potential factors, such as experimental tasks, types of formulaic sequences, or semantic transparency, which could affect the processing, were also discussed. The dissertation concludes by providing implications, limitations, and suggested venues for future research.</p>

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Virginia F. Allen. Dissertation Committee: Harold C. Conklin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-73).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-111).