This study offers a general survey from a linguistic standpoint of attitude and policy to Lowland Scots language in Scottish education. Chapter 1 outlines the aims of the thesis and considers the present status and condition of Scots language in schools along with some current perceptions of Scots and proposals about how it might be treated in education. A model of Scots and English language since the end of the 17th Century is set out for reference. Thereafter the thesis falls into two main parts. Chapters 2 to 6 provide an historical account of attitudes and policy to Scots language in education from the Middle Ages to the present. This outlines and discusses the forms of Scots language used in schools by teachers and pupils, insofar as these can be determined, and the development of a language policy in schools in relation to the teaching of English, viewed against the general linguistic situation. The situation in the 19th C. is treated in some detail, particularly before and after 1872. The account for the 20th C. focuses on attempts to promote the inclusion of Scots language and literature in schools and how the Scottish Education Department has reacted to these. Chapters 7 to 11 describe, analyse and discuss the results of a test administered to some secondary teachers to discover their general attitudes to Scots forms of language. Chapters 8 to 10 deal with reactions elicited to different accents on a test using the Matched Guise Technique, while chapter 11 is concerned with responses to lexical and grammatical Scotticisms. Chapter 12 provides a summary of conclusions.

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA) research, the study of intonation, and prosodic systems generally, suffers from a considerable under-representation.This has far-reaching consequences. From the large body of empirical work on various aspects of SLA over the last three decades, a great deal has been turned to pedagogical use. Indeed, the field of SLA is closely linked to that of language pedagogy, as the dual acquisition theoretical and pedagogical character of many current journals and conferences shows.However, the mutually nourishing relationship between SLA research and language teaching suffers if either component is inadequate.In the case of intonation, this is exactly the case. At a time when the processes of SLA are under analysis from a wide range of linguistic, psychological and sociolinguistic perspectives, relatively little is known, even on a simple descriptive level, about the acquisition of intonation. There is no body of studies of L2 intonational form comparable, for example, to the 'morpheme studies' or to studies of 'developmental sequences' which informed much thinking in the field in the 1970s and 1980s (see Ellis 1994, Ch.3); no substantial body of work, that is, which might form the basis of further research.The present study aims to contribute to current knowledge on the acquisition of intonational form in second languages. It seeks to provide a detailed account of how certain aspects of L2 English intonation develop, both in terms of their phonetics, and also in terms of the linguistic and discoursal ends to which they are put. The study is divided into two parts:Part One: in which the theoretical and descriptive bases of the study are established. It deals first with aspects of intonational form in English, describing in detail the prosodic systems which are employed to mark various aspects of informational structure within the spoken language, and also considers briefly the current state of language teaching in these areas (Chapter One). Then a review of research into the acquisition of sound systems in second languages is presented, looking particularly at intonational form and other aspects of prosodic production and perception (Chapter Two).Part Two: in which the experiments which have been undertaken as part of this study are presented. Firstly, the procedural and analytical aspects of these experiments will be described (Chapter Three). The findings will then be presented and discussed (Chapters Four to Seven). Finally, findings will be summarised and some general conclusions drawn (Chapter Eight).

The main aim of the thesis is to identify and analyse the types and frequency of grammatical, lexical and general linguistic errors made in the Arabic composition writings of the third year high school students in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This study is to provide information that can be utilised in the improvement of teaching of the grammatical rules of the Arabic language to public school students. The approach is descriptive, analytical and classificatory.Chapter one deals with the research problem, aims and significance of the study, and also discusses the limitations of the study.Chapter two reviews the background to Arabic grammar in the Saudi educational system in the country, particularly in the secondary school system.Chapter three is an extensive literature review on the background of grammatical errors and Arabic grammatical rules.Chapter four examines the prevalence of grammatical errors, their causes and complaints.Chapter five reviews the efforts and attempts to simplify Arabic grammatical rules as a reaction to the dilemma of Arabic grammar and the prevalence of the grammatical errors.Chapter six deals with the research design and methodology of the study undertaken.Chapter seven presents and analysis the main results of this study. It starts with frequency of the grammatical errors and the percentage of the students who committed grammatical errors. This chapter also presents the frequency of types of errors for each grammatical component and finally it highlights the general linguistic errors found in the students' writings.Chapter eight, which is the final chapter, is devoted to a conclusion and implications for practice and future research.

The publication of Webster's Third New International Dictionary in September 1961 set off a national controversy about dictionaries and language that ultimately included issues related to linguistics and English education. The negative reviews published in the press about the Third have shaped beliefs about the nature of the dictionary itself as well as assumptions about dictionary users' desire for authority. Additionally, the reviews influenced how scholars in English, linguistics, and the emerging field of composition studies viewed the public's understandings of language and attitudes toward structural linguistics. Drawing on archival evidence from the correspondence files of Merriam-Webster, Inc., as well articles published in the popular press and scholarly journals in the 1960s, this dissertation reexamines many of the claims made about the Third. First, it reconsiders assumptions about the influence of structural linguistics on the dictionary, showing that the Third was primarily shaped by a research-oriented attitude toward language. Then, it traces how the claims about structural linguistics evolved in the press coverage of the Third. It then examines how scholars publishing in journals like College English and College Composition and Communication responded to these claims about the dictionary. Finally, it analyzes letters sent from dictionary users around the country to complicate assumptions about dictionaries, language, and linguistics circulating in the published writing on the Third. The letters sent to Merriam-Webster reveal that while the controversy surrounding the Third did influence how some individuals perceived the dictionary, many people had far more nuanced and complicated responses than anyone publishing about the dictionary at the time seems to have anticipated. In particular, the letters indicate that assumptions about public hostility to linguistics were unfounded and that many dictionary users did not conceive of lexicographic authority as absolute. Reexamining the response to the Third opens up new possibilities for studying public beliefs about language and English education, especially in relation to composition studies.

<p> This dissertation is grounded in stories of how Chickasaw people have restructured and dedicated their lives to ensuring the continuance of <i> Chikashshanompa'</i>, their Indigenous heritage language. Building on an earlier study of what motivates Chickasaw people&mdash;across generations&mdash;to engage in language reclamation, these pages explore how: 1) Chickasaw young adult professionals who have established careers with the Chickasaw Nation Department of Language have made language reclamation their life&rsquo;s pursuit; 2) Chickasaw citizens-at-large, who reside outside of the Chickasaw Nation, engage in language reclamation, and 3) the study of <i>Chikashshanompa' </i> in school has impacted Chickasaw high school and university students&rsquo; conceptualizations of their personal and social identities. Together, the perspectives of these groups of language learners comprise a case study of Chickasaw people&rsquo;s resilient and tireless efforts to ensure that <i> Chikashshanompa' ilanompoh<u>&oacute;</u>li b&iacute;yyi'ka'chi </i> [we will always speak the Chickasaw language].</p><p> As a Chickasaw person and language learner myself, I worked from culturally-grounded research methodology which embraced my cultural identity and personal relationships with other Chickasaws involved in language reclamation. One key feature of this methodology was my reconstruction of in-depth, phenomenological interviews as participant profiles&mdash;or stories&mdash;as a means to present and analyze data. Individually, these stories tell of the nuanced and diverse experiences of Chickasaw language learners representing distinct generational categories and demographics. Collectively, they reflect three key themes enabling the vitality and efficacy of Chickasaw language reclamation: 1) a raised critical Chickasaw consciousness, 2) the conception of <i>Chikashshanompa'</i> as cultural practice, and 3) the (re)valuing of language learners. </p>

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

<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>