This mini-thesis profiles some aspects realted to the accessibility of printed news to first language speakers of Xhosa. The major aim of this thesis is to investigate whether speakers of Xhosa do have access to printed news in English, which is not in their first language. Therefore, this thesis investigates whether African langusge speakers of school leaving age understand hwat they read in English newspapers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-119).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: William O. Beeman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-335). Also available online.

Magister Artium - MA / This mini-thesis profiles some aspects realted to the accessibility of printed news to first language speakers of Xhosa. The major aim of this thesis is to investigate whether speakers of Xhosa do have access to printed news in English, which is not in their first language. Therefore, this thesis investigates whether African langusge speakers of school leaving age understand hwat they read in English newspapers. / South Africa

Student Number : 9711192Y - MA Research Report - School of Human and Community Development - Faculty of Humanities / This research considered factors that predict academic achievement in Grade 8 and 9 learners. The learners in this study were categorised primarily based on their first language. As a researcher in South Africa one is not faced with a division between monolinguals and bilinguals, but rather is forced to classify language users based on their ‘home’ or ‘first’ language. Thus learners whose first language was English fell into the first-language (L1) group, while learners whose first language was not English fell into the second-language (L2) group Academic achievement was defined in this study as the marks obtained by learners in their school subjects. This method of assessing students and learners is both pervasive and essential in the determination of academic potential, and the subsequent determination of future employment and educational opportunities. The results of these school achievement tests were compared with results obtained from the Differential Aptitude Test Form S (DAT-S) English Version. The DAT-S is an assessment instrument used to determine academic potential. This test was developed in South Africa, and normed against Afrikaans and English speaking students (Vosloo, Coetzee & Claassen, 2000). The test was chosen for use in this study because “the kind of information obtained from the differential aptitude tests can … facilitate judgements regarding potential success in the course of a career” (Vosloo, Coetzee & Claassen, 2000 p. 1). The results of this comparison were used to examine factors that determine success in an academic sphere, and which underlying proficiencies as predicted by the DAT-S may have contributed to this success.

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This study examines the current state of advertising in Cameroon and South Africa; two multilingual and multicultural societies with rich historical and linguistic backgrounds. Advertising in Douala, Cameroon, is not given enough attention and the inhabitants, not only of the city but the country as a whole, feel rejected and not taken on board in the discourse of advertising. The study identified personal characteristics of participants and their degree of satisfaction with the current state of advertising in Douala and Mafikeng. The research design is mainly qualitative with a minor supporting component from the quantitative approach. A purposive sampling approach was used to select fifty participants in Douala and fifty in Mafikeng as well as five interviewees (three in Douala and two in Mafikeng). Data collected was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The qualitative analysis involved presenting the findings in major themes using information provided by participants in the open-ended items of the questionnaire and verbatim quotations from the interviews. Excerpts from the questionnaires and interviews were used to support identified themes emanating from the participants. Quantitative data was captured and analysed through Excel. Descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution and percentages were used to identify important and relevant characteristics about participants. Descriptive statistics were also used to summarise, compare data and enhance readability of results. The study revealed that Douala city-dwellers are not satisfied with the dominant use of French and English in advertising as it deprives citizens of vital and useful information in their own languages. In Mafikeng, even though there is moderate use of Setswana, respondents apparently felt justified in recommending the exclusion of languages prevalent during the apartheid era (Afrikaans and English) in advertising. The researcher therefore suggests that policy and decision-makers, advertisers and stakeholders involved in advertising consider the local population in the selection of languages to be used in the sector and for Cameroonian advertising to take a leaf from the multilingual advertising practices of South Africa. / Thesis (PhD) North-west University, Mafikeng Campus, 2013

This PhD study explores multilingualism in Finnish language youth radio broadcasting, with interactional and ethnographic data from Sweden Finnish and Finnish youth radio broadcasting. The interactional data consist of audio recordings from radio programs, while the ethnographic data consist of observations, logbook notes and interviews. The data were recorded and collected during the summer of 2005 from Radio Sweden’s (SR) Finnish language radio station Sisuradio and its youth program Klubi-Klubben, and simultaneously from Finnish YleX, from its X-Ryhmä and YleX Tänään programs. Multilingualism within radio broadcasting is investigated from a qualitative and sociolinguistic viewpoint. The study consists of four independent empirical research articles, each tackling the research topic from a slightly different perspective (e.g., language alternation, humor, repertoires, rap flows). This approach is what I call revealing the small pictures of this study. Further, this study investigates some overarching implications and pinpoints general threads and themes of a more holistic big picture of what multilingualism sounds like in the youth radio programs. The focus of the analysis is interactional and functional. The study shows that there are many different kinds of multilingualisms: multilingualism in the late modern world differs from scene to scene. However, speakers and groups have varied kinds of multilingual repertoires at their disposal in different scenes. In addition, different multilingual repertoires are used for various functions and genres, such as entertainment, humor and the expressions of different identities, including expressing music expertise or being a rapper. English is used as resourse in all of these repertoires. The study makes visible multilingual life worlds where global and local features intertwine and where objects and discourse practices are constantly on the move. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Magister Artium - MA / Disability, as a topic of investigation, is considerably overlooked in the discipline of sociolinguistics. This thesis aims to bridge the gap between disability and sociolinguistics studies, as I critically explore the role language and multilingualism plays in the way we understand and construct the discourses of disability. Based on a year-long ethnographic study at what is defined as a “special needs school”, I offer a first-hand description of being a researcher with a disability through personal anecdotes. In these anecdotes, I account for my own positionality to highlight the importance of reflectivity and positionality when doing ethnographic fieldwork. Aside from these personal anecdotes, I also capture everyday interactions among young disabled people. In order to analyse these disabled youth multilingual interactions, I applied the notions of stylization, enregisterment and embodied intersectionality. In these examinations, we are able to see how multilingualism is used to negotiate a position of being seen as disabled. By looking at these personal anecdotes and everyday interactions as whole, the study provides a more comprehensive view of the way we talk and represent disability. I conclude this thesis by offering a new direction for disability and youth multilingualism studies, a direction that emphasises the importance of positionality when doing research on the agency of disabled people.

In this study, I explored the language transmission experiences of migrant mothers living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Specifically, I examined the meanings and stakes of language transmission experiences, taking into account the migrant mothers constructions of first languages and/or English transmission experiences with their children in the context of migration. Employing (a) Brunners (1986) and Goods (1994) narrative approach to ethnography and critical phenomenology as well as (b) Kleinmans (1995, 1999) theory of moral experience and Godbouts (1998) formulations of social exchanges as my primary theoretical framework, I carried out in-depth, open-ended interviews with 13 mothers from nine different countries, namely, Afghanistan, Argentina, Chile, Japan, India, Iran, Russia, South Korea, and Ukraine. The resulting language transmission narratives were then organized into four distinct language transmission plots, which were formednot on the basis of ethnicitybut on the basis of similar migration trajectories and background characteristics. Some of the most noteworthy findings were as follows: (1) portrayals of the objects of language transmission (e.g., first languages and English) and of language transmission experiences were not static as previous literature has suggested, but dynamic, varying across time and social context; (2) the stakes involved in the transmission of first languages were depicted as high as the stakes inherent in the transmission of English; and (3) the long-term language transmission goal of at least half of mothers in the sample was not simply bilingualism, but instead multilingualism. In the Conclusion of the thesis, I not only detailed how the present study contributed to the literature on language transmission, but I also elaborated on the following topics: (a) the role of subjunctivizing tactics on language transmission narratives, (b) language transmission as an intersubjective enterprise, (c) language transmission as a plural and dynamic process, and (d) language transmission as moral experience. The applications and limitations of the study as well as directions for future research were also presented in the concluding chapter.