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京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第20507号 / 情博第635号 / 新制||情||110(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科社会情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 石田 亨, 教授 矢守 克也, 教授 吉川 正俊 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DGAM

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The present study aims to investigate how the acoustic cues (i.e., mean pitch, duration, and mean intensity) are utilized by Taiwanese EFL learners to produce English noun-verb stress contrasts in falling and rising intonation. In addition, we examine how English native speakers perceive the English noun-verb stress contrasts produced by Taiwanese EFL learners. To examine English noun-verb stress contrasts in falling intonation, eight Taiwanese EFL learners, either in advanced level or intermediate level, recorded six English noun-verb stress contrasts which were put in a sentence frame (i.e., No, it is ______.), and four native speakers of English were also recruited for recording as a basis for comparison. Then, the vowels of the stressed and unstressed syllables were measured in terms of mean pitch, duration, and mean intensity. The results suggest that Taiwanese EFL learners in advanced or intermediate level produce English noun-verb stress contrasts by utilizing mean pitch, duration, and mean intensity, but the extent they utilize mean pitch is different from English native speakers. That is, they produced stressed syllables that are less high-pitched than English native speakers. To investigate how Taiwanese EFL learners utilize the correlates to produce the English noun-verb stress contrasts in rising intonation, the same groups of speakers also recorded the six English noun-verb stress contrasts put in another sentence frame (i.e., Did you say ______?), and the vowels of the stressed and unstressed syllables were measured and analyzed. The results show that Taiwanese EFL learners, either in advanced or intermediate level, utilize duration, but not mean pitch, to produce the noun-verb contrasts, while English native speakers use both duration and mean pitch. To examine how English native speakers perceive the English noun-verb stress contrasts with Taiwanese-accent, another eight English native speakers participated in doing several tasks including identification tasks, accent-rating tasks, and comprehensibility tasks. The results suggest that although Taiwanese EFL learners¡¦ production of the six English noun-verb stress contrasts in falling intonation was rated as foreign-accented, our eight English native speakers can identify their production with higher accuracy. In contrast, production in rising intonation was also rated as foreign-accented; however our English native speakers have difficulties in identifying their production.

The aim of this thesis is to compare and contrast the ways in which native speakers of Turkish (NST) and native speakers of American English (NSAE) write the acknowledgment sections of their MA and PhD dissertations. The analysis in the study focuses on the pragmatic and discourse strategies used by the authors in the texts written in English. First, the study uncovers the organization of the dissertation acknowledgments and the thanking strategies employed in the acknowledgment sections written in English by native speakers of Turkish and American English in their MA and PhD dissertations. Then, the authors&rsquo / choices of expressions of gratitude for specific addressees (e.g., supervisors vs. friends) are discussed. Data examined in the study comprise 144 dissertations written by 72 NST and 72 NSAE and are collected from sources such as the National Theses Centre of The Council of Higher Education of Turkey, ProQuest dissertation services. The thesis aims to contribute to the areas of foreign language education, pragmatics and cross-cultural communication.

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A small but important set of studies on complaint speech acts have been focused on certain aspects of native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) complaints such as strategy use and native speaker judgment, (Du, 1995; House & Kasper, 1981; Morrow, 1995; Murphy & Neu, 1996; Olshtein & Weinbach, 1987; Trosborg, 1995). However, few researchers have comprehensively researched complaint interactions. Complaining to the person responsible for the complainable (as opposed to complaining about a third party or situation) is a particularly face-threatening speech act, with social norms that vary from culture to culture. This study was an investigation of how Japanese and Americans express their dissatisfaction to those who caused it in their native language and in the target language (Japanese or English). The data analyzed are from the role-play performances of four situations by ten dyads in each of four groups (native speakers of Japanese speaking Japanese to a Japanese (JJJ), native speakers of English speaking English to an American (EEE), native speakers of Japanese speaking English to a native speaker of English (JEE), and native speakers of English speaking Japanese to a native speaker of Japanese (EJJ). The complaint categories used in this study represent a pared-down version of Trosborg's (1995) categories based on two criteria: (a) hinting or mentioning complainable and (b) negative assessment of the complainer's action or of the complainer as a person. The following characteristics of the complaint interactions were analyzed: (a) the length of interactions in terms of the number of turns, (b) complaint strategies used by complainers, (c) initial complaint strategies used by complainers, (d) the comparison of S1Hint and S2Cmpl as the initial position, (e) interaction flow in terms of complaint severity levels, 6) strategies employed by complainees, and (f) flow of complaint interactions between complainers and complainees. The results indicate some differences between the groups of native speakers of English and Japanese in the length of their interactions and the use of strategies by complainers and complainees. In general, complaint sequences in English were shorter, and the complaint strategies used by the JJJ group were less indirect than those used by the EEE group. Several prototypical complaint sequences are described. Concerning the use of strategies, the JEE and EJJ groups used strategies more in line with those employed by target language speakers, rather than by speakers of their own language. An attempt is made to account for the different characteristics of English and Japanese complaints in terms of linguistic resources. Pedagogical implications are also highlighted. / CITE/Language Arts

The thesis investigates conversations involving native speakers and non-nativespeakers of English. The non-native speakers partaking in the study have a welldeveloped knowledge of the foreign language. The study is particularly concernedwith the function and interactional relevance of repair strategies that interlocutorsemploy when they talk to each other. The results of the analyses highlight issuessuch as participants’ self-representations as competent speakers, the notion “nonnativeness”,and language learning, relating to current developments within conversationanalytic research on second/foreign language conversations. Comparisonsbetween non-native and native speakers are made, highlighting similarities as wellas di¡erences in participants’ use of repair strategies. The study adopts a conversation analytic framework but is also in¤uenced bystudies of second/foreign language acquisition. Conversation analytic research has,until recently, dealt with conversations involving non-native speakers who have alimited or intermediate command of the second/foreign language. Repair behavioursof advanced foreign language users are thus a little investigated area. Whereasnon-native speakers with limited experience in using the second/foreign languageoften employ repair in order to solve problems that are related to their linguisticknowledge, such as ¢nding or knowing words and constructing utterances that areunderstandable in the context in which they occur, this thesis shows how an increasedknowledge of the foreign language involves a shift in focus as repair is carriedout, i.e. repair is used to address problems of a linguistic as well as of a socialnature. Since an increased knowledge of a foreign language is accompanied by an increasein the range of jobs that repair strategies do, “doing repair” is an importantpart of the development of non-native speakers’ interactional and linguistic competence.

The purpose of this research is to explore the academic and social experiences of English learners (ELs) in a Spanish immersion program. The researcher is specifically interested in learning about both the English and Spanish language acquisition of these ELs, as well as their social interactions as this pertains to their academic development. The participants were a sample of 12 Spanish native speakers who were working towards acquiring both social and academic English. Additionally, the researcher interviewed five other students who were in the Spanish immersion program, but who were not included in the ESOL class. These 17 students represented a wide range of English language proficiencies, ranging from emergent to advanced, and were in the ninth grade during the period of data collection. The researcher also interviewed five of these students' teachers, so as to gain a better understanding of the experiences of these heritage speakers. Data were collected over the course of the 2009-2010 school year through observations, interviews, sociograms, and ongoing assessments. These assessments were collected from several sources, including an English language assessment that was administered by the ESOL coordinator, an ongoing school-wide assessment of lexile scores, and an English and Spanish informal reading inventory. The findings of this study were divided into two meta themes of the academic and social experiences of the student participants. In investigating these students' academic experiences, the researcher found that the 22 participants placed a considerable emphasis on language development, particularly in the maintenance of the Spanish native speakers' heritage language. A sizeable need existed, however, for instruction that was better differentiated to the wide range xv of proficiencies that these students demonstrated in both English and Spanish. Through the analysis of the participants' social experiences, the researcher also discovered that a strong sense of community existed amongst the participants in the ESOL and immersion programs. This interconnectedness, however, led to an insular behavior amongst the Spanish native speakers, which further exacerbated the racial tension that existed at Greenwood High. Greenwood as a whole would greatly benefit from the fostering of intercultural sensitivity amongst this multicultural and multilingual student body.

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