Abstract not available.

In this paper I discuss the results of a study on stylization and stylistic productions of "gay speech." The paper has three interrelated goals: one experimental, one methodological and one theoretical. The experimental goal was to determine if and to what extent exaggeration prevails in stylistic performances of "gay speech." Additionally, the methodological goal was to help establish experimental methodologies as useful for sociocultural linguistic analyses. Finally, the theoretical goal was to add to the robustness of sociocultural linguistic theory by providing evidence from experimental and quantitative analyses that support previous theoretical claims. Analysis of /s/ frequency at peak amplitude from 9 speakers performing both base recordings and stylized recordings indicated that exaggeration is likely relevant with respect to this feature and it's role in the production of stylized "gay speech." These findings also suggest that the experimental methodologies are effective in eliciting data for fruitful sociocultural linguistic analysis. Importantly, the data presented in this essay reflect patterns emergent in sociocultural linguistic analysis of identity, namely theories of adequation and distinction (Bucholtz & Hall 2005) and neo-minstrelsy (Bucholtz & Lopez 2012) and thereby suggest that experimental techniques such as the ones presented can be beneficial to the solidification of these linguistic theories. By combining qualitatively oriented and quantitatively oriented methodologies, this essay provides new directions for the analysis of the role of language variation in the production of local meaning while offering new insight to the way researchers might consider this relationship.

<p> Cajun and Creole traditional music evolves, as does any living tradition. Taking this music into consideration from the perspective of &laquo; oral poetry, &raquo; a concept defined by Ruth Finnegan and Paul Zumthor, this thesis studies the aspect of singing in Cajun and Creole traditional music through transformations affected by recording technology (Zumthor&rsquo;s notion of &laquo; mediatized orality &raquo;) with respect to the actual sociolinguistic context in Louisiana. First, we study the transformations occuring in songs from the traditional repertoire, through various audio renderings of the same songs. Second, we look at the way new songs, created in the traditional frame, address the lyrical content through old and contemporary themes, including the use of French language and bilingualism. This discussion is informed by interviews conducted with targeted musicians concerning their linguistic perceptions and respective artistic approaches. Thus, we eventually discover how, in addition to being a dance genre, Cajun and Creole music plays an essential role in the continued existence of French language in Louisiana.</p>

<p> The goal of this dissertation is to address the question of the Verb Second status of Old French as well as its decline by examining the interaction of syntax and Information Structure (IS) in the Left Periphery from the 13th century through the 16th century. Old French (OFr) has long been considered to be a Verb Second (V2) language, due to the overwhelming tendency for the finite verb to occur as the second constituent in matrix clauses, the hallmark of V2. Recently, the V2 analysis OFr has been called into question, due to the relatively high rate of clauses with more than one preverbal constituent (V>2). During this same period, our understanding of what V2 is has evolved in such a way as to place less emphasis on the number of preverbal constituents, and more on the theoretical underpinnings of the clause structure. </p><p> The results, obtained using a methodology for the annotation of IS in a corpus created for this project, support the V2 analysis of 13th century French, both in terms of its syntax and its IS. From a descriptively syntactic stance much of decline of V2 occurs between the 13th and 14th centuries (e.g. the rise in V>2 clauses, the decline in postverbal subjects). However, in examining the IS changes, we find that key aspects of the V2 grammar (e.g. V to C movement, EPP) are robust into the 15th century. </p><p> Ultimately, we find that examining Old French syntax through the lens of IS provides new insight into the interaction between IS and syntax in language change, especially with respect to both the manner and the timeline of the decline of V2 in the history of French.</p>

<p> This thesis focuses on the infinitive among Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban speakers, in contrast with Mexicans. Most grammars describe as ungrammatical some types of optative clauses in Caribbean Spanish (Bosque &amp; Guti&eacute;rrez-Rexach, 2009): (4) a. *Nosotros estamos buscando otras alternativas, pero el director dice &eacute;l tener ya todo seteao. We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he to-have [inf] already everything checked. We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he has already checked everything. (5) a. *Eso te pasa por t&uacute; ir demasiado r&aacute;pido. That you [acus] happens because [-Q] you [nom] to-go [inf] too fast. That happens to you because of your going too fast. </p><p> Therefore, a variation phenomenon is produced (Silva-Corval&aacute;n, 2001): (4) b. Nosotros estamos buscando otras alternativas, pero el director dice que tiene ya todo seteao. We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he has already everything checked. </p><p> We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he has already checked everything (5) b. Eso te pasa porque vas demasiado r&aacute;pido. That you [acus] happens because you [nom] go [ind] too fast That happens to you because you go too fast This project sharpens a specific look to clauses such as (4) and (5) on the basis of mood microvariation concerning the infinitive/indicative optionality, related to linguistic variables: subject type, person features, prepositions, subject specificity, subject co-references, topic-actor subject, and declaration features; and sociolinguistic variables: Caribbean sub-variety, age, and education level. Debates have arisen when studying subjunctive/infinitive optionality (Aponte, 2008; Kempchinsky, 2007; Morales, 1986, 1999). Less attention has been given to indicative/infinitive variation. This work proposes the application of procedural meaning hypothesis (Terkourafi, 2011) to explain that Caribbean speakers choose infinitive clauses because their grammar has a syntax-pragmatics micro-parameter. Using GoldVarb2001, phenomena such as (4) and (5) are analyzed from a query answered by 72 Carribeans, and 24 Mexicans; and 125 interviews. Caribbeans prefer the infinitive with first person singular, non-specific, and topic-actor subjects. This hierarchy demonstrates that Caribbean Spanish has its own structural configurations which privilege the syntactic-pragmatic interface.</p>

<p> As people groups have immigrated to the United States, churches have struggled to keep up with the demands of discipleship. Culture, language, and communication have proved to be formidable challenges, particularly when the written materials used to disciple people are construed with an inherent American bias. This research project sought to address this ministry problem by utilizing the concept of cultural transposition. By having a multicultural work group transpose a portion of American-based discipleship materials, this project attempted to determine whether the transposed materials are more understandable to a multicultural church congregation than the original. The study also analyzed the interactions among the transposition group to identify common problems that culture groups experience in understanding American-based materials. </p>

<p>This dissertation is a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of the variable word order and prosody of copular constructions (<i>Nicol&aacute;s es </i> <i><b>feliz</b></i> versus <i><b>Feliz</b></i> <i> es Nicol&aacute;s</i>, <i>Es Nicol&aacute;s</i> <i><b> feliz</b></i>, <i>Es</i> <i><b>feliz</b></i> <i> Nicol&aacute;s</i>, &lsquo;Nicolas is <b>happy</b>&rsquo;) in the Spanish of first- and second-generation Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City (henceforth NYC). The data used for the study come from a spoken corpus of Spanish in NYC based on 140 sociolinguistic interviews (details of the corpus will be presented in Chapter Three). This dissertation addresses the question of whether second-generation bilinguals have a less flexible word order in Spanish as a result of their increased use of, and contact with, English, where a more fixed order prevails. </p><p> We will show that the informants in the present study, like their peers in Los Angeles and other parts of the US, exhibit a more rigid word order compared to their first-generation peers. We have established that this increase in rigidity of word order among the second-generation can be attributed in large part to their increased use of and contact with English. The studies mentioned above have interpreted their results to mean that these speakers are losing or have lost the discourse pragmatic constraints that govern word order. However, the data here show that the first- and second-generation speakers in the present study share many of the same conditioning variables and constraints for word order, although these variables appear to account for a smaller amount of variance among the second-generation. In this way, we have established that the second-generation is not losing the discourse pragmatic constraints that govern word order, but that they are differently sensitive to these constraints. In fact, we show that second-generation speakers are very capable of communicating the pragmatic functions that the first-generation speakers do using word order because they maintain the prosodic details of their first-generation counterparts. In other words, the second-generation communicates these functions in ways that are slightly different from the first-generation, relying more on prosodic resources than syntactic ones. Furthermore, the data indicate that their prosodic patterns are not modeled after the prosody of English. In general terms we show that the second-generation does not have a different grammar from their first-generation counterparts, as is claimed by other researchers. Instead we show that these speakers favor certain first-generation strategies over others. </p>

Framing the Public Library| The Public Perception of the Public Library in the Media

<p> This dissertation examines the social and interactional foundations of a grammatical divergence between Tactile American Sign Language (TASL) and Visual American Sign Language (VASL) in the Seattle DeafBlind community. I argue that as a result of the pro-tactile movement, structures of interaction have been reconfigured and a new language has begun to emerge. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research, more than 190 hours of videorecordings of interaction and language use, 50 interviews with members of the community, and more than 14 years of involvement in a range of capacities, I analyze this social transformation and its effect on the semiotic organization of TASL. </p><p> I identify two processes as requisite for the emergence of TASL: <i> deictic integration and embedding in the social field.</i> Deictic integration involves the coordination of grammatical systems with modes of access and orientation that are reciprocal across a group of language-users. Embedding in the social field involves: (1) the legitimation of the language for taking up valued social roles, along with the embodied knowledge necessary for doing so, and (2) authorization of some language-users to evaluate linguistic forms and communicative practices as correct or not. </p><p> In this dissertation, I track these processes among DeafBlind people and I show how they are leading to new mechanisms for referring to the immediate environment and tracking referents across a stream of discourse (Chapter 7), new rules for the formation of lexical signs (Chapter 8), and a new system for generating semiotically complex signs, which incorporate both linguistic and non-linguistic elements (Chapter 9). In order to understand the social and interactional foundations of these emergent systems, I examine the history of two institutions around which the Seattle DeafBlind community was built (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, I show how social roles, given by the history of those institutions, were reconfigured by DeafBlind leaders and how this led to changes in modes of access and orientation (Chapters 5 and 6). I argue that as relations between linguistic, deictic, and social phenomena grew tighter and more restricted, a new tactile language began to emerge. I therefore apprehend language emergence not as a process of liberation or abstraction from context, but as a process of contextual integration (Chapter 1).</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the normative construction of a politics of language and community in north-west Wales (United Kingdom). It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily between January 2007 and April 2008, with central participant-observation settings in primary-level state schools and in the teaching-spaces and hallways of a university. Its primary finding is an account of the gap between the national visibility and the cultural (in)visibility communities of speakers of the indigenous language of Wales (Cymraeg, or &ldquo;Welsh&rdquo;). With one exception, no public discourse has yet emerged in Wales that provides an explicit framework or vocabulary for describing the cultural community that is anchored in Cymraeg. One has to live those meanings even to know about them. The range of social categories for living those meanings tends to be constructed in ordinary conversations as some form of <i>nationalism,</i> whether political, cultural, or language <i>nationalism.</i> Further, the negatively valenced category of nationalism current in English-speaking Britain is in tension with the positively valenced category of nationalism current among many who move within Cymraeg-speaking communities. Thus, the very politics of identity are themselves political since the line between what is political and what is not, is itself subject to controversy. The result is what I call the &ldquo;submergence&rdquo; of Cymraeg-oriented cultural communities: People who would say Cymraeg is an essential part of their personality and communities mark out cultural space for their sense of continuity (to the past, to others) in ways that do not require <i>or enable</i> them to make any substantive cultural claims. </p><p> Within these settings of a modalized Welsh culture&mdash;always only partially expressed&mdash; indigeneity and ethnic difference are symbolized by the emblematic and lived importance of Cymraeg, while the significance of Cymraeg tends to be implicitly conveyed by means of overt references to &ldquo;Welshness&rdquo;. </p><p> This cultural submergence of the resources for Cymraeg-centered identity seems motivated and sustained by the fact that it produces a haven from holiday-goers and English patriots who do not value Welsh cultural features as highly as do those who take pride in the Cymraeg-centered cultural community. In light of these features of local life, I suggest several terms of art&mdash;including &ldquo;language demesne&rdquo; and &ldquo;language corridor&rdquo;&mdash;because they are more fitting of local politics than is the idea of a (global) language community. </p><p> This dissertation also contributes a theoretical basis for examining the pragmatics of language communities, which requires differentiating phenomenal-level semiotic analyses from investigations of the dynamics of cultural discourse. The &ldquo;obvious&rdquo; empirical situation in Wales&mdash;as analyzed using a Peircean-phenomenological semiotics&mdash;runs contrary to the relatively opaque and counter-empirical cultural dynamics in Wales. As a result, this account of the tensions between semiotic descriptions and cultural dynamics signals a wrinkle in received theories of metapragmatics. Conventionally, metapragmatics makes sense of the text&ndash;discourse relation, but not the relations between discourse and consciousness because theories of metapragmatics apply only to the former. Unless the relationship of text-and-discourse to consciousness is explicated at the epistemological level of analysis, ethnographic descriptions of locales within language communities&mdash;particularly those rife with language politics&mdash;can take on the appearance of an ontology of human kinds. Given this condition, any broad account of the cultural dynamics of language and community must take an analytic position regarding the relationship between the surface-level of semiotics and the historical and cultural processes of community constitution. </p><p> My approach engages directly with the neglected conflict between the strategy of primordialist essentialism and that of constructivism. The analytic strategy and theoretical perspective of this dissertation avoids the scholarly tendency to treat certain local conceptions as misconstruals of sociocultural life. Instead, they are treated as locally valid and proper constitutings of divisible community. Academics would be no less inclined to reject analogous conceptual entailments in their cultural worlds despite their commitment to the view that sociocultural realities are constructed. The position adopted here underwrites an account that denaturalizes without denaturing the essentializing claims (e.g., of language activists) in north-west Wales. </p><p> In engaging with current analytic strategies in linguistic anthropology, my &ldquo;inferentialist&rdquo; and pragmatistic strategy frames the politicizing of language and community in north-west Wales using an alternative to linguistic indexes or icons, which are grounded in an empirical sense of necessity. The framework adopted here envisions an empirical field organized not only by <i>necessary</i> principles of Welsh belonging that are practiced or not, but by tensions among many different &ldquo;modal&rdquo; types of constraints&mdash;normative principles that are inferable from community-specific ways of enacting belonging to a particular sociocultural imaginary that owes its coherence to language affinity. Consequently, this dissertation treats languages themselves as inhabitable and provides a theoretical justification for doing so.</p>