This study examined the relationship of Spanish language proficiency as related to location and length of stay in a foreign language environment. The participants took a Spanish diagnostic test that measures Spanish proficiency through grammar principles and then answered a questionnaire concerning their language learning experiences, location and length of stay in a Spanish language environment.It was found that Spanish language proficiency increased with longer lengths of stay in the Spanish language environment. No conclusive data were found to support the hypothesis that those in one Spanish-speaking environment attain a higher language proficiency than those in another Spanish-speaking area. The study aids which were most beneficial in attaining higher levels of Spanish proficiency were those activities which involve reading.It is suggested that more research be done in this area using larger populations to assess whether the findings in this study are actual tendencies or caused only by chance.

In 1639, a law prohibiting women any head covering; veil, mantilla, manto for example, is promulgated for the fifth time in the Iberian Peninsula under the penalty of losing the garment, and subsequently incurring more severe punishments. Regardless of these edicts this social practice continued. My dissertation investigates the cultural representation of these covered women (tapadas) in Spain and the New World in a vast array of early modern literary, historical and legal documents (plays, prose, and regal laws, etc.). Overall, critics associate the use of the veil in the Spanish territories with religious tendencies and overlook the social component of women using the veil to simply explain it as a mere fashion practice. In my dissertation, I argue that it is more than just a garment; the veil was used by women to make political statements, thereby challenging the restrictive gender and identity boundaries of their epoch. A critical analysis of early modern historical and legal peninsular texts and close-readings of Golden Age literary works, together with colonial cultural productions, allow me to identify patterns in how the tapadas were represented both artistically and culturally. Accordingly, my project attempts to reassess the significance of the tapadas in Hispanic culture for 350 years and demonstrate how their resilience to stop using the veil publicly is symptomatic of the absolutist monarchy inefficiencies in imposing social control. I move away from the tendency to investigate works including tapadas exclusively, and I conclude by reconstructing more accurately their cultural impact on the social dynamics in Spain as well as the New World.

This study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large public suburban university in the Northeast part of the United States. Grammatical simplification in bilingual speakers is due to incomplete acquisition of Spanish, attrition or loss of an underused linguistic system (Lynch, 1999; Martínez Mira, 2009a, 2009b; Mikulski, 2010b; Montrul, 2007; Ocampo, 1990; Silva-Corvalán, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003; Studerus, 1995). The result of the process of simplification is reduction or loss of forms and/or meanings. In this work, I investigated in which ways Gal’perin’s (1989) systemic-theoretical organized instruction promoted awareness, control and internalization of the concept of modality in three sets of data: definition, discourse and verbalization (Negueruela, 2003). In addition, I examined how the concept of modality emerged and proceeded. By focusing students’ attention in Negueruela’s (2003) Concept of Mood in Spanish orienting chart in a top down fashion, students were able to strengthen their theoretical understanding in practical activity while still accessing empirical knowledge, and eventually generalizing its use in new contexts across nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses. At the definition level, Gal’perin’s Systemic-theoretical instruction promoted emergence and progress of their conceptual understanding from perceptual to semantic. At the discourse level, students’ theoretically based semantic understanding had a positive impact as revealed in student’s discourse progress throughout tasks. At the verbalization level, semantic, abstract and systematic verbalizations showed students’ emergence of awareness of the interrelated categories of modality. The conceptual category of anticipation was appropriately verbalized and contextualized 68% of the time. The absence of quality verbalizations referring to a specific conceptual category in some students lead me to conclude that students did not fully understand the meaning of some conceptual categories. On the contrary, their presence in any of the tasks showed emergence of conceptual meaning(s) in appropriate contexts, further appropriate recontextualization may provide full awareness and control.

This interdisciplinary study analyzes the work of two contemporary writers in Peninsular Spanish literature, Agustín Fernández Mallo and Javier Moreno, using the the posthumanist stance that considers the epistemological and ontological continuum and inseparability of contemporary cultural practices. This thesis delves into the interrelationship of their respective work with three main aspects of the 21st century reality: the omnipresent world of images in our culture, the scientific paradigm and the use of new technologies. The study of their work has led me to propose the birth of a new literature that 1. articulates the “pictorial turn” by recognizing how the image, mostly digital, has become the protagonist of the new mode of communication; 2. implements the dialogue between the so called “two cultures” (humanities and sciences). In the sense, both our writers have a scientific background (Fernández Mallo is a physicist and Moreno a mathematician) and 3. shows the emergence of a net of global connections by establishing a dialogue with the world of Internet and new technologies. I ultimately propose that the work of Agustín Fernández Mallo and Javier Moreno is part of the Spanish speaking world literary response to the hypercomplexity and entanglement of the present Weltanshauung, one that shows traces of overcoming the paradigm of classical postmodernism by introducing the perspective of reenchantment throughout the above-mentioned vectors: the image, science and new technologies.

Language is a fundamental component of one's identity, as well as a means of surviving in a globalizing world. This study draws upon sixteen narratives of first-generation Mexican and Puerto Rican parents in Central Florida to answer the research question: What are the language ideologies of Mexican and Puerto Rican immigrant parents towards the English Language acquisition and Spanish Language retention of their children? The information was gathered through semi-structured interviews and it aimed to learn how and if they value English and Spanish bilingualism and whether it was desired for their children. On the one hand, they are aware of the necessity of being fluent in English to properly navigate themselves in the United States and to secure better opportunities for education and careers. However, Spanish retention is just as important as a means to remember ones raices, or roots, which was a statement that was voiced throughout the respondents. Demographic information, language use in different contexts, access to resources, and whether they faced any forms of language discrimination are all factors that were also analyzed to determine a more holistic account of the parents' language ideologies. My results reflect how Latinx family's experiences in the United States have shaped their language ideologies and the language use outcomes of future generations. El lenguaje es un componente fundamental de nuestra identidad, y también un medio para sobrevivir en un mundo globalizado. Este estudio se basa en dieciséis narrativas de padres mexicanos y puertorriqueños de primera generación en Florida Central para responder a la pregunta de investigación: ¿Cuáles son las ideologías del idioma de los padres inmigrantes mexicanos y puertorriqueños hacia la adquisición de inglés y la retención de español de sus hijos? La información fue conseguido a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas, y el objetivo es para aprender cómo y si valoran el bilingüe (inglés y español), y si deseaban esta habilidad para sus hijos. Por un lado, los padres son conscientes de la necesidad de ser fluentes en inglés para navegar adecuadamente por los Estados Unidos y para asegurar mejores oportunidades para su educación y carreras. Sin embargo, la retención de español es importante como un medio para recordar los raices de su cultura; que fue una declaración que se expresó en todo los encuestados. La información demográfica, el uso del lenguaje en diferentes contextos, el acceso a los recursos y si se enfrentaron a alguna forma de discriminación del lenguaje son factores que también se analizaron para determinar un relato más holístico de las ideologías del idioma de los padres. Mis resultados reflejan cómo las experiencias de las familias Latinx en los Estados Unidos han dado forma a sus ideologías de lenguaje y al uso del lenguaje para las futuras generaciones.

El propósito de este proyecto de tesis es presentar una traducción analítica al idioma guaraní de un apólogo escrito en español medieval con el objetivo de demostrar la utilidad de los ejercicios de traducción literaria que faciliten el aprendizaje de idiomas. La transferencia lingüística y cultural de un texto medieval al español moderno y consecutivamente al guaraní constituye un ejemplo del esfuerzo cognitivo que debe realizar un traductor/una traductora para buscar soluciones e ir articulando poco a poco el rompecabezas que posteriormente se convertirá en la nueva versión de la obra, pero siempre respetando y conservando la esencia del mensaje original del autor/de la autora.

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No description available.

This thesis examines the products and impact of the language contact situation produced in Argentina between Italian immigrants and the local Argentine population from the late 1800s to the present day. This thesis is composed of two main parts: historical research and first-hand research, including a comparison between the linguistic situations in Argentina and Uruguay. Despite the high percentage of people of Italian descent in Argentina, we find a case of language shift and loss. Though in the past Italian immigrants were subject to discrimination, now Italian culture is a sense of pride. Nonetheless, the Italian language is only one marker of culture, and one that is lost in the home environment after a few generations. There have been, and still are, some Argentine efforts toward language maintenance, which could perhaps be improved after a thorough comparative study of Uruguay's Italian education model.

abstract: The present thesis explores how statistical methods are conceptualized, used, and interpreted in quantitative Hispanic sociolinguistics in light of the group of statistical methods espoused by Kline (2013) and named by Cumming (2012) as the “new statistics.” The new statistics, as a conceptual framework, repudiates null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) and replaces it with the ESCI method, or Effect Sizes and Confidence Intervals, as well as meta-analytic thinking. In this thesis, a descriptive review of 44 studies found in three academic journals over the last decade (2005 – 2015), NHST was found to have a tight grip on most researchers. NHST, much discredited outside of linguistics, confused authors who conflated the theories of Fisher and Neyman-Pearson, who themselves battled acrimoniously until the end of their publishing lives. Within the studies reviewed, with exceptions, dichotomous thinking ruled the quantitative approach, and binary reporting ruled the results and discussions. In addition, this thesis revealed that sociolinguistics, at least within the studies reviewed, is not exactly a “statistical monoculture” as suspected by Gorman and Johnson (2013), rather ANOVAs have joined Goldvarb’s logistic regression in its dominance. As described insightfully by Plonsky (2015), these two methods are exposed as extensions of the dichotomous thinking that attaches itself to NHST. Further, little evidence was found that the methods of the new statistics were being implemented in a coordinated fashion, including far too few meta-analyses. As such, quantitative Hispanic sociolinguistics, and linguistics in general, were shown to be vulnerable to problems with reliable quantitative theory building. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Spanish 2015