This dissertation explores learner beliefs about pronunciation and their interaction with identity negotiations in a study-abroad context. Current research on studying abroad has experienced a wave of interest in learner-centered questions, gradually moving away from the narrow focus on students’ linguistic development. In particular, the effects of study abroad on learner identities have attracted attention, revealing the impact of the dispositions of individuals, as well as of interlocutors, on the language learning process. The realm of speaking, especially with regard to pronunciation research, however, has hardly benefited from this interest in the individual perspectives of sojourners. Existing studies merely measure the extent to which learners appropriate native-like accents, resulting in partly inconsistent findings with limited insight into individual learning processes and factors. I thus adopt a different focus by qualitatively investigating the interplay between sojourners’ beliefs about pronunciation and their identity constructions and negotiations. My research is based on five case studies of Canadian learners of German. Each research subject has attended a German university for one or two semesters. In applying narrative inquiry as a research tool for both the within- and cross-case analyses, I investigate participants’ accounts in interviews and e-journals, as conducted at different stages throughout the first sojourn term. Poststructuralist-constructivist conceptualizations of learner identities and beliefs guide the data analysis and interpretation. The results of the holistic and categorical content analyses give insight into the intricate relationship between beliefs about pronunciation and learners’ identity work. In their narratives, learners appear to actively use pronunciation as a tool to construct identity facets in correspondence to specific communities of practice, giving meaning to their investment in the sojourn experience. This process of mediating between different identity constructions appears to be highly complex and partially conflict-laden. The participants’ beliefs and reported learning behaviours are interconnected with their definitions of learning goals, which draw on native-speaker ideals to different extents and with varying results. These orientations are in turn related to the subjects’ degrees of critical language awareness, the latter a factor that appears to play a vital role in shaping the ability of learners to take advantage of learning opportunities. In assessing participants’ learning objectives and their readiness to reflect upon their beliefs and orientations, my study also sheds light on the influence of different learning factor constellations on intercultural learning. The results indicate that unidirectional cause-and-effect relationships cannot be drawn between learners’ beliefs about pronunciation and their abilities to approach their roles as intercultural speakers in sojourn environments. My study rather underlines the importance of illuminating individual learning experiences in their idiosyncrasies and complexities, which may lead to a stronger consideration of learners’ subjective stances in both research and teaching practice. The findings of my study suggest that the primary way that language pedagogy can thus foster the ability to engage in intercultural encounters is by helping learners to become aware of their subjective stances, their self-constructions, and the influence of those on the learning process. Therefore, developing the ability and willingness to critically reflect is crucial, especially with regard to pronunciation. In illuminating the intricate nature of learner beliefs and their influence on the learning process, my study demonstrates the importance of qualitative, emic research into the acquisition of L2 pronunciation.

This dissertation explores learner beliefs about pronunciation and their interaction with identity negotiations in a study-abroad context. Current research on studying abroad has experienced a wave of interest in learner-centered questions, gradually moving away from the narrow focus on students’ linguistic development. In particular, the effects of study abroad on learner identities have attracted attention, revealing the impact of the dispositions of individuals, as well as of interlocutors, on the language learning process. The realm of speaking, especially with regard to pronunciation research, however, has hardly benefited from this interest in the individual perspectives of sojourners. Existing studies merely measure the extent to which learners appropriate native-like accents, resulting in partly inconsistent findings with limited insight into individual learning processes and factors. I thus adopt a different focus by qualitatively investigating the interplay between sojourners’ beliefs about pronunciation and their identity constructions and negotiations. My research is based on five case studies of Canadian learners of German. Each research subject has attended a German university for one or two semesters. In applying narrative inquiry as a research tool for both the within- and cross-case analyses, I investigate participants’ accounts in interviews and e-journals, as conducted at different stages throughout the first sojourn term. Poststructuralist-constructivist conceptualizations of learner identities and beliefs guide the data analysis and interpretation. The results of the holistic and categorical content analyses give insight into the intricate relationship between beliefs about pronunciation and learners’ identity work. In their narratives, learners appear to actively use pronunciation as a tool to construct identity facets in correspondence to specific communities of practice, giving meaning to their investment in the sojourn experience. This process of mediating between different identity constructions appears to be highly complex and partially conflict-laden. The participants’ beliefs and reported learning behaviours are interconnected with their definitions of learning goals, which draw on native-speaker ideals to different extents and with varying results. These orientations are in turn related to the subjects’ degrees of critical language awareness, the latter a factor that appears to play a vital role in shaping the ability of learners to take advantage of learning opportunities. In assessing participants’ learning objectives and their readiness to reflect upon their beliefs and orientations, my study also sheds light on the influence of different learning factor constellations on intercultural learning. The results indicate that unidirectional cause-and-effect relationships cannot be drawn between learners’ beliefs about pronunciation and their abilities to approach their roles as intercultural speakers in sojourn environments. My study rather underlines the importance of illuminating individual learning experiences in their idiosyncrasies and complexities, which may lead to a stronger consideration of learners’ subjective stances in both research and teaching practice. The findings of my study suggest that the primary way that language pedagogy can thus foster the ability to engage in intercultural encounters is by helping learners to become aware of their subjective stances, their self-constructions, and the influence of those on the learning process. Therefore, developing the ability and willingness to critically reflect is crucial, especially with regard to pronunciation. In illuminating the intricate nature of learner beliefs and their influence on the learning process, my study demonstrates the importance of qualitative, emic research into the acquisition of L2 pronunciation.

The increasing globalization of trade has resulted in a growing need for Swedish corporations to ensure that their work force is able to communicate in English. In order to meet this demand, there is a growing market of companies offering courses in Business English. When English is used for communication between people from different linguacultural backgrounds in a business context it is referred to as BELF (Business English as a Lingua Franca). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not the participants and teachers in different classes of Business English are more open to the non-native speaker model, as this type of course is supposed to prepare the students for communication with people of various nationalities. This was done with the aim to explore how these attitudes can be linked to the development of communicative competence in a business context. In the study a survey was distributed to twenty-one participants of courses in Business English and four teachers were interviewed. The study showed that although the business context affects the attitudes of the participants, there is still a preference for a native-like model. However, the teachers show an open attitude towards BELF, focusing instead on promoting communicative competence in their teaching. The findings of this study support previous research in the field indicating that there exists a certain discrepancy between the perceptions of the teachers and learners as to what constitutes an effective communicator.

Le traitement automatique de la parole est un domaine qui englobe un grand nombre de travaux : de la reconnaissance automatique du locuteur à la détection des entités nommées en passant par la transcription en mots du signal audio. Les techniques de traitement automatique de la parole permettent d’extraire nombre d’informations des documents audio (réunions, émissions, etc.) comme la transcription, certaines annotations (le type d’émission, les lieux cités, etc.) ou encore des informations relatives aux locuteurs (changement de locuteur, genre du locuteur). Toutes ces informations peuvent être exploitées par des techniques d’indexation automatique qui vont permettre d’indexer de grandes collections de documents. Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse s’intéressent à l’indexation automatique de locuteurs dans des documents audio en français. Plus précisément nous cherchons à identifier les différentes interventions d’un locuteur ainsi qu’à les nommer par leur prénom et leur nom. Ce processus est connu sous le nom d’identification nommée du locuteur (INL). La particularité de ces travaux réside dans l’utilisation conjointe du signal audio et de sa transcription en mots pour nommer les locuteurs d’un document. Le prénom et le nom de chacun des locuteurs est extrait du document lui même (de sa transcription enrichie plus exactement), avant d’être affecté à un des locuteurs du document. Nous commençons par rappeler le contexte et les précédents travaux réalisés sur l’INL avant de présenter Milesin, le système développé lors de cette thèse. L’apport de ces travaux réside tout d’abord dans l’utilisation d’un détecteur automatique d’entités nommées (LIA_NE) pour extraire les couples prénom / nom de la transcription. Ensuite, ils s’appuient sur la théorie des fonctions de croyance pour réaliser l’affectation aux locuteurs du document et prennent ainsi en compte les différents conflits qui peuvent apparaître. Pour finir, un algorithme optimal d’affectation est proposé. Ce système obtient un taux d’erreur compris entre 12 et 20 % sur des transcriptions de référence (réalisées manuellement) en fonction du corpus utilisé. Nous présentons ensuite les avancées réalisées et les limites mises en avant par ces travaux. Nous proposons notamment une première étude de l’impact de l’utilisation de transcriptions entièrement automatiques sur Milesin. / The automatic processing of speech is an area that encompasses a large number of works : speaker recognition, named entities detection or transcription of the audio signal into words. Automatic speech processing techniques can extract number of information from audio documents (meetings, shows, etc..) such as transcription, some annotations (the type of show, the places listed, etc..) or even information concerning speakers (speaker change, gender of speaker). All this information can be exploited by automatic indexing techniques which will allow indexing of large document collections. The work presented in this thesis are interested in the automatic indexing of speakers in french audio documents. Specifically we try to identify the various contributions of a speaker and nominate them by their first and last name. This process is known as named identification of the speaker. The particularity of this work lies in the joint use of audio and its transcript to name the speakers of a document. The first and last name of each speaker is extracted from the document itself (from its rich transcription more accurately), before being assigned to one of the speakers of the document. We begin by describing the context and previous work on the speaker named identification process before submitting Milesin, the system developed during this thesis. The contribution of this work lies firstly in the use of an automatic detector of named entities (LIA_NE) to extract the first name / last name of the transcript. Afterwards, they rely on the theory of belief functions to perform the assignment to the speakers of the document and thus take into account the various conflicts that may arise. Finally, an optimal assignment algorithm is proposed. This system gives an error rate of between 12 and 20 % on reference transcripts (done manually) based on the corpus used.We then present the advances and limitations highlighted by this work.We propose an initial study of the impact of the use of fully automatic transcriptions on Milesin.

This essay aims to explore how Swedish teachers of English view the shift from a Native Speaker ideal to English as a Global Language in connection to pronunciation teaching. The essay also aims to explore how the teachers teach this in practice. By interviewing five professional teachers, the results of the study showed that most of the teachers did not teach pronunciation explicitly and believed that pronunciation teaching should be integrated into other parts of language learning. None of the teachers claimed to expect their students to be able to speak with a native accent but believed that the previous views on pronunciation teaching, to some extent, still lingers on. Furthermore, all teachers did use American English or British English when teaching pronunciation but did not expect their students to use these dialects when speaking English. The teachers believed that their students mainly spoke with a dialect influenced by American English since this dialect is what the students mostly hear outside the classroom.This essay is primarily relevant to Swedish EFL teachers and students who are becoming teachers of English, but this study may also contribute to global research within pronunciation teaching. Because of the lack of guidelines regarding pronunciation teaching in the syllabus, the insight in the views and teaching methods of pronunciation teaching can function as a guideline and inspiration for how to teach pronunciation in a continuously globalized world where the views on the English language continually changes.

Extracting speaker-specific information from speech is of great interest to both researchers and developers alike, since speaker recognition technology finds application in a wide range of areas, primary among them being forensics and biometric security systems. Several models and techniques have been employed to extract speaker information from the speech signal. Speech production is generally modeled as an excitation source followed by a filter. Physiologically, the source corresponds to the vocal fold vibrations and the filter corresponds to the spectrum-shaping vocal tract. Vocal tract-based features like the melfrequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and linear prediction cepstral coefficients have been shown to contain speaker information. However, high speed videos of the larynx show that the vocal folds of different individuals vibrate differently. Voice source (VS)-based features have also been shown to perform well in speaker recognition tasks, thereby revealing that the VS does contain speaker information. Moreover, a combination of the vocal tract and VS-based features has been shown to give an improved performance, showing that the latter contains supplementary speaker information. In this study, the focus is on extracting speaker information from the VS. The existing techniques for the same are reviewed, and it is observed that the features which are obtained by fitting a time-domain model on the VS perform poorly than those obtained by simple transformations of the VS. Here, an attempt is made to propose an alternate way of characterizing the VS to extract speaker information, and to study the merits and shortcomings of the proposed speaker-specific features. The VS cannot be measured directly. Thus, to characterize the VS, we first need an estimate of the VS, and the integrated linear prediction residual (ILPR) extracted from the speech signal is used as the VS estimate in this study. The voice source linear prediction model, which was proposed in an earlier study to obtain the ILPR, is used in this work. It is hypothesized here that a speaker’s voice may be characterized by the relative proportions of the harmonics present in the VS. The pitch synchronous discrete cosine transform (DCT) is shown to capture these, and the gross shape of the ILPR in a few coefficients. The ILPR and hence its DCT coefficients are visually observed to distinguish between speakers. However, it is also observed that they do have intra-speaker variability, and thus it is hypothesized that the distribution of the DCT coefficients may capture speaker information, and this distribution is modeled by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM). The DCT coefficients of the ILPR (termed the DCTILPR) are directly used as a feature vector in speaker identification (SID) tasks. Issues related to the GMM, like the type of covariance matrix, are studied, and it is found that diagonal covariance matrices perform better than full covariance matrices. Thus, mixtures of Gaussians having diagonal covariances are used as speaker models, and by conducting SID experiments on three standard databases, it is found that the proposed DCTILPR features fare comparably with the existing VS-based features. It is also found that the gross shape of the VS contains most of the speaker information, and the very fine structure of the VS does not help in distinguishing speakers, and instead leads to more confusion between speakers. The major drawbacks of the DCTILPR are the session and handset variability, but they are also present in existing state-of-the-art speaker-specific VS-based features and the MFCCs, and hence seem to be common problems. There are techniques to compensate these variabilities, which need to be used when the systems using these features are deployed in an actual application. The DCTILPR is found to improve the SID accuracy of a system trained with MFCC features by 12%, indicating that the DCTILPR features capture speaker information which is missed by the MFCCs. It is also found that a combination of MFCC and DCTILPR features on a speaker verification task gives significant performance improvement in the case of short test utterances. Thus, on the whole, this study proposes an alternate way of extracting speaker information from the VS, and adds to the evidence for speaker information present in the VS.

I denna rapport utreds vilka komponenter en bärbar trådlös Bluetooth-högtalarebestår av och de designparametrar som en presumtiv konstruktör bör ta hänsyntill. Egenskaperna hos sex på marknaden förekommande högtalarmodeller och dekonstruktionslösningar som används i dessa undersöktes. Designparametrarnaanalyserades för att utreda om och i sådana fall hur dessa gick att förbättra. Simuleringarav högtalarprototyper utfördes och prototyper av högtalare och förstärkardelbyggdes. Mätningar gjordes för att kunna jämföra och kontrollera prototypernasljudmässiga resultat. Ytterligare mätningar av musikstycken gjordes för att utredahur RMS-värdet i musik påverkar effektbehovet i förstärkare rent allmänt ochi aktivt delade system. I slutet av rapporten ges rekommendationer för hur en bärbarBluetooth-högtalare bör byggas tillsammans med förslag på alternativ teknologiatt undersöka för implementering i framtida Bluetooth-högtalare. / This report investigates which components a portable wireless Bluetooth speakerconsists of and the design parameters a prospective designer should take into consideration.The characteristics of six commercially available speaker models andthe design solutions used in these were examined. The design parameters wereanalyzed to investigate if and how these could be improved upon. Simulations ofspeaker prototypes were done and prototypes of speakers and an amplifier werebuilt. Measurements were made to be able to compare and verify the audio performanceof the prototypes. Moreover, measurements of music were made to investigatehow the RMS-value of music impacts the power of an amplifier in general andin active systems in particular. Design recommendations on how to build a Bluetoothspeaker are given in the end of the report together with suggestions on alternatetechnologies to look into for implementation in future Bluetooth speakers.

Master of Science / Department of Psychology / Richard J. Harris / The increasing number of non-native English-speaking instructors in American universities constitutes an issue of controversial debate, concerning the interaction of native English- speaking students and non-native English speaking instructors. This study investigated the effects of native or non-native speakers and audiovisual or audio-only lecture mode on English native speakers’ comprehension and memory for information from a classroom lecture, measuring both factual memory and strength of pragmatic inferences drawn from the text. College students (N = 130) were tested on their comprehension of information derived from basic entomology lectures given by both an English native speaker and an English non-native speaker GTA. Participants also evaluated both lecturers in terms of communication skills. Results indicated that participants evaluated the native speaker as having better communication skills, which is in accordance with previous studies suggesting that both the difficulty of understanding non-native-accented speech (Reddington, 2008) and the possibility of prejudice triggered when listeners hear a non-native accent (Bresnahan et al., 2002) influence listeners’ evaluations of English non-native speaker instructors. Results revealed that familiarity with the topic also played an important role in listening comprehension, especially for lectures given by the non-native speaker. Likewise, the access to visual cues (gestures and facial expressions) enhanced understanding, but it was not a pre-requisite for adequate comprehension when the topic of the lectures did not require visual information. These findings were consistent with the polystemic speech perception approach (Hawkins, 2003), in that it is not essential to recognize all words in text in order to make connections with previous knowledge and construct meaning. Furthermore, overall participants took longer to answer questions from lectures given by the non-native speaker than by the native speaker. This suggests that non-native-accented speech may require more time to answer questions related to that speech, although listeners can adapt to it quickly (Derwing, 1995). Findings from this study are important in suggesting tools for thinking about how different aspects of a lecture can contribute to the learning process. Implications for further research are addressed.

This diploma thesis explores the possibility of mapping the reception of a literary text in terms of language management processes and in succession unveils the main differences in the perception of a literary text by a native opposed to a non-native speaker. The first three chapters treat the research methodology, which is based on Language Management Theory, Neustupný's approach to literary criticism through this concrete theory and single elements from formalism and structuralism. The research, which is described in chapters four to seven, focuses on the different moments of noting, evaluation and problem solving strategies realised by two readers of a modern Czech short story (one native and one non-native speaker). These processes are identified and analysed by the means of follow-up interviews. The aim of the thesis is to establish a complex methodology of identifying, describing and interpreting management processes which occur during the reception of a literary text and further to investigate the main characteristics that distinguish this process in the case of a native and a non-native recipient of the text.

Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo analisar as representações do falante nativo e do falante não-nativo de inglês construídas sob o ponto de vista do aluno brasileiro, e as implicações dessas representações no processo de constituição da identidade desse aluno, que tem o português como primeira língua e aprende inglês como língua estrangeira. Nossa hipótese é que a diferença significativa que se observa na relação entre o aluno brasileiro e falantes nativos, de um lado, e entre o mesmo aluno e falantes não-nativos, de outro, afeta as representações construídas pelo aprendiz, podendo resultar numa tentativa de resistência ao lugar aparentemente fixo ocupado pelo brasileiro enquanto falante não-nativo de inglês. A análise dessas representações baseia-se num corpus constituído por dez entrevistas com alunos brasileiros de inglês de uma escola de idiomas de São Paulo. Nossa pesquisa é embasada nos preceitos teóricos da Análise do Discurso, assim como em conceitos dos Estudos Culturais e da perspectiva psicanalista. Com base na análise da materialidade lingüística do corpus, destacamos representações sustentadas por oposições binárias que, se por um lado, parecem imobilizar o sujeito-aluno na relação com o falante nativo, pelo fato de o aluno brasileiro ser sempre representado como o polo negativo da oposição, por outro, permitem, na relação com o falante não-nativo, vislumbrar a possibilidade de um deslocamento dessas representações associadas ao aprendiz brasileiro. Porém, observamos que esse deslocamento é sempre adiado e não se concretiza devido à força que o falante nativo ainda exerce sobre o aluno brasileiro/falante não-nativo. Concluímos que essas representações fixistas, baseadas em oposições binárias, dificultam a prática de ensino de língua inglesa como um lugar de produção de novos sentidos. Com base nessa conclusão, ressaltamos a importância de uma prática pedagógica que vá além do ensino de inglês como mero instrumento de comunicação, permitindo desconstruir as oposições binárias e contribuir para uma ressignificação do lugar do aprendiz brasileiro/falante não-nativo de inglês em relação ao falante nativo e à língua inglesa. / This work aims at analyzing the representations of native and non-native speakers of English built by Brazilian students, and the implications of these representations to students identity as Portuguese native speakers and learners of English as a foreign language. Our hypothesis is that the significative difference noticed in the relationship between Brazilian students and native speakers of English, on the one hand, and between these students and other non-native speakers, on the other, affects the way Brazilian students represent themselves and other speakers, and may result in an attempt to resist the apparently fixed place occupied by Brazilians as non-native speakers of English. The analysis of these representations is based on a corpus containing ten interviews with Brazilian students of English from a language school in São Paulo. Our work is based upon the theoretical tenets of Discourse Analysis, as well as on concepts from the Cultural Studies and Psychoanalysis. The analysis of the linguistic materiality of the corpus showed representations that were sustained by binary oppositions, which seemed to immobilize the learners in the interaction with native speakers, since the Brazilian student is always represented as the negative pole of the opposition, but also suggested the possibility of dislocation of these representations when the interaction involved Brazilian students and other non-native speakers of English. However, it is argued that this dislocation is always postponed and never takes place because of the power that the native speaker has over the Brazilian student/non-native speaker of English. We concluded that these fixed representations, based on binary oppositions, make it difficult for the English language teaching practice to allow for the production of new meanings. Based on this conclusion, we highlight the importance of a pedagogical practice that goes beyond teaching English merely as a communication tool, by deconstructing binary oppositions and making it possible for the Brazilian student/non-native speaker of English to occupy a new place in the relationship with the native speaker and the English language.