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.

In 2011, the new upper secondary school curriculum Lgy 11 set out to distinguish thecharacteristics of the two subjects Swedish and Swedish as a second language. This thesis analyzes the consequences, or rather the underlying premises for such a characterization with the contradictory ideologies of the multicultural society as a point of departure. Using theories of cultural and linguistic hegemony, the thesis applies an ideological critique to the comparative text analysis of the two curriculums. The aim is to reveal the underlying assumptions of the two student bases as representatives of the majority society and the minorities. The results show that the characterizations of the two subjects are dominantly made along the line of the multicultural experience versus linguistic and cultural heritage. Swedish as a second language students are seen to be expected to use their own person as a learning tool to relativize cultural and linguistic values from the point of view of the majority society, while Swedish students are expected to follow a pattern of learning fixed values within a western diachronic framework, leaving their experience of being part of a majority society in a multicultural contemporary context unexplored. Discussing the results, the hegemonic aspect of the revealed assumptions is pinned down and the meanings of the seemingly varying ontological traditions within the two curriculums are brought up as a way forward for further research within the second language education discourse.

Since 2004 the Colombian Ministry of Education has been implementing the Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo (PNB) with the goal of having bilingual high school graduates in English and Spanish by 2019. However, implementation of the PNB has been criticized by English Language Teaching (ELT) specialists in the country who say, among other things, that the PNB introduced a discourse associated exclusively with bilingualism in English and Spanish. This study analyzed interviews with 15 participants of a public school of the Colombian Escuela Nueva, a successful model of community-based education that has begun a process of internationalization, regarding the participants’ perceptions of foreign language education and the policies of the PNB. Six students, five teachers, and four administrators were each interviewed twice using semi-structured interviews. To offer a critique of the PNB, this study tried to determine to what extent the school implemented the elements of Responsible ELT, a model developed by the researcher incorporating the concepts of hegemony of English, critical language-policy research, and resistance in ELT. Findings included the following: (a) students and teachers saw English as the universal language whereas most administrators saw English imposed due to political and economic reasons; (b) some teachers misinterpreted the 1994 General Law of Education mandating the teaching of a foreign language as a law mandating English; and (c) some teachers and administrators saw the PNB’s adoption of competence standards based on the Common European Framework of Reference for languages as beneficial whereas others saw it as arbitrary. Conclusions derived from this study of this Escuela Nueva school were: (a) most participants found the goal of the PNB unrealistic; (b) most teachers and administrators saw the policies of the PNB as top-down policies without assessment or continuity; and (c) teachers and administrators mentioned a disarticulation between elementary and high school ELT policies that may be discouraging students in public schools from learning English. Thus, this study suggests that the policies of the PNB may be contributing to English becoming a gatekeeper for higher education and employment thereby becoming a tool for sustaining inequality in Colombia.

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本文設定出三個研究目的 1.觀點建構：為了重新評估新聞敘事的生產與接受過程，我們基於社會真實建構論與James Carey所說的「溝通之儀式觀點」，進而提出敘事表演論，即敘事正是儀式表演。這裡，本文基於「社會空間一劇場空間－文本空間」的類比，進而主張敘事表演的背後程式和社會結構的運作邏輯密切有關。 2.理論建構：為了有系統性的探討整場敘事表演所展現的意義，同時提高閱聽眾的「批判的語言警覺性」，本文按照四個表演構成因素之間的關係網，區分了三種意義場域：「人際意義」(言者一聽者)、「理念意義」(故事主角)、「文本意義」 (舞臺場景工程)。據此，本文分別建構具體的理論工具箱，以期不但識別出文本上的微觀物理線索，即語法證據一如「語態」、「詞彙語域」、「社會行動詞」、「言說標誌詞」等；且進而尋繹出敘事所努力完成的意義網路和意象建構，即語用途徑－如「直示中心轉換模式」、「敘事轉換模式」、「引語文體」等。 3.實際應用：使用該語言工具箱來實際分析新聞範例－ 「97年台電核廢料案」，探討台/韓新聞媒體針對同一個社會事件，運用怎樣的象徵資源，如何再現言者對該議題的觀點位置，如何設定故事主角的形象與理念，又如何實現其報導內容的連貫性與事實性。對此，本文再細分成底下主要問題：(1)言者的觀點立場透過怎樣的語言用法和策略裝置展現在敘事新聞中？；(2)針對同一個故事，台/韓兩方的新聞版本所再現的理念圖像有什麼異同？；(3)針對同一個故事，台/韓雙方的新聞版本如何重說以塑造出敘事流程的一致方向？ / Is the press news a mirror of reality or constructed reality? In this debating epistemological approaches, we are based on latter as well as on the perspectives of “narrative as ritual performance” ,which is in the contextual mood of textual-oriented critical discourse analysis. From the view of media function of ‘reality-definition’, and also with socio-cultural anthropological perspectives, we are assumes that news is not reality itself and not information transfer too, but socially constructed multiple realities through social interaction on a ‘stage’ by various social actors as performers, either they are on ‘frontstage’ or ‘backstage’. In other words, in this study we attempt to reintroduce performative model into the discourse-textual analysis in media studies, and therefore propose that news is a mediated collective ritual performance in which we are both a performer and a participant, who have function of the “double subjectivity” in the context of news making and its reading. This study essentially also have a basic concern with the cultivation of what Fairclough called ‘critical language awareness’, in other to reflectively reconsider the problems of ethnocentrism and the webs of power-knowledge which can be inscribed in the form and content of ritual performance. And now, what is “narrative performance”? Based on Victor Turner‘s notion of performance, i.e. the processual sense of ‘bringing to completion’ or ‘accomplishing’, this study further defines narrative performance as those two connotations: generally speaking, it means “ritual performance of telling-stories in everyday life” and then specifically speaking, it means “all written text or printed text displaying dramatic formats ” which not only represents our interpretation of what is social reality, but also continually performing and reconstructing our collective consensus and affective memories of the historical culture including the context of “here-and-now”. What we want to do in this paper is to articulate and demonstrate the correspondence between social space and textual space which is based upon the analogies of “life-as-theatre” and “symbolic interaction-as-drama performing”. News narrative result of journalist’s convention, their sociocultural context, and the routinalized reporting practice. Through this study, we believe, it would provide a sort of alternative perspective and a set of useful metaphor for searching out new methodological directions in the fields of communication and mass media studies. The main object of this case study is to analyze the narrative structure of the press news on “the issue of Taiwan nuclear waste”, in other to identify the function of reality construction of a ritualized press performance as well as to show the process of image construction which is represented in the textual context of time-space. More specifically four research questions are raised. First, How we should rethink and reevaluate the process and significance of news-making? Second, How does teller‘s position represent in the news narrative by the use of what sorts of language-uses and tactic device? Three sub-questions as follows: a. How dose teller highlight “we-oriented” view points in the news reporting? b. How dose teller dissimulate “they-oriented” view points in the news reporting? c. How dose teller purposefully persuade the audience to be oriented and attached to the story-teller owns attitudinal position? Third, In relation to the given same social events, what is the distinctive differences of ideational pictures re-presented between Taiwan and Korean version of news story? Forth, In relation to a original newspaper article, how Taiwan and Korean press distinctively retelling or re-performing the story to be construct the thematic coherence of narrative flows ? In other to give answers to these practical questions, this study collected articles of Korean newspaper ‘Joongang Ilbo’ and Taiwan’s ‘United Daily’ and ‘China Times’, each dealing with the case of ‘nuclear waste’ which have drawn a firestorm from South Korea after Taiwan and North Korea had made the Jan. 11, 1997 deal of nuclear waste. To analysis these news articles, this study systemically build a set of analysis methods and several types of research-tools focusing on three categories of meaning-field, that is, fields of interpersonal meaning, ideational meaning, and textual meaning. Interpersonal meaning field including two types of tool or cues, that is “modality” and “deixis” by which to explore the process of image constructing of teller-audience nexus on backstage；in the filed of ideational meaning, there are three tools, that is “registers of lexical categorization”, “social-action-verbs”, and “modes of narrative transposition ” by which to investigate the process of image construction of social actors staged-on；and the textual meaning field mainly based on “discourse marker” and “speech genre(as quotation)” by which to demonstrate the thematic coherence in the semantic and pragmatic levels embodied by the operations of symbolic selection and composition of narrative devices. The above methodological approaches can be illustrated as follows: ┌───────┬──────┬───────┬──────────┬─────────┐ │Meaning-Field │Focus │Relation-Web │Image-Construction │Language-use-Cues │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├───────┼──────┼───────┼──────────┼─────────┤ │Interpersonal │enonciative │enonciative │teller and listener │modalities deixis │ │ │event │context │ │ │ ├───────┼──────┼───────┼──────────┼─────────┤ │Ideational │episodic │representation│story actor’s │lexical registers │ │ │event │of 'people- │social action │social-action- │ │ │ │world' │ │verbs modes of │ │ │ │relations │ │narrative │ │ │ │ │ │transposition │ ├───────┼──────┼───────┼──────────┼─────────┤ │Textual │symbolic │thematic │selection and │discourse markers │ │ │textualizing│coherence │composition of │speech genres │ │ │ │ │narrative devices │ │ └───────┴──────┴───────┴──────────┴─────────┘ Major conclusion of the study: For the research question 2, we found that teller’s view position was demonstrated in those ‘deictic centers’ as like ‘WHO’, ‘WHEN-WHERE’, and ‘WHAT’ , which served as a sort of mechanism making a tragic spectacle, in other to set up the sympathetic involvement toward “Mr. Yan” as a hero as well as the resentment toward “Taiwan authority” as an antagonist, which is assume to be generated from the imagined domain of Korean audiences. More importantly, we further found that the three types of tactic devices of persuasiveness used by Korean teller which is this: a. to show concrete evidence including critical witness as a vivid symptoms on the could-be-impacts of pollution crisis；b. to evoke universal sense of moral justice；c. to support the technique of punishment. For research question 3, we found that Korean and Taiwan news articles not only shown the differences of representational orders on the ideational picture of the case of Taiwan nuclear waste, but also it supported the fact that, as Mary Douglas argued, ‘ritual of social hygiene’ would be performed when a social communities faced the pollution problems to solves, in order to manages the crisis through mobilizing a sorts of symbolic capitals available to use. we show first that the dominant value of Korean domains on the news issues are standard aggressive patterns of “the program of the witch-hunting” which is based on the ethical politics of environmental protection and the justice of human rights；and second that, compared with the Korean domain’s, Taiwan news narrative demonstrated the distinctive representational order, i.e. “the program of consolation” which is based on lawful and economic ways of thinking. For research question 4, we found that Korean and Taiwan news reporting did not have a distinctive characteristics in the ways of using ‘discourse markers’ to construct local coherence of narrative flow, because both of they are follow basic conventional norms of news writing just as . But, in the other hand, from the aspects of ‘speech genre’, we found that there are differences in the ways of quotation, Korean teller is favor to use ‘free direct speech’ with a discriminating reporting verbs by which highlight the negative aspects of the deal, While on the contrary, Taiwan teller is favored to use ‘indirect speech’ and with a neutral reporting verbs by whichrean teller is favor to use ‘free direct speech’ with a discriminating reporting verbs by which highlight the negative aspects of the deal, while on the contrary, Taiwan teller is favored to use 'indirect speech' and with a neutral reporting verbs by which selecting the good ones and dismilating the negative aspects of the deal.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / By the mid 1980s the Nationalist Party had sought to salvage almost four decades of apartheid policies that were based on white supremacy. In this regard it engaged in dual strategies of repression and reform. The state's strategies were challenged by organisations and movements within civil society. In this regard a number of community-based organisation mushroomed both nationally and regionally. These organisations were co-ordinated by adult political activists most of whom were perceived to lack the necessary skills to manage organisation more effectively. In this conjuncture, the Adult Education Departments at five South African universities developed certificate-level programmes to address this gap. This study focuses on three such programmes, the Community Adult Education Programme, based at the University of Cape Town, the Certificate for Educators of Adults at the University of the Western Cape, and the Community Adult Educators Training Course based at the University of Natal- Pietermaritzburg. This study investigates the social and political conditions that gave rise to the three certificate programmes. It also investigates the relationship between the external social and political conditions and the internal curriculum practices of the certificates. In this process it analyses the nature of the relationship and identifies shifts in the programmes and the curriculum practices between 1986 and 1996. The study uses a qualitative approach and draws on elements of critical theory and social constructionism to understand the data gleaned from interviews and documents. This study argues that all three certificate programmes have directly been tied into the social political context in South Africa between 1986 and 1996. In this decade the study argues, there are three distinct political periods, namely repression/reform, negotiations and fragile democracy. It argues that distinct features from each period have shaped the certificates in different ways. Along with the national political conditions as manifest at the level of the state, the private sector and civil society there are local and institutional dynamics that contribute to the different forms assumed by these certificates. The study further argues that the external social - political conditions from each period have demarcated and fixed the boundaries for the certificates as a social practice. In this process the curriculum practices for each period permitted certain words and practices in preference to others. Consequently, it argues that the external and internal social and political dimensions together construct the certificates as a discourse. This study is based on a belief that the role of a certificate practitioner is to creatively locate the day to day practices within different theoretical frameworks in order to advance studies into sites of adult education practices. This study represents a step in such a direction.

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This thesis highlights the sociopolitics of English as a dominant/colonial language by focusing on the linkage between language, power, and race. Grounded in critical language theory, comparative education theory, and anti-racism research methodology, this research examines the inextricable relationship between language, power, and race. With this in mind, this thesis argues that language, specifically English, is not a neutral tool of communication but a highly contentious issue that is deeply embedded in sociopolitical ideologies and practices. The contexts of Japan and Trinidad and Tobago are used to illustrate how colonialism continues to impact English language policy, practice, and perceptions. In sum, this research aims to bridge the gap between critical language theory, comparative education theory, and anti-racism studies in a way that (1) highlights the complexity of language politics, (2) explores ideological assumptions inherent in the discourse of the "native" language, and (3) underscores the overlooked ubiquity of race.