The primary goal of this thesis is to investigate the way in which learners interact when asked to work together to write and revise a composition in an online environment. Specifically, the first research question explores the working styles of learners in the context of a wiki. It seeks to determine whether the various dyads work collaboratively or cooperatively to write and revise a composition in Spanish. The second research question deals with the type and degree of politeness that students express towards each other when working together to write and revise their composition. Specifically, it investigates the nature of politeness displayed by the dyads who worked collaboratively when compared to those who worked cooperatively. The interactions/written discourse displayed in the chat logs of each dyad is analyzed to understand how varying degrees of politeness characterized each dyads working style. The third research question explored how students interpreted and incorporated instructor feedback that was given to them in the wiki on their first draft of the composition. The scores that each composition received were used to determine which type of group work improved more. Chat logs and interview transcripts were analyzed to answer this question. The results of the study indicate that the majority of students/dyads in this study tended to work collaboratively, meaning they truly worked together to write and revise all parts of their composition to achieve the goal of the project vs. those groups who divided the writing and revision tasks and worked on the compositions in a more individualized manner. It was found that collaborative groups improved more in their compositions. The politeness strategies that collaborative groups used more were those of Strategy 1 (attending to the addressee) and Strategy 10 (offering) as described in Brown and Levinson (1987).

Lesbian visibility and representation has been and continues to be marked from a patriarchal perspective, governed by heteronormativity. Heterosexuality and man have and continue to be points from which lesbians are defined. The lesbian has come to form part of a heteronormative sexual sequence in society, what Annamarie Jagose refers to as sequencing. This sequence has placed the lesbian in a latter position of inferiority that depends on heterosexuality and/or man. Because of this reason, it has not been possible to reach a good representation of the lesbian. In order to obtain a better representation of the lesbian she must be defined in her own terms and in relation to other lesbian women. Jagose suggests inverting sexual norms and positioning lesbianism as the preferred sexuality to see how the lesbian is oppressed and subjugated by heteronormativity. The trilogy by Lola Van Guardia (Con pedigree, Plumas de doble filo, La mansión de las tríbadas) is able to capture a society in which every person is a lesbian or has the potential to be one. Keeping in mind the sexual sequence that Jagose presents, Van Guardias world manages to break these chains of a false lesbian representation to create a new and better representation by positioning the lesbian as the subject and normalizing her sexuality through various inversions. Van Guardia does this by presenting a plethora of lesbians, all three-dimensional characters that are relatable. The inversion of certain linguistic norms of the Spanish language and social situations established by a heteronormative and patriarchal society are also highlighted by using the generic in feminine and not the masculine as Spanish prescribes. With her trilogy, Van Guardia is able to create a discourse that is separate from the heteronormative society by focusing on the lesbian, on how she is and what matters to her. The Van Guardia trilogy is able to not only show how the lesbian is subjugated and controlled in society, but with the focus on only lesbian characters she is able to create a representation of the lesbian that is more complete and faithful.

Each body has certain cultural values attached to it regarding the way in which it should perform in public. The body is marked by dichotomous thinking (masculine/feminine, healthy/sick, sacred/degraded, artistic/pornographic, etc.) that dictates its presentation in visual culture. In Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Elizabeth Grosz states the importance of non-dichotomous thinking for feminist and gender studies scholars and gives guidelines to deconstruct these hegemonic dualities. The purpose of this thesis is to show how the eroticization of the body of Other, in accordance with Groszs guidelines, can be useful in upsetting taken-for-granted social roles thus leading to non-dichotomous thinking of the body. The non-ideal but erotic/eroticized body cannot faithfully or consistently adhere to either the positive or negative side of the dichotomy since the two sides are both explicitly presented and contested concurrently. A (strategic) sexualization of the body of Other troubles both cultural and natural notions of what the body should be. The body of Other refers to any body that transgresses the contemporary views of a positive body image (healthy, whole, beautiful, youthful, etc.); and the sexualized Other refers to that transgressive body that takes on a contemporary meaning of what is thought to be erotic or sexual. This thesis explores 6 photographs from contemporary Argentine photographers, Gabriela Liffschitz and María Zorzon and attempts to reveal conflicts about the dominant class thinking of the body and the injurious consequences of its implementation into popular visual culture. In this case the sexualized Others are simultaneously sacred and degraded (for various social reasons): the mothers body, the tattooed body, and the sick body. These bodies in some way all exhibit the qualities that Grosz enumerates and effectively defeat notions of nature/culture, active/passive, etc. to create distinct sexual bodies that do not depend on the pre-established norms of order and purity to be considered legitimate.

This thesis explores the influence of socio-religious factors in semantic interpretation. The principal objective of the investigation is to determine the level of that religious influence and make a call for the inclusion of socio-religious factors in all sociolinguistic semantic studies. The religious community of practice analyzed for this study was the Church of Christ. Its status as a community of practice is confirmed through the results of surveys and interviews, which fulfill the requirements promulgated by Lave & Wegner (1991). Participants inside and outside the community of practice, residing in three distinct cities were included: Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; and Caracas Venezuela. The 151 participants responded to a survey that presented them with 21 linguistic variables which had multiple possible definitions. Besides the religious constraints included, other social variables normally included in other studies of this nature were included, such as sex, age, education level, etc. Through the use of the statistical analysis program, Goldvarb, it was determined that the version of the Bible the participant prefers to read was the constraint most determinant for the most popular definition in 17 of the 21 lexical variables presented in the survey (81%). Also, eight individuals participated in interviews that revealed their religious cultural identity and cultural standing through the use of pronouns. The cultural standing most shared was that of the authority of the Bible. Additionally, it was found that the versions of the Bible reflect greater linguistic evolution than secular dictionaries of the same diachronic years. As such, this semantic evolution, together with the results of the analysis of the surveys and interviews, affirm the influence of religion in semantic interpretation and that socio-religious variables should be included in future sociolinguistic studies.

Abstracto: La alternancia entre sujetos expresos y tácitos constituye una característica fundamental del castellano. Orozco (under review:15) indica que el uso variable de los pronombres sujetos es una característica morfosintáctica heredada del latín. Leonetti (2009: 8) propone que la alternancia no es siempre del todo libre, ya que está determinada por algunos factores gramaticales y discursivos, pero podemos afirmar que en un buen número de contextos realmente existe la posibilidad de optar libremente entre usar un pronombre explícito y usar uno implícito o tácito. El presente estudio explora la variación en el uso de los pronombres personales de sujeto en dos comunidades puertorriqueñas. La primera es la comunidad puertorriqueña que vive en Puerto Rico y la segunda es aquella cuyo lugar de residencia es el estado de Luisiana. Los datos de esta investigación son obtenidos de información recogida de diez puertorriqueños residentes del estado de Luisiana y diez de Puerto Rico, diez mujeres y diez hombres. El análisis estadístico fue hecho utilizando Goldvarb. El número de muestras incluidas en el estudio es de 2,266. Los constreñimientos utilizados son una modificación de los constreñimientos utilizados por Orozco y Guy (2008). La tasa pronominal encontrada es de 37.0% para los puertorriqueños en Luisiana y 37.8% para aquellos que residen en la isla. Las mismas son muy representativas del castellano del caribe y concuerdan con lo que han reportado Lipski (1994:241) y López Morales (1992:137). Los factores lingüísticos que afectaron el uso pronominal fueron seis: persona y número del pronombre sujeto expreso o nulo, continuidad del sujeto, tiempo, modo y aspecto del verbo, realización del sujeto anterior, tipo de cláusula, contenido léxico del verbo, realización del sujeto de cláusula anterior mientras que sólo un factor social afecta significativamente el uso: el corpus. Estos resultados, en general, concuerdan con lo encontrado anteriormente: que los factores internos juegan una parte muy importante en el uso de los pronombres sujetos. Aunque las tasas pronominales varían, los constreñimientos condicionando el uso de los pronombre sujetos han presentado resultados bastante uniformes.  Abstract: The use of the pronominal subjects is one of the most basic foundations of the Spanish grammar. The Spanish language has an interesting ability: it is not an obligatory function to use the pronominal subjects. By the context and the conjugation of verbs that follow, the subject can be deduced. Many aspects of Spanish have been studied, including the use of the pronominal subjects relating to the null and expressed pronouns. The pronominal subjects can be null or you express, present or absent. The complete sentence in Spanish does not have to contain an expressed subject. Therefore, there is a variable use of the pronominal subjects in Spanish. This focuses on identifying in which contexts the participants employ the expressed and null pronouns. It is a comparative study of twenty Puerto Ricans, ten women and ten men. Of the twenty, ten live in Louisiana and ten live in the island of Puerto Rico. 2,226 tokens were analyzed using the statistical analysis program Goldvarb. The pronominal rates found were 37.0% for the Puerto Ricans in Louisiana and y 37.8% for those in the island, which is representative of Caribbean Spanish. The results, in general, agree with what has been found before: that the internal factors play a very important part in the use of subject pronouns. Although the pronominal rates vary, the constraints conditioning the use of the pronoun subject have submitted results fairly uniform.