MER Mathivha Centre for African Languages, Arts and Culture / MA (Xitsonga)

This study will explore to what extent familiarity with English accents can influence compulsory school students’ attitudes towards them. Data from questionnaires completed by 98 students were analysed. The results show that the degree of familiarity with the English accent seems to affect the attitude attributed to it. More specifically, the results indicate that a higher degree of familiarity influences the ability to express an attitude. A lower degree of familiarity leads to similar attitudes being given to the accents, which shows a lack of differentiation between them. The results also indicate a bias towards RP. While it is not necessarily harmful, teachers should be aware of this and how their own teaching may influence how different accents are perceived. It is argued that teachers need to intervene in the process of stereotyping which will help develop an awareness of students’ language attitudes. To summarize, it is difficult to draw any wide conclusions from these results due to the study’s scope. Furthermore, the target group is not representative of Swedish compulsory school students as students from the chosen school generally finish with an above-average final grade. Further research is necessary to determine more specifically how familiarity affects attitudes of English accents and if these findings recur in other areas of Sweden where the final grade average is lower.

The increasing use of English as a lingua franca has led to the emergence of many nonnative varieties, but research indicates that despite the efforts of disciplines such as World Englishes and ELF to elevate the status of these varieties, speakers of native varieties are still valued higher by listeners all over the world. However, few studies have attempted to compare non-native varieties to each other without the presence of a contrasting native variety. In Sweden, a country where English has a notably high status and prominence, a significant amount of the population has other native languages than Swedish, and as such, there is a range of non-native Englishes spoken in the country. Moreover, speakers of the biggest immigrant language in Sweden, Arabic, are often subjected to discrimination and stereotyping, which makes it relevant to investigate if biases against groups influence how the English spoken by the groups is perceived. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the attitudes of Swedish people towards Swedish and Arabic L2 English speakers. Using the verbal-guise technique, 59 upper secondary school students were recruited to respond to a questionnaire measuring their attitudes towards the two varieties. The findings indicate that there are significant differences: the Swedish speaker was rated as more intelligent, educated, confident and responsible than the Arabic speaker, while the Arabic speaker was rated as kinder and less aggressive than the Swedish speaker. While more research is needed, the findings indicate that subconscious biases against varieties exist, and it is suggested that these need to be taken into account in English-speaking contexts, particularly in ELT classrooms.

Det finlandssvenska teckenspråket är ett minoritetsspråk med ungefär 100 språkanvändare, främst i Finland. Språket håller på att revitaliseras och de senaste åren har flera språkstärkande åtgärder genomförts. Syftet med denna studie är att ta reda på om det finns tidigare revitaliseringsinsatser för små teckenspråk, och om man kunde finna liknande processer i arbetet för dessa språk. Detta gjordes via systematisk litteraturstudie med hjälp av sökord, där artiklar valdes ut för fördjupad läsning. Resultatet från sökningarna visar få material gällande språkrevitalisering av teckenspråk, däremot större mängd material gällande språkrevitalisering av talade språken. Uppsatsens resultat är fokuserade på vitalitet, språkattityder samt lyckade revitaliseringsmetoder i de samiska språken, däribland språkbo- och mentorsverksamhet. I diskussionsdelen tas utmaningar med att implementera dylika metoder för det finlandssvenska teckenspråket upp. Attityderna i samhället påverkar språkets utveckling men också språkgruppen själv har ett ansvar gentemot teckenspråket och dess fortlevnad. Slutligen konstateras det att samhället också måste ta sitt ansvar för att främja inlärning av teckenspråk samt skapa tillgängliga domäner för att användning av teckenspråket. Detta för att säkerställa minoritetens teckenspråks överlevnad.

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This study is on standard isiXhosa in a multilingual classroom and includes an interpretation of both urban and rurual learners’ literary texts. An attempt is made to examine a selection of isiXhosa texts in order to interprete the state of affairs of the isiXhosa language in the 21st century. Organization of the study This dissertation was organized in the following manner: Chapter one includes an introduction to the study, its aims and objectives as well as the research methodology. Since the isiXhosa language is the focal point of the study, it is discussed in some depth. In chapter two, the researcher concentrates on the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) "Imibono yethu". Imibono yethu is an anthology of learners' writings. The learners were invited to enter a competition by using various genres, e.g. short stories, poems, one-act dramas, rap songs, kwaito, essays, and melodic poems. The researcher wanted the learners to use whatever genre inspires them, to put it colloquially, "what turns them on!" Any aspect of the urban lifestyle could be explored within the theme of each entry and fell under the following headings: • Standard language. • Standard isiXhosa. Chapter three investigates non-standard language varieties with special reference to isiXhosa and the language policy of South Africa. In this chapter, a comparison was drawn between non-standard language and standard language. vi In chapter four, the researcher discusses the overall findings of the competition, comparing the results emanating from the Eastern Cape and Gauteng. Chapter five deals with achievement of the objectives and highlights of the research. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

Cette étude de recherche s’intéresse aux attitudes envers la langue gaélique en République d’Irlande. Le gaélique, tout comme l’anglais, est la langue nationale officielle et est enseignée comme matière obligatoire de l’école élémentaire au lycée. Bien que le nombre de personnes utilisant le gaélique dans la vie quotidienne reste faible, il existe depuis les années soixante-dix une résurgence d’intérêt dans cette langue. Celle-ci se traduit, entre autres, par une demande croissante du nombre d’écoles d’immersion en gaélique, tout particulièrement dans les régions où le gaélique n’est pas pratiqué au sein de la communauté. Cette étude cherche à éclaircir ce phénomène en analysant les attitudes envers le gaélique des parents d’élèves d’écoles primaires d’immersion en zone urbaine, et plus précisément, dans le comté de Dublin. En effet, peu de recherches ont été effectuées sur les attitudes envers le gaélique au sein des familles ayant choisi une éducation par immersion pour leurs enfants.Les personnes participant à cette étude se composent de parents d’élèves avec une expérience plus ou moins longue de l’enseignement en immersion, ainsi que d’enseignants des écoles participantes. Les données recueillies pour cette étude proviennent d’un questionnaire auto-administré ainsi que d’entretiens suivis.La question sur la motivation des parents à choisir un enseignement en immersion est centrale au thème des attitudes envers le gaélique, puisque dans ce contexte, l’anglais est la seule langue utilisée dans la communauté ainsi que dans la plupart des foyers. Les résultats d’analyse révèlent que les parents participant ont choisi ce type d’éducation car ils considèrent d’une part que le gaélique est un marqueur d’identité culturelle voire ethnique pour certains, et d’autre part qu’il permet d’acquérir du capital culturel. En effet, les participants s’intéressent de près à la qualité de l’éducation de leurs enfants et valorisent le bilinguisme additif. Ainsi, ils attribuent au gaélique une valeur culturelle importante. Cette étude montre également que les parents d’élèves ont une attitude positive envers la langue gaélique. Ceci s’explique de par leur enclin naturel mais aussi de par leur contact avec ces écoles d’immersion, environnement dans lequel le gaélique est mis en valeur. Cependant, malgré les efforts des parents à intégrer la langue gaélique à la maison ou dans les activités récréatives de leurs enfants, ce milieu ne semble pas être déclencheur de pratiques bilingues au sein de la famille. Néanmoins, cette étude indique que les écoles d’immersion favorisent la création de liens entre quelques familles communiquant entre elles en gaélique. / This study explores attitudes towards the Irish language in the Republic of Ireland. The Irish language—alongside with English—is the national official language and is taught in school as a compulsory subject from primary school through to the end of secondary level. Despite the low percentage of daily Irish-speakers in the country the demand for Irish-medium education as an alternative means of education has been growing since the 1970s, especially in English-speaking areas. This current study focuses on the language attitudes of parents whose child attends an urban Irish-medium primary school in County Dublin and analyses the reasons for choosing such an education. Although there has been a considerable number of research studies conducted on language attitudes towards Irish in the Republic of Ireland, very few have recently concentrated on families involved with Irish-medium education. Participants included parents with both short term and long term experience with immersion education through Irish. The main research instruments included a self-administered questionnaire and follow-up interviews with a sample of questionnaire respondents as well as teachers from the participating schools. One of the main focuses of this study is parental motivation for sending their child to an Irish-medium school. Results reveal that participants selected such education for their child for two main reasons: identity and cultural capital. Firstly, most participants regarded Irish as a strong cultural identity marker while others also considered the language as a strong marker of ethnic identity. Secondly and most importantly, participants expressed a strong interest in both education and additive bilingualism thus attributing a high cultural value to the Irish language. Findings also show that participants have very positive attitudes towards the Irish language. This is mainly due to their natural favourable disposition to Irish but also to their exposure to the Irish-medium school environment which tends to enhance this positive attitude. But despite participants' efforts to include some Irish in their child's life, either during recreational activities or at home, self-reports did not indicate the emergence of bilingual families. However, there is some evidence that the school facilitates the creation of Irish-speaking social networks between a few families.

This thesis examines enclaves of oppression and discrimination, which continue to subject indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Andean society to the pernicious legacies of a racist past. As an interpretive framework this interdisciplinary study draws from theoretical approaches to power, which analyse the reproduction of social injustice in post-colonial societies. This research demonstrates how resistance in post-colonial contexts does not always function as a subversive force. Especially when the variable of racism is taken into account, it becomes clearer how acts of opposition end up fostering a tyrannical domination. Examples from Peruvian history, as well as my fieldwork data, will illustrate how resistances and revolutions in the Peruvian Andes have paradoxically reinstated an oppressive and subjugating social system founded in disavowal of the indigenous Other. In dismantling the ramifications of a violent racist legacy, this study explores those social practices and attitudes which in the course of history have resulted in the subjugation of indigenous peoples. These include paternalism, the commodification of indigenous identity and the phenomenon of incanismo. Ultimately, the very negotiation of identities and the making of Peruvian ethnicity will highlight the reasons why, since the 1970s, the pursuit of Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in the Peruvian Andes has been a challenging and uncertain endeavour. By comparison with bordering Andean regions of Ecuador and Bolivia, IBE is not in the hands of indigenous peoples. This thesis will demonstrate that this is in part due to an underpinning racism, which keeps disrupting a sense of belonging to an ethnic identity.

Cette thèse analyse les pratiques langagières hétérogènes d’une quarantaine d’adolescents originaires des quartiers multiculturels de la capitale norvégienne. Croisant une approche sociolinguistique, épistémologique et psychoculturelle, nous nous interrogeons sur les motivations sociales et individuelles du recours à des variables lexicales et syntaxiques jugées innovantes en norvégien. Notre recherche vise à démontrer que ces éléments linguistiques ne résultent pas d’un manque de compétences linguistiques, mais bien d’une variation stylistique à laquelle les locuteurs-individus ont recours en fonction d’une multitude de paramètres internes et externes à l’énonciation. L’analyse sociohistorique permet de replacer les locuteurs dans leur environnement local et de contextualiser leurs faits de langue. L’analyse linguistique s’appuie quant à elle sur des données écologiques recueillies dans le cadre du projet national UPUS (Utviklingsprosesser i urbane språkmiljø – Processus de développement linguistique en milieu urbain) mené entre 2006 et 2008 à Oslo. In fine la thèse propose d’envisager les pratiques stylistiques hétérogènes comme un champ de ressources non-fixes présent dans le répertoire d’individus aussi bien adolescents qu’adultes, issus des minorités comme de la majorité nationale dont le point commun n’est pas le partage d’une origine ethnique mais bien l’expérience conjointe de l’actuel milieu urbain contemporain. / This thesis provides a sociolinguistic analysis of Norwegian contemporary language practices among 41 adolescents all raised in multilingual and multicultural environments in the Eastern parts of Oslo. Based on a series of examples from the UPUS-Project (Utviklingsprosesser i urbane språkmiljø – Linguistic Development in Urban Environments), this work discusses social and individual motivations which lead speakers to use innovative lexical (including non-European loan words) and syntactic features in Norwegian. We argue that heterogeneous features do not result from a lack of language skills but rather are a part of a speech style thatspeakers activate depending on discursive settings. We also take into account the social and historical dimensions of Oslo in order to contextualize the language practices and to demonstrate how speakers during the life stage of adolescence make themselves heard on the local and global society. We suggest that this new speech style is not restricted to Oslo and adolescents speakers, but rather is a common resource for whoever wants to show solidarity toward the contemporary urban reality.

This thesis is concerned with adult L1 attrition in the case of highly-educated long-term Polish immigrants in Sweden. The study sheds light on two classical issues pertaining to L1 attrition, namely what happens to a fully developed mature language system in an immigrant context, and why it happens. Specifically we aim to answer the following questions: (1) Are Polish speakers in Sweden different from comparable individuals in Poland with respect to (i) judgement and use of a number of Polish linguistic features (se keywords below), and (ii) hesitation phenomena, i.e. ability to be quick and easy and linguistic insecurity? (2) Is the variation in linguistic results dependent on how often and in what context the Polish language is used and/or which attitudes the individuals have towards it as well as how long they have been living in Sweden? One of the main contributions of the study regards methodology. The data is analysed in three steps: an initial focus on group comparisons shifts to the analysis of individual results in relation to the variation observed in the comparison group, and finally to a holistic view of the attrition effects or their absence. It is suggested that in studies on adult L1 attrition, where the effects are expected to be relatively cosmetic, the range of the linguistic behaviour in the comparison group as a reference point as well as a holistic perspective on individual results gives a more truthful picture of the attrition process. In addition the study shows that attrition effects are present in some individuals (60 %) to a different degree. The most common effect overall is linguistic insecurity followed by the overuse of 1st person pronouns as explicit subjects and to a lesser degree by the overuse of 3rd person pronouns. Surprisingly there is a scanty effect on the other hesitation phenomenon, i.e. the ability to be quick and easy. No or limited effects are observed in other structural areas which basically supports previous findings on L1 adult attrition. Finally, the presence versus absence of the attrition effect can not be straightforwardly related either to language use, attitudes or length of residence, with one exception being linguistic insecurity.