M.Ed. (Education Linguistics) / Researchers generally agree that second languages are vitally important to diverse groups of people across the world today. The teaching of second languages in classrooms around the world alone constitutes a formidable undertaking. Their general importance in and out of the classroom is perhaps best expressed by Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991:2): •••not only do second languages have a place in school, they also affect many other aspects of people's lives. In the interdependent world of today, second language acquisition and use are ubiquitous. English alone, for example, is used by almost 1.5 billion people as their official second language (Crystal, 1985). The remarkable spread and use of the language has become an uncontested fact: it has become the international language for science and technology, with more than half of all the world's scientific and technical journals published in English. It is the medium for 80% of the information stored in the world's computers at present, while three quarters of the world's mail arid other correspondence are also in English (Peirce, 1989). This is just one example of second language use that has contributed to the general importance of second languages across the globe today. There are many others. So, for instance, is second language learning and use closely linked with the huge migrant worker force of Europe and other parts of the world, where there is a need amongst the people to be able to understand and speak the language of their new environment. Another such issue is the arrival and assimilation of immigrants who permanently resettle in a new country. The large entry of Indochinese refugees into many different countries around the world in the 1980's is a case in point (Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991). Second languages also often play an important role in the affairs of state, especially in societies where there is a diversity of cultures and languages (Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991). Which language or languages should receive official recognition and which should not? In our own country, for example, this is currently a much debated issue, following the socio-political changes and events of recent years. It appears that English has become the language people favour best in a post-apartheid South Africa.

Cette étude se place dans une perspective sociolinguistique. Elle souhaite mettre en exergue le caractère pathoglossique des rapports de certains créolophones à leur langue maternelle. Cette démarche accorde une attention particulière aux populations en présence pendant la période coloniale française dans les Caraïbes, dans le dessein de démontrer les conditions de la naissance des créoles à base française. Cependant, elle s’intéresse dans une mesure non moindre à l’ex-colonie de la Réunion (située dans l’Océan indien et française institutionnellement) ainsi qu’aux ex-colonies d’Amérique (Dominique, Haïti, Sainte-Lucie) et d’Océan indien (Maurice, Seychelles) qui échappent à la politique de planification linguistique de la France.Elle essaye d’établir les liens possibles entre les rapports des locuteurs à leur langue maternelle et les conditions serviles qui ont donné naissance à cette langue.Cette étude accorde un traitement hors du commun à la planification linguistique. Elle met l’accent sur l’intervention de la Politique dans les différents domaines d’emploi des langues et les impacts pathoglossiques d’un conditionnement qui accorde à l’humain une place insignifiante.Elle propose une approche humaniste dans la définition de la politique linguistique afin de réduire le fossé, entre autres, en matière de déperdition scolaire et sociale. / This study is to be considered from a sociolinguistic view. It aims at highlighting the pathologlossical nature of the ties of some creole speakers with their mother tongue. This process pays special regard to the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands during the colonial period so as to demonstrate the roots of French-based creoles. However it shows the utmost importance to the former colony of Reunion (located in the Indian Ocean and institutionally French).It also deals with the ancient American colonies (Dominica, Haiti, St Lucia) and those of the Indian Ocean (Mauritius, the Seychelles) which escape the French linguistic planification. It tries to establish possible links between the speakers relations to their native language and the servile conditions which gave birth to their language.Such a study grants special treatment to the linguistic planification. It focuses on the intrusion of politics in the various uses of languages on the pathologlossical impacts of a conditioning that attaches little importance to human beings.It offers a humanistic approach in defining a linguistic policy in order to reduce the gap among other things as regards school or social loss.

Abstract The ambition to increase the production of paper has made paper machine runnability widely studied in recent decades. Paper machine runnability is often measured by the number of web breaks in comparison with paper machine speed. When runnability is good, a machine can be run at the desired speed with the least possible number of breaks. Web break sensitivity means the number of breaks in a day, which can also be understood as a measurement of paper machine runnability. This study presents an application for the evaluation of web break sensitivity in a paper machine. A web break sensitivity indicator was built using the basic principles of case-based reasoning with a linguistic equations approach and basic fuzzy logic. The indicator combines on-line measurement data with expert knowledge and provides a continuous indication of break sensitivity. Web break sensitivity defines the current operating situation at the paper mill and provides new information to operators. Web break sensitivity is presented as a continuous signal with information about actual web breaks depicted as an eight-hour trend. The trend shows how the situation has developed and the current value gives a prediction for the next 24 hours if the situation stays as it is now. Together with information about the most important variables, this prediction gives operators enough time to react to the changing operating situation. From the methodological point of view, a new tool for building case-based reasoning applications for other purposes was also tested and found to be suitable for diagnostic applications.

Magister Artium - MA / This study investigates Kinyarwaanda sexuality taboo words and their meaning in Rwandan culture to enable the youth to improve their communication and the values of Rwandan culture. It explores whether the use of Kinyarwaanda sexuality taboo words is a good way to communicate with one another or is a transgression of Rwandan culture. Its intent is to see the value that Rwandans assign to verbal taboos, particularly sexuality taboo words, to see how these taboos regulate Rwandans lives, to see the attitudes Rwandans hold towards them, and to find out the link there might be between sexuality taboo words, the information dissemination on HIV/AIDS and the spread of AIDS. / South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis traces the trajectories of a group of young Cameroonian learners as they engage in new social and educational spaces in two South African primary schools. Designed as a Linguistic Ethnography and using data from observations, interviews and more than 50 hours of recorded interaction, it illustrates the ways in which these learners position themselves and are differentially positioned within evolving discourses of inclusion and exclusion. As a current study in a multilingual African context, it joins a growing body of literature in Europe which points to the ways in which young people’s language choices and practices are socially and politically embedded in their histories of migration and implicated in relations of power, social difference and social inequality. The study is a Linguistic Ethnography of young school learners’ language experience, which falls outside the scope of much mainstream research. It is one of very few studies to focus on migrant children in contexts of the South where multilingualism is the reality yet where language-in-education policies tend to follow monoglossic norms. The focus is on how a group of 10-16 year old Cameroonian children use their multilingual repertoires to construct and negotiate identities both inside and outside the classroom. It also investigates in more detail the acts of identity of two individuals entering the same school with different linguistic profiles, who are positioned in differentiated ways in relation to transnational and local flows and interconnections. The context is a low socio-economic suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, where Cameroonian practices of language, class, and ethnicity become entangled with local economies of meaning. The study also contributes to an emerging body of qualitative research that seeks to develop greater understanding of the relationships between language learners, their socio-cultural worlds and processes of identity construction (Cummins, 1996; Gee, 2001; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). ; Rampton, 1995, 2006). Recent international and South African studies tend to focus on secondary school learners, showing how they are struggling to negotiate the currents of a complex society (Adebanji, 2010; Sayed, 2002; Sookrajh, Gopal & Maharaj, 2005), although there is a recent and rapidly growing body of Scandinavian research on primary school children (for example, Cekaite & Evaldsson, 2008; Madsen, 2008; Møller, 2009; Møller, Holmen & Jørgensen, 2012). In contrast, the children in this study are negotiating the transition between childhood and adolescence, faced with issues of race, linguistic competence and discrimination at a time when moving from one age group to the next should have been relatively unproblematic. They are thus entangled in different levels of transition: emotional, physical and spatial. These issues of transition and negotiation will be highlighted through the lens of positioning. The concepts of ‘position’ and ‘positioning’ (Davis & Harré, 1990) appear to have origins in marketing, where position refers to the communication strategies that allow certain products to be placed in a market among their competitors (Tirado & Gálvez, 2007, p. 20). Holloway (1984) first used the concept of positioning in the social sciences to analyse the construction of subjectivity in the area of heterosexual relationships (Tirado & Gálvez, 2007). Positioning here was explained as relational processes that constitute interaction with other individuals. The present study focuses on how ‘interactants’ position themselves vis-à-vis their words and texts, their audiences and the contexts they both "respond to and construct linguistically" (Jaffe, 2009, p.3). As they make use of lexical and grammatical tools available to them in interaction, it becomes apparent that the process of identity construction through positioning does not "reside within the individual but in intersubjective relations of sameness and difference, […] power and disempowerment" (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 607). Thus to interpret multilingual children’s positioning requires a recursive process, using a double perspective: it means looking at the day-to-day moments of interactional and other practices, and also the wider political discourses in which these practices may be embedded and historically rooted (Maguire, 2005) and which they index in different ways. These day-to-day moments of practice thus involve different “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) which can also be described as acts of stance-taking (Jaffe, 2009). A stance may index multiple selves and social identities. However, not all stances are open to everyone: those whose who have their social, cultural or linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991, 1997) recognized in a particular space will be able to position themselves more strongly there than those who do not. Moreover, stances are not successful unless 'taken up' by interactants (Jaffe, 2009): this uptake may take the form of interlocutors’ stances of alignment, realignment, or misalignment (C. Goodwin, 2007; Matoesian, 2005). Uptake in multilingual contexts is influenced by the prevailing "linguistic market" (Bourdieu, 1991, pp.55-67): day to-day acts of positioning take place in inequitable markets. These ‘markets’ are fertile grounds for social stratification where speech acts and the languages in which they are realized are assigned different symbolic values (Bourdieu, 1991, 1997). Mastery of the 'legitimate' language or languages is then often a pre-condition for claiming symbolic and material resources. New institutional spaces in South Africa become interesting here, because they are characterized by new formations of class, changes in gender roles and relations and other instances of macro-structural shifts. In such spaces, linguistic hierarchies and patterns of distribution of linguistic resources are rapidly changing (Kerfoot & Bello-Nonjengele, 2014). The school as a key institution in the distribution of social, cultural and linguistic capital is thus an important site for exploring the role of language and multilingualism in social and educational change. This thesis sets out to answer the following research questions: a) How do immigrant learners use their linguistic repertoires to construct, negotiate or contest identities in new school spaces? b) How do different spaces enable or constrain the new identities negotiated? c) What are the implications for language learning policy and practice? Data collection took place over two years between February 2010 and June 2013, and followed participants from grades 5 to 7 in the English medium and Afrikaans language classrooms. Participants were 10-16 year old Cameroonian children in two Cape Town schools, ten in each. The study contains nine chapters, with chapter 1 providing an overview of the background, rationale, and conceptual and methodological framework. Chapter 2 traces the shift towards the social in language studies, considering frameworks for understanding the differential values placed on linguistic resources as actors move across social spaces, both local and transnational. Here interaction is viewed as a crucial site for identity construction, generating a social stage through which reality is constructed, shared, and made meaningful. Chapter 3 reviews studies of interactional positioning amongst multilingual learners in social and educational contexts in South Africa and more globally. Chapter 4 focuses on the methodology used in the study, discussing the research design based on Linguistic Ethnography, a qualitative approach which is based on the two broad planks of ethnography and Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) and which enables an analytical framework combining Conversation Analysis (CA), Discourse Analysis (DA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Together, these analytical tools enable a multifaceted illumination of the construction of identity in discourse. The various tools used in data collection are discussed in depth followed by comment on reflexivity, challenges in the field and limitations of the study. Chapter 5 delineates the researcher’s trajectory in the field. This comprises profiles of the study schools (including the schools’ socio-economic, ethnic and linguistic make-up in relation to teachers and learners), perspectives on why the schools were chosen, the differing receptions to a research presence there, and some reflections on the researcher’s identity construction. The chapter further explores different techniques of data collection within this context: field notes and thick description, interviews, and audio recordings of interactions in and out of schools. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 present and analyse findings from classroom observation and interview data, together with audio-recordings of a group of Cameroonian learners interacting with each other and with children of other nationalities in classrooms, community and home spaces. These chapters aim to illustrate how these learners used linguistic resources to position themselves and others, to build, maintain and negotiate identities, and to assert or negate identifications. Chapters 7 and 8 build on the analysis presented in chapter 6 by focusing respectively on two key emergent themes: owning participatory spaces and defying positioning in multilingual spaces. Chapter 7 centres on the interactional and other means by which a 12 year old Anglophone learner, James, navigated his way increasingly successfully through new social and educational spaces, expanding his linguistic repertoire. Chapter 8 focuses on a 12 year old Francophone learner, Aline, and the ways in which she tried to convert her linguistic capital on new linguistic markets. Her efforts were more often than not met with negative evaluation, leading to a loss of both social and academic identities. The analysis of data thus serves as a rich point of entry for understanding the connections between linguistic repertoires, relations between ethnic groups, youth culture, and the experience of social change. Through their discursive production of selves, these adolescent learners supposed to be negotiating only the normal transition from one age group to the next) are here negotiating the currents of a complex society and dealing with issues of race, language and segregation. Findings suggest that participants had multiple identity options that were negotiated through different practices, from food choices to language and interactional norms. These different identity options were however constrained by existing norms and linguistic hierarchies in each space, allowing some to accommodate new linguistic practices and ways of doing things, while others experienced more ambivalent and contradictory processes of adaptation. In informal settings there was evidence of a third space characterized by a mélange of languages in which both formal and informal versions of English and French, along with Cameroonian Pidgin English (CPE) and other Cameroonian languages, were used. However, even in these settings there was a gradual shift to English, indicating the penetration of macrosocial and institutional discourses into private spaces. The thesis concludes with a set of recommendations for caregivers, teachers and policymakers seeking to create schools more welcoming of diversity. It is hoped, then, that this study will help families and schools to realize the variety of ways in which linguistic repertoires influence school success, both social and educational, and to find ways of using these repertoires for development and learning. In this way, they might contribute to immigrant youngsters’ ability to construct strong identities as learners and valued social beings.

The present study examined the language and literacy practices of one ethnolinguistically diverse family literacy English classroom for women who recently migrated to the United States as refugees, and whose access to formal, school-based learning was interrupted prior to migration. More specifically, this study investigated how institutionally-valued practices socially positioned the women in class, and how the women discursively negotiated and claimed new or different positionings for themselves. Overall, this study draws on social positioning theories (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999), to attempt to address the relationship between English language education for women and notions of social inclusion (Allman, 2013). Designed as a linguistic ethnography (Copland & Creese, 2015), data were collected over the course of two years and included eight months of thrice-weekly classroom-based participant observation; classroom audio (105) and video recordings (39); photographs (1038); audio and video-recorded semi-structured interviews with the focal teacher (4), three focal students (2 each), and the main administrator (1); and document collection. Data were transcribed and analyzed utilizing thematic (Saldaña, 2012) and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis (Bloome et al., 2006). Findings show a range of institutionally-valued language and literacy practices and diverse accompanying positionings. Some practices served to socialize learners into specific “storylines” (Harré & Moghaddam, 2003) related to socially-preferred ways of “doing” language and literacy both inside and outside the classroom, particularly in relationship to the learners’ positions as mothers. Other practices served to position learners as legitimate co-authors and community members, affording them ways to use English to “write (and speak) themselves into” the times and places of their surrounding communities (Trend, 1994, p. 226). The findings further illustrate that learners used language and other multimodal means (i.e., photographs, video, social media) to make inter(con)textual, intercultural, and transnational connections for both academic and personal purposes—and to draw others into those connections with them. These connections positioned learners as academically, technologically, and relationally resourceful transnational women. Implications for pedagogy, programming, policy, theory, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

No description available.

The presence of Allophone students in French-language secondary schools in Ottawa is gradually increasing. While the politique d’aménagement linguistique (PAL) insists on the use of French within the school, one may begin to wonder which language Allophone students are speaking. French? English? Their native language(s)? This qualitative case study of four multilingual Allophone students explores their language repertoire use in relation to their desired linguistic representation, their linguistic proficiency in French, English, and their native language(s), and their perceptions of language prestige. The results indicate that students spoke a significant amount of English, some French (particularly with their teacher or Francophone classmates), and minimal amounts of their native language. Recommendations are suggested to increase the effectiveness of PAL within a Francophone minority context and to ensure that the policy’s objects are attained.

a) Basic Problem The main question posed in this research was as follows; where exactly, and in what types of locality have those of French ethnic origin living in the Prairie provinces been most (or least) successful in preserving a distinctive French-Canadian culture. b) Method of Investigation i) The production of detailed population distribution maps showed where, and to what extent, French-Canadians were areally concentrated into distinct group settlements. It is only in such group settlement that such a sub-culture can hope to survive. ii) The varying degree of ethnic homogeneity within the various group settlements was analysed. This study confirmed that the more French Canadians were intermixed with other groups the more susceptible they would be to anglicisation and assimilation. iii) The varying strength of the French-Canadian position was measured by calculating the proportion of French Canadians in each group settlement belonging to a French-language parish - an institution which has played a great role in the cultural survival of the French-speaking minorities. iv) The areally varying strength of French-language education in the Prairie provinces was studied. v) The areally varying degree of access to a French-language newspapers, radio and television was analysed; vi) Population increases and/or decreases among this ethnic group were studied. The extent of these increases and decreases, in both rural and urban areas, affects the strength of this sub-culture. vii) A cartographic description, using the most detailed census data available, was made of those of French ethnic origin who have retained French as their mother-tongue. The retention of French among this group was taken as the key index of assimilation, not least because they have always fervently regarded such linguistic fidelity as the essential basis of their distinctive cultural survival. b) Conclusions i) Neither the province of Quebec, nor the French-Canadian people have ever shown great interest in settling western Canada. ii) A considerable and increasing proportion of French Canadians in the Prairie provinces has become completely assimilated into the English-speaking community. However, within the group settlements the degree to which French has been retained is often high. iii) By far the strongest French-speaking community is situated in south-eastern Manitoba where three large rural groups focus on the unique urban group of St. Boniface. The cultural survival of French-Canadian communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan is much more threatened, either by their cultural isolation from other French-speaking groups, or by the extent to which they have been intermixed with non-French-speaking groups. iv) The key socio-geographic factor in the linguistic assimilation of western French Canadians seems to be the degree to which they are physically intermixed with other groups. This factor emerged as much more important than other considerations such as situation in an urban or rural area, or group settlement size. v) The western French Canadian sub-culture is an extremely "localised" phenomenon. Immediately beyond the "core" areas of the group settlements assimilation becomes very marked, even if a considerable number of French Canadians can still be found. Evidence of assimilation can be found even within the "cores" of some groups. vi) The future survival of this sub-culture depends, among other things, on strengthening French Canadian institutions within the group settlements. This applies particularly to the need to develop genuinely bilingual schools. Also a new form of "group settlement" must be developed to maintain and stimulate French-Canadian institutions and culture among the increasing numbers of Francophones who have left their rural communities for the larger urban areas. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the issue of cross-linguistic influence (CLI), i.e. language interaction, in context of the bilingual first language acquisition of French and English. It establishes itself in the current line of research that aims to refine the language-internal and language-external predictors of CLI (Hulk & Müller, 2000; Nicoladis, 2006; Serratrice, Sorace, & Paoli, 2004). A large body of research has shown that referential markers of discourse-pragmatics (i.e. determiners, pronouns, dislocations) are ideal candidates to investigate CLI (Hacohen & Schaeffer, 2007; Kupisch, 2007; Müller & Hulk, 2001; Notley, van der Linden, & Hulk, 2007; Serratrice, Sorace, Filiaci, & Baldo, 2009; Unsworth, 2012b). The study of the local and global markers of old and new information is particularly interesting in the context of French-English bilingualism as it provides a unique opportunity to examine a range of variables that may affect CLI. The first two studies investigate the role of typological differences and similarities on CLI by examining whether the contrasting distribution of determiners (i.e. presence vs. absence of definite articles in generic noun phrases), and the comparable pronominal systems (i.e. two non-null argument languages) in French and English predict this phenomenon. The analyses are based on the longitudinal corpus of two French-English children (Anne 2;4-3;4 and Sophie 2;6-3;7). At the determiner level, the results indicate the existence of bi-directional CLI that is determined by both structural overlap (Hulk & Müller, 2000) and economical considerations (Chierchia, 1998) as a function of language proficiency. At the pronominal level, the data indicates that CLI does not occur for structurally similar constructions. Aside from moving the issue of CLI from local referential expressions to the sentence level (i.e. dislocations), the third study investigates the role of input quality, language dominance, frequency, and structural complexity on CLI in the longitudinal corpus. The findings clearly show that input quality does not affect this phenomenon. In fact, the data displays a rather complex picture for CLI. It suggests that a multitude of variables interact with one another and drive this phenomenon. In particular, two measures of language dominance (i.e. children’s language exposure and their expressive skills) affect CLI differently as a function of the frequency and complexity of the structure vulnerable to this phenomenon (i.e. determiners vs. dislocations). Finally, the corpus-based analyses are supplemented by two experimental studies using the priming paradigm to investigate the role of language processing and language exposure on CLI. The findings indicate that (i) bilingual children’s mental representation of syntactic structures is affected by the simultaneous acquisition of two languages; and that (ii) language exposure plays a role on the degree of activation of a particular structure in bilingual children’s processing. Ultimately, the present research shows that CLI is caused by the interaction of a multitude of variables (i.e. language processing, language dominance, frequency, structural complexity) rather than being the consequence of a combination of two factors (e.g. structural overlap, discourse-pragmatics interface) (Hulk & Müller, 2000).