The aim of this thesis is to investigate how nigga is used between speakers of African American Language (AAL). Nigga has few detailed analyses that examine its intracommunity usage, especially regarding non-negative uses of the word. It is the center of much controversy within African American communities, particularly due to the generational divide on its racist potency, and horrific historical ties. Therefore, I ask whether in-group speakers use nigga in different contexts to convey meanings that are also neutral or positive in sentiment, and whether factors such as gender and age affect these sentiments. This thesis is a partial replication of Smith (2019), and I utilize spoken data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language in my quantitative analysis. I find that AAL speakers use nigga across all sentiments, and in a variety of syntactic environments. Additionally, men seem to say nigga more often than women in spoken conversation, and younger individuals are more likely to use the term over older individuals. Through this thesis, I shed light on the invisible linguistic boundaries that complicate AAL speakers' feelings on nigga. Cultural experiences and social pressures of being African American inform many speakers' opinions regarding nigga, and care should be taken to discuss these complexities. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Cemeteries are cultural landscapes that reveal key details about their communities. The gravestone-its architecture, epitaph, iconography, and positioning within a cemetery-is a rhetorical device that reflects social and economic values of a particular era within the community. This qualitative study examines the gravestones of two public Appalachian cemeteries: one in a western Pennsylvania township of Northern Appalachia and the other in far southwestern Virginia in Central Appalachia. The data suggest gendered rhetorical patterns in how men and women have been represented in death from the late nineteenth century to present day. These patterns can be linked to sociocultural shifts in Appalachia in the past century and suggest that Appalachian cemeteries also function as sites of rhetorical power for the living.

A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, 2002. / Before the emergence of democracy in South Africa, the apartheid regime had brought linguistic imbalance. In 1994 the new government of South Africa set out to address the imbalances created by the apartheid government. Prior to 1994, English and Afrikaans were the only official languages in South Africa. In order to address this situation the new government elevated nine of the South African languages to the same status with English and Afrikaans. The government then introduced the new languages in education policy, which aims at promoting multilingualism in education. Therefore the main focus of this research is on the implementation of the new language in education policy taking into consideration the sociolinguistic situation of the country. The empirical study was conducted in 1999 and 2000. Questionnaires were distributed to respondents. Non-scheduled interview and observation data was collected from five black African high schools in Eshowe district. In addition data was collected from one Superintendent of Education Management in Eshowe district. The main findings indicated that Afrikaans had been phased out in most schools that were studied. Hence, English and Isizulu were the remaining languages that were taught and learned. Moreover, the sociolinguistic situation indicated that IsiZulu was the predominant languages spoken largely in schools and in communities where schools are situated. Having considered the main findings it was evident that there is still a tremendous challenge on the actual implementation of the new language in education policy, which emphasises promotion of multilingualism. However, the sociolinguistic situation suggested that bilingualism involving IsiZulu would be more appropriate. The research looked at the theoretical understanding of the concepts of bilingualism and multilingualism. The concepts are defined in the research to bring more understanding on individual multilingualism and societal multilingualism or bilingualism. This research further concentrates on literature review which discusses the new language in education policy, kinds of bilingualism or multilingualism, the current debate on the language in education policy and the language policy implementation plans. Furthermore, it was important in the literature review to look at the theories of second language acquisition. The theories that were reviewed and evaluated are; Krashen's monitor model, interlanguage theory, linguistic universals, acculturation / pidginisation theory and cognitive theory. After reviewing these theories language teaching theories or approaches are also discussed. The language teaching theories that were reviewed and evaluated are; the structural approach, the functional approach and the interactional approach. In addition, the research discussed the research methodology after which the data that was collected was presented. The findings were then interpreted followed by the conclusion and recommendations.

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This study examines orthographic variation in synchronous computer-mediated French discourse. All nontraditional variations of selected frequently occuring items are quantified in order to provide an etic (i.e., from an external perspective) analysis. The primary variable of interest is age since this study focuses on providing a comparison of chat participants in their twenties versus those in their fifties. The widespread claim is that younger people communicate using more informal and/or nontraditional forms than older people; however, the results of the present study suggest that this is not always the case. The main finding of the present study is that the twentysomethings and the fiftysomethings produce the nontraditional orthography in a similar fashion in 52.2% of the terms, and in a non-similar fashion in 47.8% of the terms. Following the presentation and discussion of the results, directions for future research are provided.

This sociolinguistic study of the bilingual speech of Spanish immigrants in Toulouse, France focuses on the phenomenon of code-switching (CS). The analysis of the data showed that most CS was situational, rather than metaphorical. Three types of CS were found: insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization. Their examination revealed that the insertion of French words was more common than of Spanish items, the alternation was most frequent in repetitions, and the congruent lexicalization was present at the grammatical and structural level. The speech of the individual participants was also analyzed, and it was found that the sociological aspects greatly affected the use of CS. Finally, the analysis of the frequency effects was conducted revealing that the topic of the nouns influenced the language in which the nouns were used. The results proved that it is impossible to conduct a reliable grammatical analysis without including the sociolinguistic aspects.

This study investigates the use of the (ing) variable in the speech of Swedish L2 speakers of English. Developments in recent years have led to a shift in the language environment in Sweden, and the position of English has arguably evolved from a foreign language to a second language. The aim of the study is to investigate to what extent and in what ways Swedish L2 speakers’ use of the variable (ing) is affected by extra-linguistic conditioning relating to age, gender and style, in similar ways as have been uncovered in various studies on native speakers of English and L2 immersion learners. Furthermore, the construction of identity is examined based on the application of the variable. Sociolinguistic interviews with twelve participants of different age and gender were conducted to elicit the phonetic variable in different speech styles. Significantly, the study shows that the standard variant [ɪŋ] is favored by the Swedish L1 speakers, but that the choice of variant also is affected by all of the extra-linguistic variables to varying extents. The results show tendencies that the nonstandard [ɪn] is applied more the younger the participants are, if they are male and in less monitored speech styles. Moreover, the participants appear to be constructing their identity through the use of the variable, positioning themselves with English native peers.

Codeswitching between languages is a uniquely bilingual mode of communication. The purpose of this dissertation is to enhance the current body of knowledge dealing with the phenomenon by analysing samples of speech produced by twenty-six Spanish/English bilingual children ranging in age from eight to twelve. Methods of analysis include theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and educational linguistics. A discussion of relevant codeswitching research covering the past thirty years is presented. The data were collected during a reading study focusing on miscue analysis. The children read stories in English and retold them in both Spanish and English. The analysis considers the data from the four previously mentioned points of view. The linguistic analysis looks at the locations of switched constituents within the sentence and the frequency with which those constituents are switched. The data of this study are compared with that of other researchers, and a consideration of a formal grammar of codeswitching is presented. The sociolinguistic analysis addresses the effect of social and stylistic variables on codeswitching. The psycholinguistic analysis of codeswitching covers lexical storage, editing phenomena, and developmental aspects. Finally, some aspects of the education of bilinguals are considered by analysing the effect of the printed word on language switching and dialect shifting . The application of the results of the analysis to both theoretical issues and practical concerns is explored along with suggested areas for future research. The analyses show that young children's codeswitching initially favors less complex structures and is influenced by few social variables. As they grow older, they become more comfortable with switching grammatically complex structures, and they become aware of a greater variety of social factors. A separate grammar is not necessary for a complete description of codeswitching; a modified interdependance model of the two grammars can account for the codeswitching mode. Lastly, the written language becomes part of the speech situation in the classroom and affects the choice of language or dialect spoken.

I combine approaches drawn from sociology, social psychology, and linguistic anthropology to create a unique, novel framework for the study of language, culture, and affect. The social psychological concept of affective meaning in language is measured in a single, bilingual culture and applied to the study of bilingualism, language shift, and the transmission of culture through language. The data are collected from three generations of people identifying as Cajun in South Louisiana and a small comparative sample of elderly, non-Cajuns in the Southwest. Quantitative, affective data - collected from all study participants - are bolstered by qualitative video- and audio-based data collected using anthropology-based field techniques from Cajun French/English bilingual participants, oral family histories collected from middle-aged participants, and survey data collected from high school student participants. These data and personal accounts of lives, histories, and language conception and change provide the basis for answering the following research questions: 1) When using their different languages, do bilingual speakers hold different meanings for words that have the same translated meanings? 2) Can language shift be tracked affectively? 3) Does loss of language mean loss of culture? The answer to each of these questions is yes. It is my hope that the methods developed in this study will provide the basis for future language recording and analysis and cultural preservation projects.

<p>This dissertation is a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of the variable word order and prosody of copular constructions (<i>Nicol&aacute;s es </i> <i><b>feliz</b></i> versus <i><b>Feliz</b></i> <i> es Nicol&aacute;s</i>, <i>Es Nicol&aacute;s</i> <i><b> feliz</b></i>, <i>Es</i> <i><b>feliz</b></i> <i> Nicol&aacute;s</i>, &lsquo;Nicolas is <b>happy</b>&rsquo;) in the Spanish of first- and second-generation Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City (henceforth NYC). The data used for the study come from a spoken corpus of Spanish in NYC based on 140 sociolinguistic interviews (details of the corpus will be presented in Chapter Three). This dissertation addresses the question of whether second-generation bilinguals have a less flexible word order in Spanish as a result of their increased use of, and contact with, English, where a more fixed order prevails. </p><p> We will show that the informants in the present study, like their peers in Los Angeles and other parts of the US, exhibit a more rigid word order compared to their first-generation peers. We have established that this increase in rigidity of word order among the second-generation can be attributed in large part to their increased use of and contact with English. The studies mentioned above have interpreted their results to mean that these speakers are losing or have lost the discourse pragmatic constraints that govern word order. However, the data here show that the first- and second-generation speakers in the present study share many of the same conditioning variables and constraints for word order, although these variables appear to account for a smaller amount of variance among the second-generation. In this way, we have established that the second-generation is not losing the discourse pragmatic constraints that govern word order, but that they are differently sensitive to these constraints. In fact, we show that second-generation speakers are very capable of communicating the pragmatic functions that the first-generation speakers do using word order because they maintain the prosodic details of their first-generation counterparts. In other words, the second-generation communicates these functions in ways that are slightly different from the first-generation, relying more on prosodic resources than syntactic ones. Furthermore, the data indicate that their prosodic patterns are not modeled after the prosody of English. In general terms we show that the second-generation does not have a different grammar from their first-generation counterparts, as is claimed by other researchers. Instead we show that these speakers favor certain first-generation strategies over others. </p>