The present dissertation examines social stratification, as well as social inequality and its reproduction through government textual representations in a community in the outskirts of Mexico City: Ciudad Satélite. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis approach and interdisciplinary methodological tools, this study defines the type(s) and salient features of discourse used in government written communication in Cd. Satélite, as well as how some discursive strategies operate. The objective of the analysis is to illuminate how citizens interpret government communication in the subject community, and to illustrate how the Plain Language campaign has impacted such community. Chapter I demarcates the analytical background and guidelines, and it reviews several studies that focus on oral and written discourse in order to establish the basis of the communicative relationship between citizen and government. It also explains the relation of the subject community to the structure of the Mexican government. Chapter II provides a detailed description of Ciudad Satélite, the corpus and the surveyed citizens, and it also establishes the relation to the analytical guidelines. It also explains the methods used for the collection of linguistic and graphic data, and it demarcates how data was sorted and coded. The data analyses are in Chapters III and IV. Chapter III broaches linguistic accessibility of government written communication through a quantitative analysis of readability indexes as a way to shed light on accessibility of government documents. It explains the terminology, significant markers of readability and how they relate to each other. It then explores readability levels of documents, tasks, and government offices, and how and which particular social groups interact with texts using variables such as gender, age, education, occupation and identity. Chapter IV takes a multimodal approach of salient identified modes through qualitative and quantitative approaches. It considers citizens’ reaction to semiotic data and incorporates their responses in the analysis, which aim to describe the political representations in the linguistic landscape of the subject community and how citizens perceive such representations. This chapter also explores the type of persuasion used by government in the subject community through specific graphic images. Chapter V provides a discussion of all relevant data that aims towards explaining how certain meanings are perceived and thus created and maintained in the government-citizen text interaction. It explores accessibility of government linguistic resources considering readability indexes, modal representations and symbolic power, in order to show the unequal access to institutionally controlled linguistic resources. / Spanish

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The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of linguistic representations among young Québec adults between 25 and 35 years old. Few studies have dealt with this subject since the 1990s, and the more recent work has been concerned with future teachers (Remysen, 2002) or high school students (Razafimandimbimanana, 2005). I chose to focus on young Québec adults raised after the Quiet Revolution and the adoption of the Charter of the French Language (1977) and who are not working in a field related to language in order to determine if, on the one hand, linguistic representations have changed since the 1990s and, on the other hand, if the facts of not being a"language professional" and of not being assessed by a learning institution anymore could affect their attitude towards language. Based on a corpus of interviews conducted with 30 young Québec adults living in and around Sherbrooke, this study aims firstly at collecting the opinions of my informants on various themes related to linguistic representations in Québec, i. e. superiority of French from France, the threat of English in Québec, the use of anglicisms, the degeneration of French in Québec, the concept of mistakes and the complexity of written French. Second, I identify the normative criteria revealed in the informants' discourse that are used to assess the French that is spoken in Québec. This identification is based on an argumentative analysis of the epilinguistic discourse in order to shed light on commonplaces, which are clues of what the informants view as being part of the common standards. Based on the criteria I found, in combination with the standards of A.-M. Houdebine's linguistic imaginary, I developed a hierarchy allowing to determine, on the one hand, which criteria most often lead to a conclusion, and on the other hand, which ones are only used as a concession, indicating that they are acknowledged as a common standard but not taken up by the informant. As some commonplaces are not agreed upon in the discourse on language, I analyse the discourse in which these contradictions are found while paying special attention to the scope of the arguments put forward and to the dissociation of concepts, which helps foster a better understanding of these apparent contradictions.The results of this research reveal, among the group of a speakers interviewed, a certain tolerance towards discrepancies from the standard described in reference works as well as a certain indifference regarding the standard coming from France. Moreover, the normative criteria that bear the greatest argumentative weight are criteria associated to the use of the language, not to the standard of reference. This distinction between use and standard is also found in the explanation of contradictions, which means that the informants make a distinction between assessment of their own use of French and assessment of the use of others (for instance using French of France) and between the spoken language and the"ideal" language.The conclusions drawn from the various analyses carried out in this study reveal a greater linguistic security among my informants than among the populations that had been examined in previous studies.

The aim of this study is to investigate the process of accent levelling in the Regional French of Alsace and its relationship with the social variables of age, gender, social class, urban or rural origin of speakers and feelings of regional attachment. Accent levelling, which can be defined as the process of speakers abandoning local phonological forms in favour of supralocal variants, has been the focus of much recent sociolinguistic research on British English, French and other languages. Since knowledge of Alsatian (a Germanic language spoken in Alsace) is decreasing, it is possible that the resulting lack of interference between Alsatian and French is leading to levelling of the traditional accent features of Alsatian Regional French. In order to provide data for this research project, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted and written questionnaires used in Strasbourg and in the village of Helsheim (a fictional name used for reasons of confidentiality) with 56 informants. The data obtained were then subjected to quantitative analysis with regard to the linguistic variables of aspirate h (which can be realised as a supralocal zero variant or as a regional [h] variant) and the devoicing of canonically voiced plosives and fricatives (for example, sage pronounced [saʃ]). The results of the data analysis revealed that the regional variants of both linguistic variables are used more frequently by older than younger, working class than middle class, rural than urban speakers and that level of regional attachment correlates with use of the linguistic variables, as predicted in the research hypotheses. However, the relationship between levelling and gender proved to be more unexpected, with no clear pattern emerging for the (h) variable and a complex one involving the acquisition of supralocal patterns of sociolinguistic variation as well as the supralocal phonological variant in the case of consonant devoicing.

Traditional Soviet conceptualisation of slang, argot and obscenities as ‘substandard’ is argued to have strong ideological underpinnings. Despite such lexis gaining increased visibility in public speech starting from Perestroika times, sociolinguistic research into their use is still scarce and often tainted by the same judgemental approach. Rejecting the association of slang, argot and obscenities with speakers’ insufficient linguistic competency, this study shifts attention to their identity construction values. Drawing largely on constructionist sociolinguistics, this thesis examines the use of slang, argot and obscenities in the scripts of six post-Soviet Russian films released in the period 1993-2005. It investigates how indexical connections between language and society were exploited, negotiated and, at times, reinterpreted in the films. Lexical variation is conceived here as a stylistic resource, and its functions in cinematic discourse are analysed in terms of statics (engagement with stereotypes) and dynamics (identity work) of characterisation. With regards to the former, the focused and economic conditions of film production determine that stereotypes are often drawn on to provide quick identification, especially in construction of minor characters. Stereotypes of criminals, youth and uneducated male adults were analysed, revealing that cinema does not only exploit direct associations between lexical varieties and social groups, but also engages with such stereotypes agentively, bringing to viewers’ attention their arbitrary nature and rigidity of boundaries, established by social categories. Language variation can also represent dynamics of characters’ identity work, which was analysed on two levels – interpersonal and ideational. The analysis revealed a multitude of functions, which on the interpersonal level drew on associations with familiarity, power and catharsis, yet defying stable connections between lexical varieties and structural elements. On the ideational level slang, argot and obscenities were shown to render characters’ orientation towards social structure and discourses, prevalent in the contemporary Russian society. This thesis thus shows that slang, argot and obscenities are a versatile meaning-making resource, employed in cinematic discourse for a variety of purposes. Focusing on the way character identities are styled through the use of lexical variation enabled this project to account for both the local instances of identity construction and the macro-level attempts of the filmmakers to critically engage with the social structures, exploring, questioning and reinterpreting them.

published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study casts the code-switching patterns observed among Spanish-English bilinguals in Bayside, Texas within the framework of Bell’s (1984) theory of audience design, which is claimed to apply to both monolingual style-shifting as well as bilingual code-switching. The latter part of this claim has been little explored. The intent of this study, then, is to determine if the explanatory power of audience design, as demon¬strated in studies on style-shifting, does indeed hold when applied to cases of language alternation. Analysis of the data from Bayside generally supports Bell’s theory as it shows speakers adjusting their use of Spanish and/or English to suit their audience. The study will highlight a less frequently analyzed aspect of Bell’s model, i.e., the role of the auditor, and will call for the auditor to be classified as a primary influencer of lin¬guistic choice in bilingual contexts, alongside the addressee. The code selection patterns exhibited by a pair of Bayside residents in a series of interviews and in conversations videotaped at the local general store will be com¬pared to illustrate the effects of addressee and auditor. A qualitative analysis will dem¬onstrate that differing determinations regarding the linguistic repertoires of the auditors led to contrasting linguistic choices on the part of the study’s subjects. The data collected will show that, when selecting a language of communication, as opposed to a register, style, or dialect, a speaker may be more greatly affected by an auditor than by the addressee. The methods used in collecting the data will also support an expan¬sion of Bell’s model to include an additional participant category suitable for capturing the effect of the recording device, as per Wertheim (2006). / text

<p> From <i>silva dimes</i> to <i>po-boys</i>, r-lessness has long been a conspicuous feature of all dialects of New Orleans English. This dissertation presents a quantitative and qualitative description of current rates of r-lessness in the city. 71 speakers from 21 neighborhoods were interviewed. Rpronunciation was elicited in four contexts: interview chat, Katrina narratives, a reading passage and a word list. R-lessness was found in 39% of possible instances. Older speakers pronounce /-r/ less than younger speakers, and those with a high school education or less pronounce /-r/ far less than those with post-secondary education. Race and gender did not prove to be significant predictors of r-pronunciation. In contrast to past studies, many speakers in the current study discuss their metalinguistic awareness of /-r/ and their partial control of /-r/ variation, discussing switching between r-fulness and r-lessness in different contexts. </p><p> In New Orleans, this metalinguistic awareness is attributable in part to the devastation following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the near-disappearance of the city intensified an already extant nostalgia for local culture, including ways of speaking. Nostalgia and amplification by advertisers and popular media have helped recontextualize r-lessness as a variable associated with a number of social meanings, including localness and authenticity. These processes help transform r-lessness, for many speakers, from a routine feature of talk to a floating cultural variable, serving as a semiotic resource on which speakers can draw on to perform localness. </p><p> This dissertation both closes a gap in research on New Orleans speech and uses New Orleans as a case study to suggest that the social meanings of linguistic features are created and maintained in part by a constellation of interrelated social processes of late modernity. Further, I argue that individual speakers are increasingly agentively engaged with these larger processes, as part of a global transformation from more traditional, place-bound populations to more deracinated individuals who choose to align themselves with particular communities and local cultural forms, particularly those that have been commodified.</p>

<p>The concept of community development is founded on the premise that changes in the living conditions of people are best effected by the people themselves. The term community evokes the idea of a homogeneous social group who can recognise their common interests and work together harmoniously for their common good. The concerns of the leading development agents and donors in the past two decades have been on empowering communities to participate in their own development by taking control of decisions and initiatives that seek to improve their living conditions. The zeal to address these concerns has in the past decade been pushed with such resounding statements that people&rsquo / s participation in development projects has not only been seen as a basic human right, but also as an imperative condition for human survival. It has been strongly argued in the UNDP reports that the overall development strategy is to enable people to gain access to a much broader range of opportunities.</p> <p><br /> From this perspective, development as a social activity seeks to ensconce economic liberalisation, freedom of association, good governance and access to free market economy as the guiding tenets of an improved life in all communities in the world. The realization of this dream posed a major challenge to many governments in the Third World and the 1980s saw the emergence of &lsquo / associational revolution&rsquo / &ndash / the proliferation of small-scale non governmental organizations (NGOs) with relative autonomy from the state. The mainstream development agencies perceived the NGOs as the best instruments to instigate changes in the living conditions of the poor and the disadvantaged people. For this reason, NGOs became increasingly instrumental in implementing development objectives in the rural and disadvantaged communities. Development in this sense consists of processes in which various groups are stimulated to improve aspects of their lives particularly by people from outside their community. This has drawn attention to how these outsider- development agents communicate development information particularly due to the sociolinguistic situation in many rural African communities. The real concern is with is that the target majority of the people in the rural areas are not speakers of the dominant languages of the development discourse, in most cases this is the official foreign languages taught in schools.</p> <p><br /> Communication is a fundamental part in community development programmes and language emerges as a key factor in effective communication and implementation of these programmes. While it is evident that social interactions are sustained by agreeable communicative principles, the role of language and the different mode of communication applied to development interventions have received very little attention from the parties concerned. This has yielded detrimental repercussions in the quality of interaction at the grassroots level. More often than not, it is assumed that once there is a common language, effective communication will take place and for this reason language use and mode of communication are never given much thought in the field of development interaction.</p>

This thesis presents results obtained during 2007/08 in the course of doctoral research into attitudes towards linguistic variation in England and Austria and is based in part on a study by Lees (2000). In this project attitudes amongst British and Austrian informants towards low-prestige ('dialect') and high-prestige varieties are investigated on the basis of assumptions made about speakers of these varieties. The data are collected by means of the 'matched-guise technique', whereby informants listen to a number of recordings of low and high-prestige varieties and note their reactions on the basis of a selection of traits using a semantic differential. In this way the research aims to ascertain whether a pattern emerges, where the informants' perception of the guises is influenced by the prestige of the spoken variety. The results in England and in Austria are compared in order to determine similarities and differences in language attitudes towards low and high-prestige varieties in the two countries. Some results presented here correspond to certain social expectations, with high-prestige speakers being associated with better-paid employment and a better education. Other results, though, are less predictable, as where, for example, the female informants in England and in Austria judge the speakers more positively than the male informants, regardless of the prestige of the speaker's variety. In any case, there is evidence from both countries of the informants' evaluations of the speaker being influenced by their associations of the speaker's variety with that speaker's social status. The data also indicate that the social status of speakers in England is judged to a greater extent on the basis of their spoken variety than is the case in Austria, where speakers are more used to switching freely between points on the standard-dialect continuum and are consequently less judgemental in their perception of a speaker based purely on the evidence of their spoken variety.