Thesis (M.A.) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / Most people feel scared and ashamed when practising their rituals and using the relevant language. The aim of this study is to be an eye opener to make people to change their behaviour and attitude. They should be free to perform their rituals with pride and dignity and regard them as valuable. Qualitative method was used to gather the information and data in this research in which interviews were conducted. Males and females were visited at their homes from villages around Mamehlabe, Ngwanallela, gaSebotse, gaMashashane and only few were quoted. Their responses were transparent in a way that it is clear that the Northern Sotho people have their own way of using language and performing rituals. It is recommended that in the performance of rituals and language usage, a full explanation is needed to accumulate practical implementation. The society at large need to be educated in order to transfer the information to the younger generation.

This diachronic study tracks Louisiana French syllable structure and sound patterns over several decades, offering an in-depth, quantitative evaluation of language death and hybridization. Most scholarly inquiry involving this severely endangered language has revolved around morphosyntactic issues. The present work instead considers how a century of contact with English may be influencing Louisiana French phonology. Recordings made in 1977 and 2010 provide speech data from 19 male and 17 female native speakers born between 1888 and 1953. All speakers come from the same town, and none read or write in French. The study evaluates 260 minutes of phonemically transcribed speech, comprising over 70,000 sound segments. The quantitative analysis shows that sociolinguistic variables (age, sex, timeperiod, community identity) still account for variation in pronunciation patterns, and complex, marked segments such as front rounded vowels are not dying out in favor of segments common to both French and English. However, diachronic consonant cluster trends appear to mirror language acquisition patterns. The Optimality Theory analysis takes on questions of phonological hybridity, scrutinizing the behavior of Louisiana French phonemic and phonetic nasal vowels, along with liaison, to understand how French- and English-based processes come together. The analysis highlights the opposing forces of phonetic and phonemic vowel nasality, experiencing challenges precisely where these systems come into conflict. In order to capture the attested surface variation, the formal analysis develops a method of assigning first () and second () place to output candidates. The study concludes that Louisiana French phonology has stayed remarkably resilient over time, and that a first- and second-place evaluation method allows Optimality Theory to better reflect actual language patterns. It underscores the hybrid and complex nature of Louisiana French, which instead of moving to a simplified system of vowel nasality, contains and works to harmonize both phonetic and phonemic nasal vowel patterns. The 2010 interviews and transcriptions also represent the first available Louisiana research point in the international Phonology of Contemporary French project (Phonologie du Français Contemporain, PFC). This diachronic investigation of language death thus makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of language contact and variation. / acase@tulane.edu

This study compares traditional methods of sociolinguistic analysis to Milroy's (1987) theory of social network analysis to analyze language maintenance and shift (LMLS) in a group of 127 Afro-Costa Rican women in two bilingual (Spanish-English) communities, Puerto Limon and Siquirres, in the province of Limon, Costa Rica Since the publication of Milroy's work, a more recent trend has been to determine whether relationships among individuals exert normative pressures that affect their choice to maintain or alter the standard linguistic practices of their community. This study situates itself within this trend and so attempts to determine whether social network organization explains LMLS better than traditional methods of sociolinguistic analysis This objective is accomplished by applying each approach to analyze LMLS of the English spoken by the sample of Afro-Costa Rican women and their maintenance of four Creole phonological variables. The traditional sociolinguistic method of analysis is implemented by the examination of data collected through a questionnaire, complemented by interviews. Milroy's theory is implemented by delineating the network structure of the participants through the types of relations that bind them in order to define a measure of multiplexity and thus centrality. Both approaches were also applied to the examination of phonological variables based on the narration of 104 (of the 127) women of a picture story-task The data suggest that traditional sociolinguistic analysis is more reliable in explaining factors associated with LMLS than the social network approach. The latter did not prove useful in explaining patterns of language behavior as norm enforcement mechanisms in the maintenance of the linguistic practices of the members in the network Neither traditional methods of sociolinguistic analysis nor the social network model were associated with the maintenance of the phonological features of the Creole variety / acase@tulane.edu

While past research in the highland Kaqchikel Maya communities of the Quinizilapa Valley foresaw a language death scenario for this valley among the current youth generation, my research defies these predictions through the observed use and increasingly robust forecast for Kaqchikel among succeeding generations. This research articulates the relationship between the growth of positive language affect and the appearance of an age-grade language model in the Quinizilapa Valley. Positive affect stems from individual language ideologies, economic incentive for learning Kaqchikel, the influence of pan-Maya ideologies on language, and generational shifts in the beliefs about language in relation to changes in the larger social system of Guatemala. By connecting these variables with quantitative data on language use, this research goes beyond past work on language ideology and linguistic affect, demonstrating language use is increasingly interconnected with specific social domains, economic spheres of interaction, and personal beliefs about Kaqchikel language and culture. The apparent increase in fluency over time among older generations in the Quinizilapa Valley is a generational change in the process of language learning in the valley, leading to the establishment of a new pattern of age-graded transmission of Kaqchikel, thereby promoting language maintenance and revitalization in these communities. While children are not necessarily learning Kaqchikel as their first language in the household, interaction in institutional and community-specific domains such as education, traditional religious lay organizations, emblematic usage of Kaqchikel in town festivals, and the active promotion of language by individuals, the state, and NGOs in the communities are contributing to increasing fluency in Kaqchikel, creating an alternative means to past generational transmission. It is probable that a portion of the population will continue to vary in the use and transmission of Kaqchikel; however, a significant segment of the population is gradually reversing this trend. This research encompasses the complexities of research through an analysis of the emergence of a new, integrative model of linguistic and cultural maintenance and revitalization in these communities / acase@tulane.edu

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis proposes a model for the description of social practice which analyses social practices into the following elements: (1) the participants of the practice; (2) the activities which constitute the practice; (3) the performance indicators which stipulate how the activities are to be performed; (4) the dress and body grooming for the participants; (5) the times when, and (6)the locations where the activities take place; (7) the objects, tools and materials, required for performing the activities; and (8) the eligibility conditions for the participants and their dress, the objects, and the locations, that is, the characteristics these elements must have to be eligible to participate in, or be used in, the social practice.

Migration is an established phenomenon in today’s world. However, there has been only a relatively small amount of research on Iranian migrants in Australia, and in particular female Iranian migrants. By studying 15 first-generation Iranian Muslim women migrants’ perceptions of their immigration to Australia and their difficulties in adjusting to the new culture, this study addresses four objectives: first, the extent of modification in religious identity; second, attitudes towards cultural maintenance; third, attitudes towards language maintenance; and fourth, attitudes towards gender role maintenance. The present study contributes to these underdeveloped areas of study on Iranian migrant women in Australia. This research involves a questionnaire and extensive interviews with the subjects. On the basis of a quantitative analysis of the questionnaire data, and a qualitative content analysis of the interviews, the study investigates the effects of immigration and a change of sociocultural context on the attitudes of the participants towards maintaining or modifying different aspects of their identity, namely the religious, cultural, linguistic and gender aspects. In doing so, we examine, in particular, the influence of the participants’ levels of English language proficiency on their attitudes towards change in these four aspects of their identity. Berry’s Acculturation Model (1997) and its extended version, as proposed by Navasa and her colleagues (2005), are the theoretical frameworks adopted in this research. The present study tests the participants’ responses against Berry’s model. The two issues explored in this work are: a) identifying the phase in Berry’s Acculturation Model in which the participants are located, with respect to the above-mentioned aspects of their identity; and b) examining the effect of English language proficiency, which emerges as a major factor, on the acculturation process of the participants. The findings show that there is a need to review the existing acculturation models, since Berry’s original model, and its enhancement by Navasa et al., are unable to explain and/or predict the acculturation situation of the migrant women in this study. A new model is therefore proposed – the Sociolinguistically Enhanced Acculturation Model (SLEAM), based on Berry’s original model, in which the impact and significance of the role of host language proficiency as the most important factor in the acculturation of migrants is integrated into the structure of the model. The current study is broadly located at the intersection of Sociolinguistics, in so far as sociocultural issues involving language and the use of language are concerned, and Migrant Studies, since the informants are migrant women. More narrowly, the study fits within the boundaries of Sociolinguistics of Identity. By this, we mean the study of identity in a sociocultural context, primarily through the instrumentality of language. The study further relies on the literature from the two fields of Acculturation and Gender Studies. The findings of this work are relevant to the fields of Sociolinguistics, Intercultural Communication, Migrant Studies, and Gender Studies. The results of this research are designed to increase our understanding of the acculturation processes involved in the relocation and settlement of immigrants, specifically from more traditional cultures, into relatively more Western-oriented cultures.

<p>The aim of this study was to investigate if there is a connection between language and social identity in the perception of word meaning among second language learners in the same way as for native speakers, and if the sociolinguistic variable age is significant. This was done with an investigation of two generations of Swedish learners' perception of the meaning of the words 'respect', 'integrity' and 'communication'. The investigation showed that age is important to a certain extent regarding interpreting words and their meaning, but that it is not as important if the speaker has English as their mother tongue or as their second language.</p>

Culture, thought worldview and language have been discussed for a long time in different fields from various perspectives. However, the basis of this study is the view of language as both the product and producer of people just as people are the producer and product of language. Each language requires of those who use it, a particular way of viewing reality. The structure of language containing a particular worldview therefore must influence how people learn and acquire a second language. The purpose of this study is to test this assumption about worldview in adult second language acquisition. The main concern is whether or not the native English speakers' worldview influences their ability to learn Chinese as a second language. The focus of this investigation is the Aspect marker -le, which represents a different way of observing action when compared to Tense used in English. Chinese is a context sensitive language. The way of perceiving action is in terms of Aspect, which is to observe an action within an event from a specific point of view without considering Speech-time. In contrast, English is less context sensitive, and its way of perceiving action is more precise and time-conscious, in terms of Tense. The results of the investigation of a group of native- English-speakers learning Chinese as a second language reveals that the worldview they have in observing action is shaped by their native tongue and interferes with their use of the Chinese Aspect marker -le. / Graduation date: 1998

Postsocialist Eastern Europe is one region where economic restructurings coincide with state-building processes, both of which lead to a reordering of national values and a redefining of national identity. The former USSR continues to be a reference point for adults in western Ukraine as they make sense of ongoing uncertainties. The generation born after socialism and Ukraine's independence in 1991, however, has learned what life was like before it was transformed only through the accounts of others. As a result, the way these young people relate to the cultural, political, and economic elements associated with socialism and postsocialism are not the same as what the older generation expects of them. / Drawing upon ethnographic and linguistic data collected over sixteen months at two public schools in western Ukraine, this research examines how space and time work in concert to allow young people in contemporary Ukraine to make sense of the world they live in. Specifically, I apply Bakhtin's notion of the chronotope, a space-time association that underlies people's experiences and conceptions of personhood, to contend that teenagers draw upon multiple linkages between space and time in order to position themselves among their peers, within their local communities, and towards the wider global community. / My analysis suggests that teenagers position themselves in relation to different social identities by constructing multiple chronotopes of tradition and modernity. Specifically, I examine how these space-time associations underlie teenagers' attitudes towards out-migration, language use and linguistic variability. These chronotopes play an important role in how Ukrainian teenagers perceive the differences between the older and younger generations, between rural and urban residents, and between Ukrainians and the rest of the world. In addition, socioeconomic class and differing ideologies of language influence how space and time are valued within these dichotomous relationships. / An investigation such as this suggests that everyday encounters with change are only one way in which social transformation is experienced. People also draw upon space and time in order to contextualize change and understand its effect on their lives, an integral facet of experience that extends beyond any particular historical event or rupture.

Cette dissertation doctorale constitue une étude sociolinguistique visant à évaluer le rôle des identités régionales dans la variation linguistique observable sur l'axe diatopique (ou géographique), en Belgique francophone. Nous avons essayé de démontrer que si la variation diatopique dans les communautés francophones contemporaines était parfois considérée comme non pertinente, c'était principalement parce que cette forme de variation était souvent appréhendée dans une perspective n'envisageant pas d'autre source de différenciation topolectale que celle due à l'influence des langues de substrat. C'est pourquoi nous avons proposé une approche renouvelée de la variation diatopique, fondée sur l'idée de la structuration sociale de l'espace : cette approche consiste à concevoir la variation diatopique comme le reflet de l'existence de collectivités associées à des entités géographiques particulières et instituant des normes linguistiques qui leur sont propres au sein du « marché linguistique » dans lequel prennent place les pratiques sociales de chacune de ces collectivités. La variation diatopique résulte en ce sens de différences relatives aux attitudes des locuteurs et à l'identité qu'ils partagent ou non avec certaines collectivités régionales ; elle n'est pas simplement la conséquence de la diversité des substrats dialectaux. Nous avons intégré cette conception de la variation diatopique dans un cadre théorique plus large, essentiellement dans le but de pouvoir cerner l'imbrication fondamentale des faits de variation liés à l'axe géographique d'une part, et à l'axe socio-économique ou socio-culturel d'autre part. Ceci nous a amené revoir des concepts sociolinguistiques traditionnels comme celui de variété régionale. Nous avons souhaité illustrer l'intérêt de ce cadre théorique à travers l'analyse de quatre variables phonologiques (l'assourdissement des consonnes sonores finales, l'allongement vocalique, la prononciation de /r/, le statut et le comportement des schwas). Ces variables ont été étudiées sur la base d'enregistrements d'un échantillon d'informateurs contrasté selon l'origine géographique, le niveau de scolarité, l'âge et le sexe des locuteurs. De manière générale, ces analyses nous ont conduit à revoir la place des attitudes et des aspects identitaires dans l'explication de la variation linguistique : nous avons ainsi montré qu'il était nécessaire d'interpréter le comportement linguistique des individus en tenant compte non seulement des pratiques linguistiques qui sont courantes dans l'environnement social immédiat du locuteur (et qui forment son parler « vernaculaire »), mais aussi de son orientation vers certains modèles normatifs associés à différents groupes définis en termes géographiques ou socio-culturels. Nous avons par ailleurs mis en exergue l'influence de la trajectoire sociale des locuteurs sur leur positionnement en faveur de certains groupes de référence et sur l'adoption de normes linguistiques données qui est en le corollaire. Notre recherche nous a permis, d'une part, d'actualiser la description de la prononciation du français en Wallonie et à Bruxelles et, d'autre part, de mieux comprendre les processus de divergence qui conduisent les locuteurs à préférer dans certains cas le respect des normes endogènes (régionales) à l'adoption inconditionnelle des normes standard. / This doctoral dissertation is a sociolinguistic study aiming to evaluate the role of regional identities in the linguistic variation observable at the geographic level, in French-speaking Belgium. We tried to show that geographic variation in francophone communities is often viewed as non relevant because it is explained in a restricted way which considers the influence of the rural dialects as the sole source of regional differentiation. This is the reason why we proposed a renewed approach of geographic variation, based on the idea of the social structuration of space: this approach states that geographic variation results from the existence of collectivities associated with particular geographic entities and setting up specific linguistic norms within the “linguistic market” where each collectivity's social practices take place. In fact, regional variation reflects inter-individual differences regarding the speakers' identities and attitudes towards their local community; it is not simply the consequence of the diversity of dialectal substrata. We conceived this approach of geographic variation within a larger theoretical framework, in order to understand the relation between the effects of geographic and socio-economic or socio-cultural factors on linguistic variation. This implies a redefinition of several linguistic concepts (ex. regional variety). We illustrated the interest of our theoretical framework through the analysis of four phonological variables (final consonants devoicing, vowel lengthening, pronunciation of /r/, status and behavior of French schwas). These variables were studied on the basis of recordings from a speaker sample composed of individuals from different geographic origin, educational background, age and gender. Globally, our analyses led us to evaluate anew the importance of identity and linguistic attitudes in the explanation of linguistic variation: we showed that it was necessary to interpret individuals' linguistic behavior not only in the light of the speaker's social environment (which determines his “vernacular” speech) but also through his orientation towards some normative models associated with groups defined in geographic or socio-cultural terms. Moreover, we underlined the influence of speakers' social trajectories on their orientation towards certain reference groups and on the correlative adoption of given linguistic norms. Our research allowed us to actualize the description of the pronunciation of French in Wallonia and in Brussels on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to better understand the processes of divergence which lead speakers to prefer in certain circumstances the adoption of endogenous (regional) linguistic markers instead of the unconditional respect of standard norms.