Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Linguistics, Dec. 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 152-159) Also available on the Internet.

This qualitative study investigated Spanish language use and linguistic attitudes in Laredo, Texas and the surrounding area from 1860 to 1930. In the public domain, sources include the Spanish and English language newspapers and Webb County Court documents. These were analyzed for evidence of the impact of English language contact and prevailing attitudes towards the use of Spanish from both the Hispanic and Anglo perspective. In the private domain, three major collections of private correspondence as well as other miscellaneous correspondence and records were transcribed and analyzed for evidence of metalinguistic or other attitudes towards Spanish. A linguistic analysis of the orthographic, phonological, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic features of Spanish used in the correspondence was also conducted. The major collections of correspondence and other private papers include: 1) the John Z. Leyendecker collection, 2) letters from the Clemente and Federico Idar Family Papers, and 3) the Miguel San Miguel Jr. private collection. The multiple authors in these collections come from low to middle income families and from varied educational and linguistic backgrounds, thus providing a broad socio-economic linguistic sample. Findings include a strong support for Spanish language use and teaching/learning of the Spanish language as well as varied levels of language confidence among bilingual and aspiring second language learners. Negative attitudes regarding class and lack of education rather than ethnicity were clearly held by some writers. Additionally, mixed attitudes about the strong presence of the Mexican culture in Laredo were found. The linguistic analysis found little evidence of English impact during the 1860s, but growing evidence of its influence during the early 20th century. Most prevalent were the use of English loan words, nativized loan words, and nonce borrowings. Some evidence of language shift was noted in the younger writers of the twentieth century. A few of the more salient Spanish linguistic features found include the use of the synthetic future verb form, minimal confusion between ser and estar, metathesis, apocope, vowel raising and lowering, and archaic expressions.

This essay will investigate male and female usage of four swear words: hell, heck, damn and darn. A minor part of the essay focuses on comparing real life speech (by using the Longman Corpus of Spoken American English) with scripted language in soap operas (the SOAP corpus). The main part of the essay focuses on a detailed investigation of the four swear words in the SOAP corpus to see how they are used considering gender. Preliminary hypotheses were both correct and incorrect. Even though it was true that women use the milder forms of swearing in the company of men, men however use the harsher forms in the company of women. Moreover, heck seems to be a very neutral swear word used by men and women equally. Hell was most frequently used by men, and darn was very frequent among women. Overall, there was very little female to female swearing, and the category with the highest instances of usage of three of the four swear words was in fact male to female.

The alternation between labial and velar fricatives (e.g. [x]uego fuego ‘fire’) and labial and velar approximants (e.g. a[ɣ]uelo abuelo ‘grandfather’) frequently co-occur in disparate Spanish dialects (Colombia, New Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Chile, among others). I hypothesize that these alternations are triggered by the perceptual similarity between such variants in the context of [u] and [w]. I further hypothesize that the spread of these variables to the upper layers of society is prevented by formal education, since orthography can block sound change. Although the labio-velar alternations have been observed before, there are few experimental studies addressing their acoustic and perceptual motivations. Yet, the only way to understand the mechanisms of sound variation and change is to analyze the physical, acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the sounds involved. This dissertation uniquely combines three methodologies of data elicitation in order to achieve a better understanding of the alternations. Vernacular speech was collected through sociolinguistic interviews. Contextually controlled target words were elicited via a picture naming task. Finally, the hypothesis that the alternations were driven by the perceptual similarity between the sounds was tested via an AX discrimination test. The sociolinguistic data was correlated with the results from the perception experiment to determine whether more variation in speech correlates with higher rates of confusion in perception. The results reveal that Education and Following Context are two of the most powerful factor groups that influence the alternations. The alternation is almost exclusively found before the diphthongs [we, wi], and in stressed syllables. Knowing the orthography plays an important role in blocking the diffusion of this perceptually driven variation. The same factors affecting the variation in sociolinguistics interviews were found to be significant in increasing the confusion between [f] ~ [x] and [β] ~ [ɣ] in the perception experiment. The acoustic analysis (centre of gravity and F2 at vowel onset), however, did not support the hypothesis regarding the similarity of labial and velar fricatives and approximants.

Something happens visiting a Spanish speaking country, where linguistic characteristics are not uniform throughout the country or region. Specifically, this research emerged from lack of knowledge of the pronoun vos, to acquire information to its introduction in the country of Costa Rica, its use, and variants, and the reasoning behind its prevalence in metropolitan regions, and certain regions around the Pitzer College Firestone Center.

The alternation between labial and velar fricatives (e.g. [x]uego fuego ‘fire’) and labial and velar approximants (e.g. a[ɣ]uelo abuelo ‘grandfather’) frequently co-occur in disparate Spanish dialects (Colombia, New Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Chile, among others). I hypothesize that these alternations are triggered by the perceptual similarity between such variants in the context of [u] and [w]. I further hypothesize that the spread of these variables to the upper layers of society is prevented by formal education, since orthography can block sound change. Although the labio-velar alternations have been observed before, there are few experimental studies addressing their acoustic and perceptual motivations. Yet, the only way to understand the mechanisms of sound variation and change is to analyze the physical, acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the sounds involved. This dissertation uniquely combines three methodologies of data elicitation in order to achieve a better understanding of the alternations. Vernacular speech was collected through sociolinguistic interviews. Contextually controlled target words were elicited via a picture naming task. Finally, the hypothesis that the alternations were driven by the perceptual similarity between the sounds was tested via an AX discrimination test. The sociolinguistic data was correlated with the results from the perception experiment to determine whether more variation in speech correlates with higher rates of confusion in perception. The results reveal that Education and Following Context are two of the most powerful factor groups that influence the alternations. The alternation is almost exclusively found before the diphthongs [we, wi], and in stressed syllables. Knowing the orthography plays an important role in blocking the diffusion of this perceptually driven variation. The same factors affecting the variation in sociolinguistics interviews were found to be significant in increasing the confusion between [f] ~ [x] and [β] ~ [ɣ] in the perception experiment. The acoustic analysis (centre of gravity and F2 at vowel onset), however, did not support the hypothesis regarding the similarity of labial and velar fricatives and approximants.

This study examines differences between male and female as well as UK and US authors in newspaper text, specifically column writing. Many studies have shown that women have a tendency to show greater involvement in text by using personal and subjective reference. The present study applied corpus linguistic methods to 145 columns retrieved from two broadsheet newspapers, The Guardian and The New York Times. The usage of first person singular and plural pronouns was examined to determine whether there are gender-based or cultural differences in the way the authors show involvement in the texts. The data show no significant differences between male and female or UK and US authors. The uneven gender distribution of the sampling, conventions of journalism and column writing as well as women’s adaptation to the communication style of public sphere may be some of the reasons for the non-significant differences between the studied dimensions.

Freie Univ., Diplomarb.--Berlin, 2004.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 294-300). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 498-531).