Studies in African languages beyond the common core of linguistics are lacking. This motivates this dissertation which investigates the use of Kikoongo, a Bantu language, focusing on natural data produced by the Maniaanga of BesiNgombe region, Bas-Zaire, Zaire. The data are referred to as palavers. These consist of three complex speech events namely, wedding, bereavement and reconciliation viewed as instances of `conflict' management. Each of them is taken not only as a speech event but also as a highly structured sociocultural unit with linguistic implications.The study of palavering as a speech behavior aimed at resolving disputes (Frake 1979) contributes to Pragmatics as defined by Levinson (1983) and Leech (1983). This study provides a body of information that supports the new discipline as an adequate means for demonstrating that any language is an entity that is divisible into units of a higher order than sentences and/or utterances. The fundamental approach adopted to analyze this unit is that of ethnographyof `speaking' (Hymes 1972) and discourse or text analysis, especially, conversation analysis (CA). This approach is descriptively adequate for this study because palavering is basically an extended verbal exchange between two representatives (spokesmen) of two parties who may allow duetting (Falk 1979) and audience involvement or response elicitation whenever appropriate. Speaking publicly, the main participants generate most of the speech intended to achieve their goals as geared toward dispute resolution. The involved speakers operate systematically, following an elaborate code of conduct.This study demonstrates that the pragmatic competence required for palavering consists of paralinguistic and linguistic behaviors which make a palaver an essential institutionalized instrument of survival in Koongo society. In the end of such an event the speakers project a structurally and functionally coherent macro-unit. This appears through the use of metalinguistic terms that also demonstrate that their activity consists in an attempt to find a compromise according to established norms. The participants perform their speech acts within the confines of a mind-unifying event. / Department of English

This study attempts to discover and describe patterns of variation in college students' overt attitudes toward a limited set of grammatical and lexical variables, the shibboleths of edited written American English usage. The basic instrument used in the study is a 115 item multiple choice questionnaire prepared by the researcher. Fifteen questions were designed to assess the respondents' social, economic, and demographic backgrounds, whereas the major part of the questionnaire elicited judgments about one hundred English sentences offering the choice between the attributes "good," "bad," and "I can't decide." This questionnaire was administered to 172 students in nine freshman composition classes during the spring semester of 1994 at Ball State University. The study sought to discover and describe systematic relationships between the answers to the first set of questions (extralinguistic data) and the second set of questions (linguistic data) by using various analytical methods and statistical techniques, such as correlation coefficients, chi-square tests, and multidimensional scaling.It was hypothesized that variation in subjects' overt judgments about linguistic variables would parallel the findings of numerous sociolinguistic studies about variation in linguistic production, and hence would pattern along the social and demographic characteristics of the subjects. However, although this study found considerable variation in the freshman students' judgments about the usage shibboleths, it did not find social or demographic correlates to the respondents' judgments.By investigating the nature of the variation in freshman composition students' notions about linguistic correctness, this study attempted to answer questions which have not been asked by traditional usage studies, sociolinguistics, or composition research. Moreover, this study has added support for linguists' claims that the traditional "mistakes" in usage handbooks have almost no empirical basis, even if they remain the favorites of most handbook authors and English teachers. / Department of English

<p> In the current global business environment many endeavors are undertaken as projects. Translation, localization and other language services are no exception and must be viewed and studied as services performed in a projectized environment. If they are not, there will continue to be gaps between the way translation is taught and researched (as an isolated activity) and how it is performed in the business world (as part of projects). The existence of these gaps not only prevents translation practitioners from recognizing and communicating the value of the service that they provide, but also diminishes the value of the training that future translators receive. Lack of understanding of the context in which translation is performed limits the opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation between translation studies and other disciplines in the academic environment, and between organizations and divisions within a given organization in the business environment. </p><p> This study proposes to contribute to the research on translation in project contexts by examining risk management, which is an important area of focus for organizations and professionals in many sectors, but which is largely ignored in the language industry. </p><p> This study first provides an overview of the language industry, explores key concepts, such as risk, uncertainty, project management, risk management and maturity model, and explains the role and relevance of risk management in the language industry. It then reviews existing risk management frameworks developed by project management and risk management practitioners, including the framework developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Next, a model of risk sources developed specifically for application in translation and localization projects is presented and discussed. The theoretical discussion is followed by a case study in which PMI's project risk management framework is implemented and the proposed model of risk sources is applied in a real-world translation company. The description of the case study methodology is followed by observations of how the study was carried out and by a presentation and analysis of the results of the case study. The dissertation concludes by offering recommendations based on the findings of the case study and by examining possible future avenues of research.</p>

This study is a descriptive analysis of the occurrence of the sociolinguistic variables of pronunciation associated with all forms of ‘there’ and Non-Standard There-tag (NST-tag) in Bathurst English. Participants were interviewed and the occurrences of ‘there’ were obtained through the use of sociolinguistic interviews with 15 speakers. The incidences of ‘there’ were sorted based on grammatical category and pronunciation and were subsequently analyzed based on age and gender. The results indicate that older speakers use non-standard pronunciations of ‘there’ more than younger speakers and they also use NST-tag more than younger speakers. Younger speakers mostly use standard pronunciations of ‘there’ and use NST-tag very little. This may indicate age and gender grading or a change in progress in that vernacular is giving way to more standard speech in this community.

The present study examined the request strategies of advanced learners of Japanese, by comparing those of native speakers of Japanese. The investigation focused on the following aspects: discourse structure, sentence types, strategy types, and reasoning behind the speakers’ choice of strategy. The participants for this study were five learners and six native speakers of Japanese. Data were collected through role plays and a retrospective verbal report. The distribution of the types of responses was compared. Results showed that the request realization of learners of Japanese and that of native speakers of Japanese were similar at least in the use of the supporting statements in the discourse structure and use of indirect strategies; in contrast, they differed in the use of sentence types to realize indirect requests and types of intended strategies. Findings suggest that the learners’ deviations from native speakers were caused by their inadequate grammatical skills. / Graduate

Dialekter jämnas allt mer ut och utpräglade dialekter är sällsynta i dagens samhälle. I denna utjämning har skolan spelat en stor roll då det under 1800-talet förespråkades en utrotningspedagogik på grund av språkliga fördomar. Trots att det idag finns en större medvetenhet om dialektens betydelse för den enskilda individen är skolans språknorm ännu rikssvenska. Denna studie har för avsikt att undersöka hur lärare hanterar motsättningen mellan skolans språknorm och elevers identitetsutveckling i sin yrkesroll. Deras egna dialektbruk och dialektattityder studerades för att få en uppfattning om hur de förhåller sig till dialekter i klassrummet. För att undersöka hur verksamma lärare i de lägre årskurserna på Gotland förhåller sig till dialekter genomfördes en enkätundersökning och en intervjuundersökning. Resultatet visar att trots en positiv attityd till den egna dialekten och dialekter generellt väljer respondenterna i sin yrkesroll bort den egna dialekten. Respondenterna har generellt en positiv inställning till elevers dialekter i klassrummet, men eftersom dialekten dels anses ha en negativ inverkan på skriftspråket och dels inte anses höra hemma i skriftspråket prioriteras dialekten bort. Elevers dialektala drag i skriftspråket korrigeras istället för att eleverna ges de förutsättningar som krävs för att kunna anpassa språkform till mottagare, oavsett om det är i tal eller skrift. Slutsatserna är att elevers identitetsutveckling tenderar att prioriteras bort samt att det finns en risk att elever väljer bort den egna dialekten för att undvika den förödmjukelse som en språkkorrigering innebär. Utifrån studiens slutsatser kan skolan fortfarande anses bidra till dialektutjämningen. / Dialects currently lose their distinct features, and linguistic characteristics have been neglected in modern society. A large contributor to the phenomenon of disappearing dialects can arguably be the school system. In the 19th century schools placed emphasis on the language at schools, at the cost of the personal development of not tolerating and accepting the use of dialects. Despite a current understanding and appreciation of the influence of dialects on identity on an individual level, the school system implemented the national Swedish language as the standard form, which continues to this day. The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers cope with the contradiction between written language development, and continuously strengthening pupils’ self-esteem. Teachers’ attitudes towards dialects have been studied with the intention to an understanding of how they relate to dialects in academic settings. To investigate how teachers in primary education on Gotland handle dialects, a questionnaire was created along with a procedure of interviews. The results show a positive attitude towards the native dialect on Gotland, and other dialects in general. Among the results, there was an indication that the respondents have dropped their native dialects. Among the student population, dialects are generally received in a positive manner. However, due to a perceived negative impact on the written the use of dialects has been more and more disliked and treated as language usage in written assignments. Students’ individual dialects are corrected when used in the written form instead of being given the proper condition to adapt their language to the recievers, regardless if it´s in spoken or written form. One of the conclusions is that the students can experience a significantly decreased focus on the development of their feeling of self-esteem and identity. Another conclusion is that students may choose to avoid using dialects to hinder the risk of humiliation. Based on these conclusions, the school system still can be considered to contribute to dialect equalization.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982. / Bibliography: leaves 216-224. / Microfiche. / xiii, 224 leaves, bound 29 cm

<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>

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.

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