Esta pesquisa descreve o comportamento linguístico de nordestinos residentes na cidade de São Paulo e nos municípios de Osasco e Santo André, a partir do pressuposto de que o comportamento linguístico de um indivíduo dentro de sua comunidade de fala envolve mudanças. O objetivo é verificar se os nordestinos modificaram seu dialeto diante do dialeto paulista. Adotaram-se como corpus doze entrevistas com falantes. A metodologia utilizada foi a de entrevistas gravadas em gravador digital e a transcrição obedecendo-se a fluência verbal dos informantes a fim de coletar dados elucidativos para o presente estudo. Nas transcrições procurou-se, quando possível, utilizar as normas de transcrição do Projeto NURC. Partimos de duas análises sociolinguísticas: a análise das variáveis linguísticas e extralinguísticas. A análise das variáveis extralinguísticas objetivou traçar o perfil de quem poderia estar ou não implementando uma mudança linguística. Os fatores aferidos foram: gênero, escolaridade, tempo de permanência em São Paulo, faixa etária, ocupação e estados de origem. Nesta análise percebeu-se que há tanto falantes categóricos como aqueles que oscilam ao utilizar ou não seu dialeto, que os fatores extralinguísticos estão diretamente relacionados a essa mudança, assim como o estado de origem dos entrevistados. A análise das variáveis linguísticas objetivou verificar se há uma mudança linguística em curso ou não e em quais situações de fala isso pode acontecer. Os fatores aferidos foram as variáveis dependentes: [ t ] [ d ] oclusiva dental e [ t ] [ d ] africada palato-alveolar diante da vogal [ i ] e as variáveis independentes quanto ao segmento antecedente, segmento seguinte e em relação à sílaba tônica. Os dados foram codificados e aferidos através do programa Goldvarb versão 2001. / This research aims at describing and analysing the linguistic behavior of the northeastern ones who lives in Sao Paulo city, and in the neightborhood cities: Osasco and Santo André, as a consequence of their migration movements. The objective is verify if the northeasten modify their dialects in front of paulistas dialect. Twelve interviews were adopted like corpus with resident speakers. The used methodology was that of interviews recorded in digital tape recorder and the transcription obeying verbal fluency of the informants in order to collect elucidatory data for the present study. In the transcriptions it tried, as possible as, to use the Project NURCs transcription standards. We began of two analyses sociolinguistics: the analysis of the linguistic and extralinguistic variables. The analysis of the extralinguistic variables aimed to draw whose profile might be or without implementing a linguistic change. The checked factors were: genre, schooling, permanence time in Sao Paulo, age, occupation and states of origin. In this analysis it was seen that it is so much categorical speakers as those who oscillate while using or not their dialects, that the extralinguistic factors are straightly connected to this change, as well as the state of origin of the interviewed ones. The analysis of the linguistic variables aimed to check if there is a current linguistic change or not and in which speech situations that can happen. The checked factors were the dependent variables: [t] [d] oclusiva dental consonant and [t ] [d ] africada - alveolar before the vowel [i] and the independent variables as for the preceding segment, next segment and regarding the syllable tonic. The data were encoded and checked through the program Goldvarb version 2001.

This thesis examines phonetic variation of /s/ in bilingual French and German gay and straight men. Previous studies have shown sibilant variation, specifically the voiceless sibilant /s/, to correlate with constructions of gay identity and 'gay sounding voices' in both production and perception. While most of this work concerns English, researchers have also explored /s/ variation and sexual orientation or non-normative masculinity in Afrikaans, Danish, Hungarian, and Spanish. Importantly, with the exception of only a small number of studies, this body of work has largely left the realm of /s/ variation and sexual orientation in bilingual speakers unexplored, and furthermore there is very little work which examines these voices in the context of French and German. The analyses show that some gay French and German men produce /s/ with a higher centre of gravity (CoG) and more negative skew than the straight speakers of the study, a result which dovetails with previous studies in languages such as English. Unlike English however, French and German listeners do not appear to associate /s/ variation with sexual orientation or (non)normative masculinities. I argue that the gay speakers who produce /s/ with a higher CoG than the other speakers of the study are doing so as a way to distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity. This thesis is structured into three stand-alone journal articles bookended with introductory and conclusion chapters which tie them together in the broader picture of /s/ variation and French/German speakers and listeners. The first of the three articles expands upon the previously established linguistic framework of indexing gayness by exploring /s/ variation in native and non-native speech, examining how the linguistic construction of gay identity interacts between their English production and the constraints of their native language. The data draws on read speech of 19 gay and straight French and German men across their L1 and L2 English to explore the social meaning of /s/. Results show that some gay speakers produce /s/ with a higher centre of gravity (CoG) and more negative skew than the straight speakers. These results are consistent with previous findings, which show sibilant variation to index sexual orientation in monolingual gay men's speech, and provide evidence of this feature correlating with sexual orientation in French and German. Furthermore, the results presented here call for a greater level of inquiry into how the gay speakers who employ this feature construct their gay identities beyond a purely gay/straight dichotomy. The second study reports the results of a cross-linguistic matched guise test examining the role of /s/ variation and pitch in judgements of sexual orientation and non-normative masculinity in English, French, and German listeners. Listeners responded to manipulations of /s/ and pitch in their native language and all other stimuli languages (English, French, German, and Estonian). All listener groups rate higher pitch stimuli as more gay and more effeminate sounding than lower pitch guises. However, only the English listeners hear [s+] guises as sounding more gay and more effeminate than the [s] or [s-] guises. This effect is seen not only in their native language, but across all stimuli languages. French and German listeners, despite previous evidence showing /s/ to vary according to sexual orientation in men's speech, do not hear [s+] guises as more gay or more effeminate in any of the stimuli languages including their native French or German. The final of the three articles takes the findings of the first two papers and attempts to reconcile the production/perception mismatch seen when comparing the results of the first two papers. The first article in this thesis revealed two groups of speakers which form the basis for analysis for this paper. The first group is a heterogeneous group of gay and straight speakers whose average /s/ productions are below 7,000 Hz ([s] speakers) and the second is a homogeneous group of gay speakers producing average /s/ CoG above 7,000 Hz ([s+] speakers). The analysis shows style shifting across task type with both groups of speakers producing higher /s/ CoG productions in L1 read speech contexts than any of the L2 speech contexts. Style shifting across conversation topic reveals that the [s+] speakers are producing higher /s/ CoG when discussing their coming out stories and topics of LGBT involvement. I argue that these [s+] speakers are employing these higher frequency /s/ variants to construct a very specific and identifiable gay persona, that of a counter-hegemonic effeminate gay man. This thesis is among the first to examine phonetic qualities of gay bilingual speakers and the ways in which they may index their sexual orientation. The inclusion of bilingual French and German speakers adds to our growing knowledge of ways in which these individuals navigate and construct their identities within both their L1 and, specifically, within an L2. In this regard, this thesis contributes to the growing body of knowledge concerning socioindexicality in L2 production more generally. This work thus speaks to these gaps within the sociolinguistic literature and provides strong evidence that /s/ variation is a valuable resource for some French and German men in the construction of a certain type of gay identity.

The subject of this thesis is the French language in the Franco-Belgian borderland. More specifically, it investigates language, linguistic perceptions and language attitudes in the French-speaking part of Belgium which borders France. The study takes a variationist approach and is grounded in sociolinguistic theory, but it also draws on theories and methodologies from elsewhere in the social sciences. Two questions are at the heart of this study: how do people speak French in the Belgian borderland and why do they speak that way? To answer the research questions, speech and questionnaire data were gathered from 39 informants living in the borderland city of Tournai and its surrounding area. With this data, a variety of analyses were performed. Sociophonetic investigations were carried out on two phonological variables, namely the vocalic oppositions /e/-/ɛ/ and /o/-/ɔ/, draw-a-map task perceptual data were analysed through a ‘visual methods’ lens, and attitudinal data were also examined. Social variation in linguistic behaviour, perceptions and language attitudes was also analysed. The notions of ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘spatiality’ were accorded considerable importance: the interactions between language and ‘space’ as the factors of ‘mobility’, ‘media consumption’, ‘sense of place’ and ‘regional belonging’ were also examined. The findings include that French in the Belgian borderland is more similar to that in France than to elsewhere in Francophone Belgium and that this is due to a number of factors. Moreover, the French in the borderland appears to be converging on that in France, although some differences persist. It was also found that spatial factors interact with both linguistic and social ones. Finally, it was concluded that whilst there is no longer a physical barrier at the national border, it persists to an extent as a psychological one, and this has ramifications for borderlanders’ behaviour: be it linguistic or otherwise.

Le contexte algérien est fait de plusieurs langues en contact, dont les interactions varient suivant les situations géographiques, socio-culturelles et socio-économiques observées. Leur coexistence/leur concurrence créent des situations d’enseignement/apprentissage complexes et particulières, dont l’étude précise est nécessaire pour que l’école algérienne puisse tirer parti de la richesse du plurilinguisme, car actuellement le plurilinguisme est la règle et le monolinguisme est l’exception. Cela dit, il est à noter que l’arabe standard moderne tout comme le français ne constituent nullement la langue maternelle du locuteur algérien même si l’on retrouve ces deux langues dans des domaines multiples et variés comme les média, l’administration, l’économie, les sciences…néanmoins un conflit existe et perdure, ce sont les parlers du quotidien, les idiomes locaux, régionaux qui dominent dans ce pays et qui influent sur ce processus d’enseignement/apprentissage des deux langues . / The algerian context is composed of several languages in contact, of which the interactions varie according to the geographical locations, sociocultural and socio-economic observed. Their coexistence/their competition create sophisticated and particular situations of teaching and learning. Their precises studies are necessary so that the algerian school takes advantage of the richness of the plurilingualism, because currently the plurilingualism is the rule and the monolingualism is the exception. However, it should be noted that neither modern standard arabic nor french constitute the mother tongue of any algerian speaker even if one finds these two languages in multiple and varied fields such as the media, the administration, the economy, sciences… nevertheless a conflict exists and continues : it is a matter of the daily speeches, the local and regional idioms which dominate in this country with their influence on the process of teaching and learning these two languages .

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of the North, 1988 / Refer to the document

Ce travail propose une étude de la prise en compte des plurilinguismes des enfants dans les cadres scolaires et orthophoniques français et algériens. Nous y analysons les façons qu’ont les acteurs professionnels de l’éducation et du soin interrogés, d’agir vis-à-vis des différentes langues et cultures des enfants, tantôt élèves tantôt patients. Les problématiques centrales abordées sont notamment celles de la norme, de l’étrangeté ou de l’écart, et de la traduction. Dans ces contextes scolaires et thérapeutiques liés, nous souhaitons ainsi nous questionner sur les possibilités d’écarts et de « dissensus », à la fois conditions et stimulations du politique et du culturel, dont disposent les enfants qui y sont éduqués et soignés. En d’autres termes, comment les enseignants « ordinaires » et les orthophonistes (dont le préfixe peut laisser entendre une certaine idée de « droiture ») agissent avec et réagissent face à des enfants qui ne correspondent pas aux normes ou à la norme linguistico-culturelle attendue et exigée par l’éducation nationale et la société françaises? Le langage étant une création permanente, ces enseignants et ces orthophonistes ont-ils une vision d’un « ordre » linguistique et langagier influencé par une conception monolingue de la société ? Quelle part de liberté et de création, d’inattendu, eux aussi définitoires d’une certaine compréhension du politique, laissent ces éducateurs et ces thérapeutes aux enfants vis-à-vis de leur langage et de leurs langues ? Face à ces interrogations, c’est la figure de l’ « allophone », dont la nomination même pose grandement question, qui aura fonction de miroir et de révélateur des normes implicites des contextes étudiés. / This work provides an overview on consideration of children’s plurilinguism in the frame of french and algerian school education and speech-therapist care. We analyse how professionals of education and care we interviewed act with, or react to children’s different languages and cultures. The main issues we approached are norms, strangeness or « deviation », and translation. In these educational and care frames, which are bound, we aim to think about children’s possibilities of « deviations » and dissensus, which are at the same time conditions and stimulations of politics and culture. In other words, how speech therapists and « ordinary » teachers act with and react to children who don’t correspond to norms or to the linguistic and cultural norm waited and required from french « national education » and french society ? Language being a permanent creation, do these teachers and speech therapists consider that there is a linguistic and language « order », influenced by a monolingual conception of society ? What part of freedom, creation and unexpectedness, all three that can also define a certain idea of politics, do teachers and speech therapists give to children about their languages ? To consider and throw light on these issues, we will be using the figure of pupils french educational system call « allophones » as a reflecting mirror to reveal implicit norms of the contexts we’ve been studying.

Sports play an important role in the culture of the United States as does language, so the choice to use non-Standard dialects in a nation that privileges the Standard and negatively judges dialectical differences, especially those spoken by mostly people of color, is not undertaken lightly. Because of this privileging of Standard American English, it is assumed that only professional African American athletes are allowed to keep their native dialect if it is African American English (AAE) and still be successful. However, this is complicated by the historical and present increased criticisms women face in both sport and language. To investigate this claim, a quantitative analysis of post-game interviews of five men and five women in the National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association, respectively, was conducted. The athletes were analyzed to see if they used dental stopping and be-leveling, two features of AAE. Four additional features of AAE were also investigated on an exploratory basis. Inter-gender variance was found among both genders. Across genders, women used the features of AAE studied an average of 30.6 percent less than men, demonstrating a clear gender difference in the usage of AAE. The results of this study illustrate disparities in women and men’s language use that could be a consequence of the inherent and historical sexism women must face in the realms of both sport and language.

This work presents an analysis of punctuation use in computer-mediated communication (CMC); in particular, the present study aims to describe the pragmatic functions of nonstandard punctuation on Twitter, providing a corpus-driven overview of the distribution and frequency of nonstandard punctuation use, and an analysis of sampled tweets at the individual tweet level to estimate noise levels in the overall corpus. A survey was also conducted which aimed to identify user understanding of the affective content of nonstandard punctuation strings and to identify any possible effects of character repetition. Survey results indicate that linguistic content was the strongest indicator of affective understanding, type of punctuation (i.e., ?, !, and combinations thereof) was a weaker indicator of some affective content, and repetition was not found to be significant. The study argues that certain string types, possibly defined by punctuation type and not count, have large indexical fields of pragmatic meaning available to them, which are bounded by context. In light of these observations, the study also proposes distinctions/categories of punctuation strings and their associated pragmatic meanings.

This thesis examines writing conference interactions between multilingual students and first-year composition instructors in order to understand the co-construction of instructor authority and student agency in discussions of academic writing. Multilingual approaches to first-year writing assert that inviting students’ home languages or dialects into the classroom allows multilingual students to use languages other than English connect with the curriculum, develop rhetorical complexity as writers, and to be validated as language users; however, scholarship could benefit from examining social interactions. Because identities, ideologies, and stances are co-constructed between people and emerge in social interactions,a discourse analysis of interactions between first-year composition instructors and multilingual students could identify ways that multilingual students and instructors position themselves, and how this positioning affects the validation of multilingualism, and hybrid identities. Data consists of 18 audio recordings of writing conferences between instructors and multilingual students, five interviews with first-year writing instructors, and audio-recorded post-conference interviews, where instructors and students were separately asked open-ended questions about the content of the writing conference. Employing a Communities of Practice lens in a discourse analysis of the data revealed that that expert-novice identities were co-constructed in interaction, and the emergence of this power differential that inhibited the validation of multilingualism, and hybridity. Implications for mitigating instructor authority and promoting student agency in interactions with multilingual students are discussed.

The ethnography of communication is a mode of inquiry which investigates relationships between language and culture in a particular speech community. Based on the ethnographic perspective, this study examines a certain way of speaking at a specific historical moment in a specific community. The major focus is two disc jockeys who are characterized as "trilingual" speakers (Japanese-English-Okinawa dialect) and their code switching activities in an Okinawan local radio program. The three-month field study took place on the island of Okinawa. Data were collected from observations at the two radio stations, transcriptions of the program, and interviews with the DJs, the program director, program listeners, and older Okinawan residents. The situational and metaphorical code switching patterns found in the DJs' verbal interactions include: obligational code choice, topic related code choice, interjections, quotations, translations, a lack of language proficiency, reiterations, and addressee specification. Using language which reflects "we" versus "they" orientation was a major determinant of the DJs' code choices. While the DJs use dialect to maintain Okinawan group identification, the use of English appeared directed toward loosening the social separation between Okinawans and Americans who belong to mutually exclusive speech communities. In addition to these functions of code switching related to the general social context in Okinawa, the study finds that the DJs and program listeners share the particular sociolinguistic values and therefore create a specific speech community. The DJs' use of three codes discloses two cultural phenomena in this young Okinawan speech community. One is the enhancement of Okinawan identity as a resistance to Japanization and the other is the acceptance of the American influence as part of local culture. Although the DJs are known to be "trilingual" among the younger people, the older generation defines the DJs' dialect as Okinawan-Japanese, which is a Creole produced language contact between the Okinawa dialect and Japanese. In a strict grammatical analysis, most of the DJs' dialect is not spoken in pure form of the Okinawa dialect. However, using dialect in a certain way, the DJs maintain and share Okinawan group identity with the young program fans. Simultaneously, the mixed-background English speaking radio hosts are also accepted by listeners as a symbol of new Okinawa where the American influence has become an indispensable factor in creating its unique characteristics. The success of the "trilingual" entertainers reveals the current situation in the young Okinawan speech community where a cultural interrelation between mainland Japan, America, and Okinawa can be discovered.