This thesis is a study of patterns of language attitudes and use among Xhosa home language speakers at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Speakers of Xhosa, according to Statistics South Africa 2000, form the second largest speech community in South Africa (17.9% of the total population), second only to speakers of Zulu (22.9% of the total population). The University of the Western Cape, which is situated just outside Cape Town, was originally intended to serve only the Coloured (mixed-race) population of South Africa. Coloureds form the majority group in the population of the Western Cape, one of the nine provinces of South Africa. In 1982, the university took the bold step of defying the apartheid regime, by opening its doors to students of all races. Students from all over South Africa now attend the university, but Xhosa students, drawn mainly from the provinces of the Eastern and Western Cape, form the largest language group or speech community on the campus. The thesis presents a study of the patterns of language attitudes and use with which Xhosa students enter the university, as well as patterns of change in language attitudes and use revealed by a longitudinal study of a smaller group of Xhosa students.

This study investigates Kinyarwaanda sexuality taboo words and their meaning in Rwandan culture to enable the youth to improve their communication and the values of Rwandan culture. It explores whether the use of Kinyarwaanda sexuality taboo words is a good way to communicate with one another or is a transgression of Rwandan culture. Its intent is to see the value that Rwandans assign to verbal taboos, particularly sexuality taboo words, to see how these taboos regulate Rwandans lives, to see the attitudes Rwandans hold towards them, and to find out the link there might be between sexuality taboo words, the information dissemination on HIV/AIDS and the spread of AIDS.

Bibliography: leaves 457-478. / xx, 478 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1997?

This thesis is a comparative investigation into the use of Italian of an extended Italian family in language contact situation in three countries: the United States, Australia and France. This study is undertaken and described in the context of the different policies on migrant integration and minority languages in the three migration countries. / The investigation uses the ‘Case Study’ methodology in the format of an embedded multiple case-study project. / The third generation was made the focus of the study to investigate Fishman’s “intergroup social dependency” theory. According to this theory, when the immigrant experience is viewed from a perspective of three or more generation time depth, the immigrant group generally loses its language due to its dependency on the host society for its survival. Fishman contends that only an effective and strict ‘compartmentalisation of language functions’ between the minority language and the host language can help the minority group maintain its language. / The findings indicate that for people of Italian background living as a minority group in language contact situation compartmentalisation is not a viable alternative. Nor do they consider the ‘maintenance’ of their community language important. When in the migration country bilingualism is valued, it is the standard variety of the heritage language that is chosen for maintenance and further learning. / The study presents recommendations towards the achievability of bilingualism beyond the limitations of compartmentalisation.

This dissertation conducts a comprehensive examination of the study of Asian languages in two Australian states, taking into consideration the broad range of people and variables which impact on the language-in-education ecology. These findings are intended to enhance the development of language-in-education policy, planning and implementation in Australia. In order to incorporate a number of perspectives in the language-in-education ecology, interviews were conducted with a range of stakeholders, school administrators, LOTE (Languages Other Than English) coordinators and LOTE teachers, from all three education systems – government, independent and Catholic (31 individuals), across two states – Victoria and New South Wales. Questionnaires were also completed by 464 senior secondary students who were studying an Asian language. Along with the use of supporting data (for example, government reports and newspaper discourse analysis), the interview and questionnaire data was analysed thematically, as well as through the use of descriptive statistics.

This thesis is a sociolinguistic study of Preterit and Present Perfect (PP) usage in contemporary and earlier Argentinian River Plate Spanish (ARPS). The data analyzed stem from a 244,034-word corpus collected for the purposes of the study, including contemporary casual conversation, sociolinguistic interviews, participant observation, written questionnaires, and newspapers spanning the 19th–21st centuries. / The study is motivated by previous claims that in Latin America the PP is restricted to contexts that extend into the present time, resembling Peninsular medieval and Renaissance usage (e.g. Lope Blanch 1972: 138; Harris 1982: 50; Squartini & Bertinetto 2000: 413). I challenge this proposal showing that (1) ARPS has undergone its own development, and (2) Latin American varieties do not represent earlier frozen developmental stages akin to earlier Peninsular Spanish. / Although low in overall frequency, the contemporary ARPS PP is used in experiential settings to express indefinite past (a vernacular use). Moreover, multivariate analysis of the contemporary oral data reveals that the ARPS PP is not aspectually restricted to repetitive and iterative contexts extending into speech time – contrary to Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos’ (2008) findings for contemporary oral Mexican Spanish. Indeed, the data show that the ARPS continuative PP is losing its link-to-present requirement. The ARPS PP also features minimally in resultative and continuative settings, supporting layering of old and new grammaticalizing structures (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994: 21). Present relevance does not determine ARPS PP usage and is instead encoded through the Preterit and temporal adverbials (TAs). / Historically, the PP has dwindled in usage frequency since the 19th century and the Preterit has invaded the spaces erstwhile occupied by the PP. PP functions like result, continuity, current relevance, and hot news are currently fulfilled by the Preterit, in combination with TAs (TA + VERB-PRET). I argue that the TA + VERB-PRET construction has emerged as a periphrastic encoder of PP nuances, a development reminiscent of perfect periphrases in languages such as Yoruba and Karaboro (Niger-Congo) (Dahl 1985: 130). A contemporary example of this construction includes the widespread temporal marker ahí ‘at this point in time’ (lit. ‘there’) in combination with the Preterit to indicate temporal immediacy. / The contemporary ARPS PP is sociolinguistically constrained; men use it significantly more often than women. The PP is also employed by younger speakers, challenging the position that this form is on the verge of extinction (Kubarth 1992a: 565; Burgos 2004: 103). In contrast to the contention that the PP occurs more frequently in written media (e.g. De Kock 1989: 489; Squartini & Bertinetto 2000: 413), the contemporary oral and newspaper corpora show similar distributional tendencies. Only in the questionnaire is the PP used more readily in ways unattested in oral interaction (i.e. in current relevance and past perfective settings). ARPS ambivalent use of the PP represents the essence of the so-called “actuation problem”; that is, the contention that the process of linguistic change involves stimuli and constraints from both society and from the structure of language (Weinrech, Labov & Herzog 1968: 186).

"November 2001". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Dept. of Linguistics, 2002. / Bibliography: p. 285-291. / Introduction -- Language from a systemic functional perspective -- Social networks: a review of literature relevant to the Scotland Island study -- Methodology -- Analysing relational ties: a social network perspective -- A systemic functional approach to analysing social reality -- Discussion and conclusion. / This research is concerned with the study of language and the social order. Working within the systemic functional theory of language, and utilising the concept of a social network to model the social order, the primary aim is to put on display the relationship between the linguistic system and social order, between language and culture. Systemic functional grammar (Halliday, 1995; Halliday and Hasasn, 1985/9; Halliday and Matthiesen, 1997; Eggins and Slade 1997), with its emphasis on language as a social semiotic, is used to analyse the language used by a group of four women engaged in casual conversation in a small Australian island community. Here the analysis reveals how the women negotiate their social reality when speaking to each other. It shows how their social relations are shaped within a text (Hasan, 1996), and explores the notion that, despite the seemingly trivial, unconscious nature of casual interactions, power and solidarity are continually being negotiated by the participants (Halliday, 1994; Eggins and Slade, 1997). More specifically, this research examines the notion that through lexico-grammatical and semantic selections participants are able to negotiate dominant positions in interaction. Social Network analysis has been used to examine the relationship between the individual and the group. It offers a quantifiable analytical tool for describing the character of an individual's everyday social relationships (Milroy, 1987). A social network analysis is used in the present study to map the social relationships in the tight-knit network, or speech fellowship, of these women (creating a map of the context of situation in SFL terminology). Change in the social relationships and language choices is modeled by revisiting the participants 15 months later in a contextually similar environment and re-analysing the network and linguistic options. Systemic functional linguistics is then used to highlight the interdependency of language and social order. Through systematic accounts of language and the context in which it is embedded this reciprocal nature is displayed and language and social order can be seen, not as two distinct entities, but rather as one phenomena seen from two different perspectives (Halliday, 1978; Mathiessen, 1993). / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / v, 291 p. ill

Zugl.: Mannheim, University, Habil.-Schr.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Design), University of Western Sydney, 2003". Includes bibliography : leaves 263 - 270.

Thesis (Ph. D)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 223-238).