<p>  </p> <p>It is well established that people are highly sensitive to timing in interaction and that delay of response is consequential in shaping the interaction (Davidson, 1984; Jefferson, 1989; Pomerantz, 1984; Roberts, Francis, & Morgan, 2006). There is also crosslinguistic evidence that people of different language backgrounds orient to these delays as problematic, though with different levels of tolerance (Roberts, Margutti, & Takano, 2011). However, few studies, if any, have focused on the timing of responsive actions such as laughter or open class repair initiators (OCRI; e.g., English “what?” or Japanese <em>nani).</em> Both types of actions fill the slot of responses but are semantically-underspecified. They provide no overt comment on the speaker’s talk; although laughter does have a sociocultural association with humor and positive affect. In effect, laughter and OCRI are “agnostic” responses whose interpretations are highly dependent on contextual factors. This dissertation explores the phenomena of laughter and OCRIs in relation to timing and delay and the possibility of crosslinguistic variation by examining delayed laughter and delayed OCRI in American English and Japanese via two inter-related studies.</p> <p>The first phase examined delayed laughter and delayed OCRI in naturally-occurring conversation (telephone calls) using the analytic framework of Conversation Analysis (CA). The data for this analysis came from the CallFriend – English (Northern US) and CallFriend – Japanese corpora of audio-only telephone call conversations between friends and are accessible through the TalkBank database (MacWhinney, 2007). The English corpus contains 31 half-hour conversations, and the Japanese corpus consisted or 32 half-hour conversations. The results suggest little crosslinguistic variation in the sequence and function of delayed laughter and delayed OCRI. However, the results of this phase indicate that delayed laughter is often found as a hearer’s response to the speaker’s delicate and is typically oriented to by the speaker as an affiliative signal, unless additional indications of disaffiliation also co-occur in the interaction. Delayed laughter also functions as a forecast of an upcoming action that may spark trouble in the interaction or pose a face threat (such as an imperative.) On the other hand, delayed OCRI seem to indicate the hearer’s surprise at some sequential trouble, such as a disjunctive topic, or in a sequence of disaffiliation.</p> <p>The second phase takes these insights gleaned from the CA phase and investigates them experimentally by asking native speakers of English and Japanese to report their perceptions of laughter or OCRI at one of three different delay lengths. Participants for this study were recruited via the online crowdsourcing platforms Amazon Mechanical Turk (for English native speakers; n = 413) and Crowdworks (for Japanese native speakers; n = 240). Participants were asked to complete an online Qualtrics survey in which they listen to short, simulated telephone calls and rate their perceptions of agreement, surprise, and avoidance in the context of a recipient’s delayed laughter or OCRI. The experiment was conducted as a between-groups design, so for each language group, participants were exposed to either the laughter or the OCRI condition at one of three delay levels (0ms, 400ms, or 600ms). The results support the CA findings, as the participants reported that laughter expressed more agreement and avoidance than OCRI, and OCRI expressed more surprise than laughter, regardless of delay length. As with the CA findings, there was little crosslinguistic variation, but there was indication that native English speakers were more likely than Japanese speakers to perceive laughter as an expression of agreement and OCRI as an expression of surprise.</p> <p>The overall results suggest that delayed laughter is typically oriented to as an affiliative action by the co-participant while OCRI is more of a neutral action that has the potential to be a face-threatening action. Because these non-linguistic features are understudied, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of how the perceptions of seemingly agnostic responses are shaped by temporal characteristics and interactional sequence. </p>

Despite its exceptional importance as a cultural performance event in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Conference has received little attention in Mormon studies, to say nothing of sociolinguistics. Situated within the larger question of how the public language of Mormon authorities has changed over time, this thesis seeks to discover style features of what impressionistically appears to be a unitary General Conference style since 1960 (the era of church "Correlation"). Statistical analysis is then used to determine which of five sociolinguistic factors and three pairwise interactions between four of the five sociolinguistic factors most saliently conditions the use of these style features in General Conference. Findings indicate that older male speakers are more likely to perform the majority of these style features, which opens the possibility that a new style may be emerging. Finally, this study attempts to give a theoretical account of style in General Conference by appealing to Alan Bell's (1984; 2001) "audience design" framework, and Nikolas Coupland's (2007) refinement of Bauman's cultural performance theory. The unique conditions of General Conference are best described as a "high performance event" in which speakers converge stylistically on an uncharacteristically present "in-group referee," namely the General Authorities of the church present in the LDS Conference Center during the live broadcast of General Conference.

The umbrella term used in research to imply exposure to the English language outside the classroom is “extramural English”. The impact of the engagement in activities by second language learners of English through extramural activities is generally perceived as positive for language development. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of teachers in Swedish lower secondary school on the influence of online extramural English on the written and spoken English proficiency of students, enrolled in years six till nine, learning English as a foreign language.A qualitative study in the form of an online questionnaire, consisting of open- and closed-ended questions, is used to answer three research questions: 1. What is the overall perspective of English teachers on their students’ proficiency in English and the influence of extramural English? 2. What is the perspective of English teachers on their students’ proficiency in written English and the influence of extramural English? 3. What is the perspective of English teachers on their students’ proficiency in oral English and the influence of extramural English? Teachers clearly believe that oral communication and listening skills benefit more than reading and writing skills from online extramural activities in English.

in English This work consists of five chapters: a theoretical part, which specifies the theoretical basis of the text (especially concepts related to bilingualism and language contact); methodological part, which specifies the objectives and methods of field research (identification of target group, subject of research, qualitative and quantitative methods, technical part of the survey); historical part relating to the origin and life of the Bulgarian minority in the Czech Republic; sociolinguistic part analyzing the sociolinguistic influences of Czech language on Bulgarian language; language part, analyzing the interference from language perspective. The objective of this work is sociolinguistic and linguistic analysis of the speech behavior of Bulgarian-speaking bilingual individuals in Czech linguistic environment, due to which to understand what impact a foreign language - Czech (E2) has on the mother tongue - Bulgarian (E1) in speech events in E1; which are the factors that cause it and how it is manifested in speech acts of bilingual individuals. We analyze the effect of E2 on E1 by sociolinguistic aspects, taking into account all sociolinguistic factors that affect the speech acts of individuals. After analyzing the ways of impact of E2 to E1, a linguistic analysis is made, i.e. a...

Colleges and universities typically provide remedial reading coursework for English language learners (ELL) to develop academic reading proficiency. However, a disproportionate number of ELLs fail to exit remedial classes. Prior research has indicated cultural relevance can motivate and stimulate learning; however, the extent to which a culturally relevant classroom curriculum makes a difference in the ELL classroom experience has not been fully explored. This study describes the experience of cultural relevance in an academic reading ELL college class. Moll's funds of knowledge was used as the conceptual framework in a qualitative case study to examine how cultural strengths and knowledge can be embedded into instruction for enhanced learning. Data were collected from one teacher and 10 ELL student interviews, lesson observations, and the course syllabus with instructional materials. The results from an inductive analysis revealed four major themes: cultural relevance, student characteristics, reading English, and social learning, which aligned with the funds of knowledge framework. Further, it was found that a teacher's role can serve as the cultural bridge to enhance ELL's cognition. Recommendations for future research include a larger and more culturally diverse group of participants to (a) explore if a consistency occurred that was informed by cultural experience, and (b) investigate the experience of culturally relevant pedagogy for ELL students. Social change implications include culturally relevant pedagogical practices, a cost effective instructional model, and successful academic English acquisition for ELLs.

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