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Fair trade offers an alternative market for handicraft producers in Peru, connecting them to buyers in the Global North. This market connection means that formerly utilitarian and traditional handicrafts must now satisfy the changing desires of consumers with whom artisans have no direct contact. In this dissertation, I examine the connections between Peruvian artisans and Northern importers as mediated through Manos Amigas (MA), a fair-trade handicrafts-distributing organization based in Lima. From its intermediary position in the fair-trade network, MA aims to design products that will sell to Northern clients while supporting Peruvian artisans—many of whom are Quechua-speakers and Andean migrants—and adhering to the principles of MA’s fair-trade certifier, the World Fair Trade Organization. The dissertation is based on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork involving participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of audio and audio-visual recordings of product-innovation meetings, clients’ visits with artisans, and other interactions. I examine the ways in which, and the extent to which, MA, through its implementation of fair trade, translates fair-trade principles into practice, supports the use of indigenous languages and artisanal traditions, and fosters transparent communication. I find that artisans are quite often excluded from important fair-trade conversations. In product-innovation meetings that involve MA staff members, Northern clients, and only sometimes artisans, the participants negotiate such product attributes as tradition, authenticity, “Peruvianness,” and desirability. Through my analyses, I demonstrate the varied meanings that these attributes have for different participants in fair trade. Even when artisans are included in meetings with Northern clients, much of the talk that occurs is not translated into Spanish for the artisans’ benefit. Artisans’ speech, on the other hand, is often translated into English for clients’ benefit, making translation largely unidirectional. This contributes to the knowledge and experience of the Northern visitor but does not increase artisans’ understanding of consumer trends or of clients’ reactions to their products. Translation practices thus tend to perpetuate unequal relationships that keep artisans at a disadvantage. Manos Amigas offers an example, overall quite successful, of how fair trade can be implemented. There is always room for improvement, however—ways to uphold fair-trade principles more strongly and ways to support artisans more effectively. Throughout the dissertation, I indicate ways that fair trade and conventional trade are similar and present comparable pitfalls. Competition, discrimination, poverty, and ideologies of gender that tend to keep women from powerful and well-paying positions are some of the challenges that artisans consistently face. I demonstrate numerous ways that fair trade—through certification and auditing, flexible interpretation of fair-trade principles, unidirectional translation practices, and client control over product designs—perpetuates asymmetrical power relations and Southern dependence on the North. / Anthropology

Tucson, Arizona is a site of a lively Polish-American community. Initially associated with a political organization ("Solidarity Tucson"), which actively supported the Solidarity Movement throughout the 1980s, the Polish diaspora has gradually transformed into an ethnic community very much focused on maintaining its distinctive heritage. Recent formation of the Polish folkloric dance group Lajkonik was directly stimulated by the local multicultural establishment, which promotes ethnic diversity in the Old Pueblo. Having become an integral part of the Southwestern society, Lajkonik has developed a collection of identity practices, which despite diverse influences continues to reproduce Polish cultural traits. In my ethnographic account, I examine ways, by which members of the Lajkonik group construct their diasporic identities. First, I focus on the core activities of the group, which include the practice of Polish traditions, learning folk dances and songs in a wide cultural context, and negotiating the speaking of Polish. Additional analyses, based on video recordings, of Polish classes and dance rehearsals, which show the actual mechanics of the production processes, as well as the narratives of the teacher and parent of performers, further support the account of the ethnographer. Secondly, I look into the development of Polishness for public consumption, which involves negotiation of multiple images in accordance with specific cultural events, creation of engaging stage programs, and presenting the essence of Polishness to festival audiences in Tucson. Regardless of the particular purpose of identities' productions, either for integrating community or public display, these processes simultaneously involve the quest for authenticity, building ethnic pride, and negotiations of diverse traditions. / Anthropology

From 1890-1914, Argentina received a large influx of Italian immigrants who wanted to "hacer la América", or live the American dream of economic prosperity. With Italian immigrants representing nearly half of all immigrants entering Argentina, the government strived to create a new sense of Argentine pride and nationalism. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate and analyze the linguistic experience of Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina, applying Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social space and linguistic markets, and contact language theories to explain the attrition and shift of the Italian language. This study identifies three relevant social spaces that contributed to the linguistic experience of Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires: 1). conventillos or immigrant housing 2.) school community, and 3.) mutual aid societies. Within each social space thrived a linguistic market which language played a key role in the way people interacted and identified with each other. First, the conventillos were part of an alternative linguistic market in which cocoliche, a transitional language, thrived as a way for Italians to communicate with immigrants from different countries. Second, the school community formed part of the legitimate linguistic market because education was mandated by the government. Third, the mutual aid societies formed part of the alternative linguistic market that not only helped immigrants adjust to their new home, but it also fostered a sense of common identity by renewing their traditional ties to their home country in addition to teaching standardized Italian to Italian immigrants who often spoke their own regional dialects. A comparison of the three social spaces and the role that the linguistic markets play in each of them shows that all three spaces, whether legitimate or alternative linguistic markets, were integral in the linguistic experience of the Italian immigrants and important factors in the attrition and shift of Italian to Spanish. / Spanish

This dissertation will demonstrate that a variety of Dominican Spanish in contact with St. Thomas English Creole (STTEC) revealed many features which are consistent with Dominican Spanish in other contact environments and some new features which are emerging as the result of uniquely STTEC influences. The most notable feature is the appearance of the vowel [ɛ] in Dominican Spanish, which in STTEC is highly indexical to St. Thomian identity. In the present sociolinguistic analysis, it was found that the variability of [ɛ] was significantly influenced by the following phonological segment, syllable stress, the language of the token, and the speakers’ social network ties and self-ascribed identity. This dissertation also includes a socio-historical background of St Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, a description of St Thomas English Creole, and a history of immigration patterns of people from the Dominican Republic to St Thomas, U.S.V.I. / Spanish

In this longitudinal, qualitative, multiple-case study, I investigated the following questions: What is it like for a Japanese student who has little experience in countries where English is spoken as an L1 to seek a graduate degree at a U.S. institution of higher education? What linguistic, cultural, and institutional obstacles do they face? How do they overcome them? How does the experience change them? By documenting and analyzing the lived experience of three Japanese women seeking advanced degrees in U.S. universities over a period of at least two years, I shed light on the academic and social factors that played a role in their ultimate success or failure. Drawing on the theories of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), supplemented by activity theory (Engeström, 1999) I focus on the participants’ journeys from the periphery of their new academic communities toward fuller participation within them, with an eye for the way power relationships affect their progress. Using narrative inquiry as a research strategy, I tell my participants’ stories, describing and interpreting their experiences, as they (and I) understood them. The data comprise bi-annual interviews conducted on the participants’ respective campuses, my own observation journals from those visits, additional interviews in Japan, monthly Skype interviews, participants’ journals, course materials, department handbooks and policy statements, and other institutional materials. Findings are grouped into two broad categories: forms of participation and patterns of interaction. The main obstacles to participation included difficulty engaging with instructors and classmates in class, ineffective advising, dysfunction at the departmental level, and trouble managing reading and writing requirements. Patterns of interaction reveal how the participants overcame those obstacles, including forming and leveraging strong socio-academic networks to fill gaps in their own knowledge and to draw emotional support, finding alternative sources of insider support in the absence of effective advising, and developing strategies to cope with literacy demands. The findings suggest that inequities of power in the classroom and in the department can hinder academic socialization and make success less likely. However, these inequities can at times be overcome by agency and creativity. / Language Arts

Research in identity and heritage language (HL) education focuses on the experiences of heritage speakers (HS) and how certain classroom discourses can devalue the skills and proficiencies that they bring with them to the class (García & Torres-Guevara, 2010; Leeman, 2012; Showstack, 2016). These dominant and monoglossic language discourses often focus on the teaching and acquisition of a “standard Spanish language” (Train, 2007; del Valle, 2000). Although scholarship on HL education has long advocated for separate specialized courses to meet the needs of HSs (Potowski, 2002; Valdés, 1997), many HSs remain in courses designed for second language (L2) learners because institutions do not consistently offer specialized instruction. Some research has investigated the experiences of HSs in mixed L2-HL classes (Harklau, 2009; Potowski, 2002), but there is a need for an examination of the classroom discursive practices in courses tailored for L2 learners and how those practices shape how HSs of diverse backgrounds position themselves as Spanish speakers within and outside of the classroom. The present study explores the representation of identity among HSs enrolled in university-level Spanish language classes. This investigation examined the relationship between HSs’ perceived instructional objectives in a Spanish as a second language class, the ways HSs positioned themselves as knowledgeable of the language concerning these objectives, and finally, their subsequent investment in their Spanish studies. The data come from a classroom ethnography and were analyzed within a grounded theory methods approach (Glasser & Strauss, 1967) and showed the extent to which classroom activities were inclusive to HSs’ pedagogical needs. Further, from a social identity and positioning lens, I considered how language ideologies that value the standard linguistic repertoires of monolingual native speakers’ affected individuals’ perceptions and relationships to their heritage community, and the expert or novice identities they negotiated during social interaction. Classroom observations and interviews revealed that the instruction that HSs received often promoted a linguistic hierarchy that devalued the non-standard language forms that reflected the participants’ ethnolinguistic backgrounds. The findings show that each HS navigated classroom discursive practices and negotiated multilingual identities in interaction with their peers, teachers, and the curriculum in different ways. Some of the participants became ambivalent toward the language and its speakers as their backgrounds went unacknowledged in classroom practice, while others found value in the Spanish classes because of past experiences. Findings suggest that there is a need for methodologies in mixed-group classrooms that reflect and acknowledge the sociolinguistic variation of the class (Gutiérrez & Fairclough, 2006). / Spanish

This research involves three separate studies with the goal of investigating learner increases in the pragmatic awareness when exposed to various degrees of sustained, explicit instruction. Operationalized as a composite construct in the theory of communicative competence, pragmatic awareness includes knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic features, with sequential action events representing the former and relationship status categories the latter. Research questions for each study focus on gains learners revealed on a video-based pragmatic awareness assessment instrument delivered in pretest-posttest format. Data collection occurred from fall semester 2013 to spring semester 2015 in one single-sex junior/senior high school and two co-educational universities, one with a first-year focus group and the other with a second-year group, with participates across the contexts enrolled in 1 of 12 intact classes ranging in size from 23 to 33. At each site, data collection included response behaviors for comparison counterfactual groups. Data for the primary analyses of each study were subjected to a one-way ANCOVA. Results revealed a significant difference between the treatment group performances compared to a counterfactual group from each institution: Study 1, F(1,152) = 5.86, p = 0.02; Study 2, F(34, 115.28) = 5.71, p = 0.02; and Study 3, F(3, 77.30) = 8.04, p < 0.00. Relationship strength between the factor levels and the dependent variable, as measured in partial eta squared, accounted for 4%, 14%, and 16% of the variance, respectively. In Study 3 a Bayesian confirmatory analysis revealed that the least explicit treatment, one involving only a focus on pragmalinguistic input, showed the greatest gains. Implications for the three studies are: (a) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic categories reveal difficulty hierarchies, with particular sequential action events and relationship status categories consistently more challenging than others; (b) learners display differential awareness of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic sub-constructs, with the former registered as more difficult; and (c) explicit instruction on a limited number of pragmalinguistic categories might result in spillover learning effects to other, untaught categories. / Applied Linguistics

Who uses they, and who can they be (or not be) used for? Singular they has been proscribed in formal grammars since the mid-18th century, yet it dates to at least the 14th century (Balhorn 2004; Curzan 2003), persevering in both writing and speech (e.g., Baranowski 2002; Balhorn 2009; Lagunoff 1997; Matossian 1997; Newman 1992; Strahan 2008). This thesis investigates the envelope of variation (e.g., LaScotte 2016; Maryna 1978; Meyers 1990) in which speakers make choices of third person singular pronouns based on a multiplicity of both linguistic (e.g., gender stereotypicality, antecedent type) and social (e.g., gender, age, LGBTQ2S+ identity) factors. The analysis is based on data from 620 participants from across Canada and the US between the ages 13 and 79. An online survey sought responses related to three occupations: LaScotte’s (2016) open ended ideal student question was replicated, and Martyna’s (1978) fill in-the-blank style was modelled for mechanic and secretary—nouns with observed and unambiguous gender stereotypes (masculine and feminine respectively; Deaux & Lewis 1986; Haines, Deaux, & Lofaro 2016). Participants self-identified their gender and were categorized into a ternary grouping: men (e.g., cis, trans, transmasculine), women (e.g., fem, cis, trans, female ish), and non-binary (e.g., genderqueer, genderfluid). LGBTQ2S+ identity was also collected, as well as personal pronouns. Use of third person pronouns in the survey responses is quantified by consistency (i.e., maintaining use of the same pronoun throughout a participant’s response) and by proportional frequency of use—the latter explored in depth. The most important quantitative finding is that singular they is the most consistently and frequently used third person pronoun overall. But, its patterns of use are not parallel across test occupations or participant social groups. The results indicate that student is gender-neutral, whereas mechanic and secretary remain gendered (he:they; she:they), results that are reflected by perceptual ratings: student remains neutral (they), mechanic skews masculine (he), and secretary skews feminine (she). The impact of social characteristics adds layers of complexity about the groups leading sociolinguistic change at societal levels and/or within their own communities and networks: Non-binary, LGBTQ2S+, users of gender neutral personal pronouns, and/or younger. Collectively, these findings suggest that gender stereotypical roles are not unilaterally weighted and biases can manifest through pronominal choice. There are multiple dimensions of influence, such as the referent, one’s identity, and the communities to which individuals are connected. Thus, this thesis both uncovers persistent gender biases and creates a dynamic display of pronominal variation across speakers. / Graduate