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

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This three-article dissertation explores the nuances of play within adventure playgrounds, guided by two pivotal questions: how does play manifest in settings with user-negotiated boundaries, and how do the creators of these playgrounds perceive play? Utilizing a mixed-methods approach across three articles, this study explores the interaction between the physical and conceptual boundaries of play spaces, the perceptions of playworkers, and the play behaviors and experiences of the generations of players. The research methodology combines sociolinguistic analysis, participatory observation, multimodal making, and interviews. The first article examines the linguistic landscape of adventure playgrounds to understand how language influences the play environment. The second investigates the players’ perspectives on play within these unique settings. The third article focuses on playworkers, analyzing their perceptions and practices in facilitating play. Findings reveal a complex ecosystem where space, perception, and play are intricately linked, highlighting the role of user and creator in shaping the boundaries and possibilities of play.

This dissertation investigates the use of the subjunctive in completive clauses governed by verbs in Italian, both synchronically and diachronically, and in Vulgar Latin. By making use of the tools provided by the Variationist Sociolinguistic framework (Labov 1972, 1994), the current study sheds light on the underlying conditioning on variability using actual usage and speech-surrogate data. Contemporary actual speech data comes from LIP (De Mauro et al. 1993) and C-ORAL-ROM (Cresti & Moneglia 2005) corpora, providing spontaneous discourse in casual and careful speech as well as sub-sample divisions representative of geographical variation. In order to measure any changes in the underlying conditioning on subjunctive selection, a diachronic benchmark is established: a corpus of speech-like surrogates of 16th to 20th century Italian, COHI (Corpus of Historical Italian), and a corpus of Vulgar Latin (Cena Trimalchionis, from the Satyricon by Petronius). The subjunctives were extracted in adherence to the principle of accountability (Labov 1972), using the method developed by Poplack (1992): every complement clause governed by a matrix verb (governor) that triggered the subjunctive at least once was included. This method enables us to circumvent the issue of the lack of consensus in the literature on exactly which contexts, i.e. verbs and/or meanings, should trigger the subjunctive in discourse. This issue surfaces as well from the meta-linguistic analysis of a compendium of 58 Italian grammars and treaties (CSGI, Collezione Storica di Grammatiche Italiane), constructed for the purpose of this research. A series of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors proposed by formal and prescriptive literature are operationalized and tested against the corpora of both Italian and Vulgar Latin, in order to ascertain the nature of variability in discourse: i.e. whether the use of the subjunctive is semantically motivated, productive in speech or undergoing desemanticization and lexicalization. Despite widespread assumption of a change that occurred after the political and the subsequent linguistic unification of Italy, i.e. that the subjunctive has lost ground in favour of the indicative when it was supposedly used categorically in the past, quantitative and statistical evidence shows that subjunctive selection is largely determined by lexical identity of the governor as well as embedded suppletive forms of essere, and that this pattern has been operative at least since the 16th century. On a more socio-linguistic aspect, this study confirms the linguistic prestige that the subjunctive has acquired in contemporary speech, being selected with a wider range of infrequent and singleton governors by highly educated speakers. Also, the highly lexicalized pattern on variability was found to be largely shared amongst the four main urban centres of Florence, Milan, Rome, and Naples, thus countering the assumption of divergent linguistic behaviour between northern and southern varieties of Italian. The study also shows that despite the significant time span targeted, no evidence of desemanticization has been found. Likewise, the variationist analysis on the Vulgar Latin subjunctive shows that subjunctive choice was already largely determined by, and restricted, to a few governors, identified as ‘volitive’ and ‘emotive’ matrices. These governors remained strong predictors for the selection of the subjunctive in Italian as well, suggesting that this lexical pattern has been transferred and consistently retained in the daughter language.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Linguistics, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 210-223. / General introduction -- A multimodal analysis of the 2006 Mexican presidential campaign billboards -- Study 2: Discourses of obligation and prohibition within an institutional setting -- Study 3: Gatekeeping practices at the LEMO: a multimodal analysis -- General conculsions. / This is a thesis composed of three studies linked by a common critical multimodal approach to the analysis of the data. Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional framework was drawn on in order to explore the social practice, discursive practice and text dimensions of the discourses in question. The first two studies focus on printed texts in Mexican Spanish, whereas the third study addresses spoken interaction in English with occasional code switching to Spanish. -- Study 1: A Multimodal Analysis of the 2006 Mexican Presidential Campaign Billboards - This is a joint study (with my colleague Michael Witten and approved by my supervisor and the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie) which analyzes the political discourse of the multimodal and multisemiotic texts that the three major political parties involved in the 2006 Mexican presidential elections produced and extensively distributed through the medium of public billboards. We investigate how these parties express their particular ideologies, construct and convey social identities and relationships, and construct relations of power between themselves and the readers/viewers of these texts, through the medium of billboards. As indicated in the preamble, the methodological framework addresses these issues drawing on Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional model of analysis while employing a variety of qualitative techniques, tools, and approaches. -- Study 2: Discourses of obligation and prohibition within an institutional setting - Following the theme of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this study examines the institutionalized discourses of obligation and prohibition at the Library of the Language Faculty (LEMO)*of a public university in Mexico. Six different texts pertaining to various genres ranging from a protocol to notices were examined. Multiple qualitative methodologies and tools such as those drawn from ethnography, critical discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics are utilized in the analysis of the data. Power relations between the institution and the library users are examined as well as the conditions of text production and reception, the latter through an ethnographic component. An emphasis is placed on the linguistic text. -- Study 3: Gatekeeping practices at the LEMO - This study investigates one of the gatekeeping practices at the Language Faculty of a public university in Mexico (see above). The particular practice concerned consists of the professional examinations (vivas) that students have to take in order to obtain their degrees of 'Licenciatura en Lenguas Modernas' (BEd in Modern Languages) in the English Teaching section of the university. This study focuses on the professional discourse(s) utilized by both candidates and examiners by means of analyzing the texts of four recorded professional examinations. This study chiefly draws on Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical concepts of 'frontstage' and 'backstage', where the analysis of the frontstage work addresses the Question-and-Answer section of the examinations, and the analysis of the backstage work addresses the subsequent deliberations among the examiners concerning the performance of the candidates. Multiple qualitative methodologies and tools are again drawn upon, such as ethnographic analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. (* Facultad de Lenguas) / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xii, 233 p. : ill. (some col.)

This paper investigates the usage of topic in spoken Brasilian Portuguese, considering it as the constituent on the left of the sentence. To carry out the analysis, we chose the proposal of Callou et alii (1993), which considers the topic lato sensu constructions. The aim of our project is to verify how this phenomenon is used, and to observe if the presence of topic either favors or not the occurrence of lexicalized subject in the sentence. In order to do so, an investigation of topic as well as subject structures was carried out, bearing in mind during the analysis, linguistic and extralinguistic factors such as social class and age group. The corpus used to develop the research consisted of 45 interviews carried out with adult speakers from the city of Uberlândia (MG), from both sexs. The analysis showed that in spite of the little presence in the language, all the informers, irrespective of the social class, age group, used the topic structure, confirming our main hypothesis. In regards to the constructions of the topic lato sensu it was noticed that the Dislocation for de left (DE) is more used than Topicalization (TOP). This fact doesn t confirm our hypothesis but confirms the tendency of Brasilian Portuguese to fill all the empty categories, as already mentioned by many researches. Furthermore, according to the theory of Labovian Sociolinguistics and Parametric Sociolinguistics, in which we based this paper, it was possible to conclude that presence x absence of topic lato sensu constructions, in the sentence, is a process of variation, not a process of linguistic change. / Este trabalho investiga o uso do tópico na língua oral do Português do Brasil, considerando como tal o constituinte à esquerda da sentença. Para realizar a análise, adotamos a proposta de Callou et alii (1993), na qual são consideradas construções de tópico lato sensu. O objetivo do nosso trabalho é verificar de que modo o fenômeno é usado e observar, principalmente, se a presença de tópico favorece ou não a ocorrência de sujeito lexicalizado na sentença. Para tanto, foi feita uma investigação de estruturas de tópico e estruturas de sujeito, levando em consideração, na análise, fatores lingüísticos e fatores extralingüísticos classe social e faixa etária. O corpus utilizado para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa constituiu-se de 45 entrevistas realizadas com falantes adultos da cidade de Uberlândia (MG), de ambos os sexos. A análise realizada evidenciou que, apesar da pouca incidência na língua, todos os informantes, independentemente da classe social e da faixa etária, que fizeram uso da estrutura de tópico, lexicalizaram o sujeito, corroborando, assim, nossa hipótese principal. Especificamente em relação às construções de tópico lato sensu, foi constatado que o Deslocamento à Esquerda (DE) é mais usado do que a Topicialização (TOP). Essa constatação refutou nossa hipótese, mas confirma a tendência do Português do Brasil de preencher categorias vazias, como já foi atestado por vários estudiosos. Além disso, seguindo os pressupostos teóricos da Sociolingüística Laboviana e da Sociolingüística Paramétrica, nos quais fundamentamos nosso trabalho, foi possível concluir que presença x ausência de construções de tópico lato sensu , na sentença, constitui um processo de variação e não de mudança lingüística. / Mestre em Lingüística

This dissertation deals with the variation between the conditional and the pastimperfect indicative in conditional sentences beginning with the conjunction "if". The usage of these verb tenses alternate with simple verb constructions and verbal locutions. The author aimed to detect whether the verb forms actually alternate and the factors that determine which verb forms should be used. For the purpose of this work,linguistic factors have been analysed: size of constructions, order of sentences and formal parallelism. Besides, extra-linguistic factors such as social class and age group have also been investigated. The researcher worked with a corpus that represented the language spoken in Uberlândia, Brazil. This corpus was composed by 45 interviews with adult speakers from the city mentioned previously. The perspective of Labovian Sociolinguistics (Theory of Variation) and Parametric Sociolinguistics conducted the methodology of the research. This study shows that the past imperfect indicative is mostly used among low class and the formal parallelism favours one of the verb forms analyseds. / Esta dissertação trata da variação entre o futuro do pretérito e o pretérito imperfeito do indicativo, em orações condicionais iniciadas por "se". Essas formas verbais se alternam tanto em construções com verbos simples como em locuções verbais. Buscou-se detectar se essas formas verbais se alternam e quais fatores condicionam o uso de uma em detrimento da outra. Para tanto, foram investigados fatores lingüísticos, tais como, tamanho das orações, ordem das sentenças e paralelismo formal. Além disso, foram analisados fatores extralingüísticos, como classe social e faixa etária. Para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa, trabalhou-se com um corpus representante da língua falada na cidade de Uberlândia, Brasil. Na composição desse corpus, foram utilizadas 45 entrevistas realizadas com falantes adultos desta cidade. Trabalhou-se na perspectiva da Sociolingüística Laboviana (Teoria da Variação) e da Sociolingüística Paramétrica. A análise realizada evidenciou que o pretérito imperfeito é o tempo verbal preferencial da classe baixa e que o paralelismo formal favorece um dos tempos verbais analisados. / Mestre em Lingüística