Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Vasa universitet, 1995. / Thesis t.p. laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. 387).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1980. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 295-309).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.

No description available.

<p> 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 [&epsiv;] 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 [&epsiv;] was significantly influenced by the following phonological segment, syllable stress, the language of the token, and the speaker's&rsquo; 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.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the semiotic resources that Singaporeans combine, balance, and negotiate in order to enact a &ldquo;proper&rdquo; Singaporean identity. The analysis considers a variety of semiotic resources, ranging from fine-grained phonetic variables to language varieties to education or career paths. The meaningful organization and use of these semiotic resources are situated within Singapore&rsquo;s broader sociopolitical discourses of nationhood, that is, how Singaporeans perceive themselves as a nation and citizens of that nation according to participation&mdash;or non-participation&mdash;in institutional discourses. I show how the notion of being &ldquo;proper&rdquo; as well as evaluations of &ldquo;properness&rdquo; are associated with social and linguistic practices that <i>index</i> (Silverstein 2003) meanings of being global and local, often simultaneously or in balance. Furthermore, this work extends Eckert&rsquo;s (2008) concept of <i>indexical fields </i>, acknowledging that variables index multiple social meanings, any one of which have the potential to be activated in use. In the enactment of a &ldquo;proper&rdquo; identity, I investigate how these meanings are continuously co-constructed in interaction (Bucholtz and Hall 2005). </p><p> The (re-)production of &ldquo;proper&rdquo; ways of speaking and being are part of the processes of <i>enregisterment</i> (Agha 2007), via a <i>semiotic repertoire</i>, which is then available for public circulation and performable cultural models of behavior. This work examines the range and flexibility of resources that constitute a semiotic repertoire through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses&mdash;connecting macro-level discourses, such as the circulation of sociocultural stereotypes, to variation in speakers&rsquo; day to day language use, including micro-level investigations, such as the perception of voice onset time in Singapore English. This work highlights the many ways in which social identities and meanings are contextualized in and emerge out of interactions that regiment and discipline the behaviors of the self and others.</p><p>

abstract: There have been various studies on the pronunciation of the /s/ in Latin American Spanish. Most studies have shown three variants of the /s/ in syllable-final context: [s] (sibilant), [h] (aspiration) and [ø] (deletion). Most studies focused on Caribbean Spanish, i.e. the Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela. In Caribbean Spanish, maintaining the /s/ is considered prestigious, aspiration is considered neutral, and deletion of the /s/ is stigmatized (Lafford 1982, 1989). Most people who maintain the /s/ are highly educated people, while people who received little to no education are more likely to delete the /s/ (Lafford 1982, 1989). Besides Caravedo (1990), there have been very few studies on the pronunciation of the /s/ in Peruvian Spanish. To find out more, I analyzed television interviews with Jaime Bayly, a well-known writer and journalist from Lima, Peru to determine when the /s/ is maintained and when it is aspirated or deleted. While watching eight interviews with people of different backgrounds, I recorded what Bayly said, focusing on how he pronounced final-syllable (s). After recording the occurrences of the /s/ and classifying and coding the variables, I used Goldvarb X to establish the probabilistic strength of the proposed factors. The results showed that the most significant linguistic factor was the position of the (s) and the most significant social factors were the gender and acquaintance of the interviewee. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2012

<p> The three studies in this dissertation were carried out with the intention of showing how Indigenous communities in critically endangered language settings can &ldquo;bring their language forward&rdquo; (Hornberger, 2008) by encouraging Indigenous youth participation and integrating technology into Indigenous language revitalization efforts in and out of educational settings. Indigenous youth play a pivotal role in determining the future of their languages (McCarty, et. al, 2009). However, youth are often situated in contexts where they no longer have adequate supports to learn and use their Indigenous languages (Lee, 2009; McCarty, et.al, 2006; Romero-Little, et.al, 2007; Wyman et al, 2013) and Indigenous languages are continuously marginalized and unequally contested by other dominant languages (Tupas, 2015; Zentz, 2017). The study within was situated in a multilingual and multicultural urban area in Indonesia marked by complex dynamics of language shift and endangerment in and out of school settings, where the teaching of Indigenous language at school was managed by the local government and limited as a subject to two hours a week. However, the study also documented multiple existing and potential resources for language revitalization, and demonstrated possibilities for building language revitalization efforts on youth language activism and the availability of technology in and out of schools. In the first study, I examined the implementation of Lampung teaching in schools in Bandar Lampung, looking at the outcomes, challenges, and achievements of existing programs, and available resources for further developing and improving the programs. In the second study, I present ethnographic vignettes of three Indigenous youth and young adult language activists from three different Indigenous communities in Indonesia, highlighting how study participants initiated wide-ranging language activist efforts, and suggested new ways to encourage other youth to participate in Indigenous language revitalization. In the third study, I invited eight young adult language activists to share their stories of language activism with students in three Lampung language classrooms in Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, and help facilitate students&rsquo; Lampung language learning and use in online spaces together with Lampung language teachers. In the three studies, I triangulated quantitative data from sociolinguistic surveys and writing and speaking tests with qualitative data from interviews, focus group discussions, observations and documentation of language use in on and offline contexts. Overall findings from the three studies show how positioning youth and young adults as a resource (Wyman, et. al, 2016), and building on young peoples&rsquo; engagement with contemporary technology as a tool (Thorne &amp; Reinhardt, 2008; Reinhardt &amp; Thorne, 2017), can help youth learn, use and advocate for their Indigenous languages, offering hope for supporting language vitality in the future. Findings also demonstrate the potential for top down and bottom up language planning initiatives (Hornberger, 2005) to support youth Indigenous language learning and use beyond classroom settings, and encourage youth participation in community efforts to reverse language shift.</p><p>

This study explores the dynamics of terminological expansion in what is referred to as the ‘women’s register’, seen against the background of the development of Afrikaans from Dutch within the heterogeneity of cultures and languages – first at the Cape, later in the broader South African context. This study addresses the historical imbalance in literature regarding the contribution of women as far as the creation of appropriate terms for their varied activities is concerned. The holistic sociolinguistic approach that was taken, made it possible to highlight the linguistic legacy of previously marginalised or overlooked subgroups, in particular the lexical contribution of slave and indigenous women to the women’s register in Afrikaans. On a terminological level, the study examines the nature and extent of term creation within the women’s register by exploring the use of loan words, transliterations, loan translations, compounds and derivations as well the terminologisation of existing words. / Prof. A.E. Coetzee