During the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the fear of being denounced and subsequently punished contributed to the social silence that became the norm during Franco´s dictatorship. This was then reinforced during democracy through an implicit pact of oblivion. After the death of Franco, as an attempt to avoid reopening wounds, successive democratic governments decided not to agitate the ghost of the civil war, due to its traumatic nature. The consequence of such a pact of oblivion is the lack of information about the past, continually suffered by subsequent generations. Furthermore, Francoism legally imposed the subordination of women to men in all spheres of life, denying the most basic rights to women as well as their autonomy as individuals. This political and gendered repression resulted in a lack of agency and reinforcement of a patriarchal structure. Memory Studies has assumed major importance due to the memory boom that has affected Spain since the end of the twentieth century. Twenty-first century literature offers new representations of women which need to be fully studied. This dissertation analyzes four novels that describe, question and expand on different roles for women during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and its aftermath from an interdisciplinary perspective. The main theoretical concepts through which the novels/themes are examined include intersections of gender and power, intersectionality, gendered empowerment, identity, victimization, agency, genocide, gendered punishments, and the deconstruction of the normative gender role through the re-signification of domestic chores. In the selected literary works, female characters are depicted in uncommon scenarios, such as prisons, anti-Francoist guerrilla, exile, and also on the winning Francoist side. Drawing on interdisciplinary frameworks including sociology, literature, and history, my analysis reveals the silenced story of the defeated and its repercussions in the democratic Spain of today.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This thesis has presented a comparative study of English and Spanish determiners. The comparison has been made at a surface level of the determiner systems of the two languages and also at a deep structure level. The reason of this comparison has been to find out how the two languages differ or have points of similarities. The points of difference have been taken into consideration to see how these differences between the two languages affect errors in writing compositions by Spanish-speaking students learning English.Some ideas have been drawn up of how constrastive analysis could help in teaching or learning a language.

The subjective reactions of listeners from various backgrounds to speech varieties used in Medellin, Colombia, were investigated using the matched-guise technique with a series of measuring scales. In all three dimensions of a semantic differential scale-namely, competence, personal integrity, and social attractiveness-Non-Antioqueno Dialect (NAD) speakers were rated significantly higher than Antioqueno Dialect (AD) speakers regardless of the sex or the dialect of the subject, or the sex of the speaker. In the case of social attractiveness, however, for female subjects the difference between NAD speakers and AD speakers was somewhat larger than for the male subjects.The evaluations of male speakers were significantly higher than those of female speakers regardless of the sex of the subject, the dialect of the subject, or the dialect of the speaker. For AD subjects the difference in ratings between male and female speakers was about the same for male and female subjects; however, for NAD female subjects this difference was somewhat larger than for the NAD male subjects.In general, the evaluations of speakers by different age groups indicated a significant difference, between older and younger subjects. The younger subjects rated speakers significantly lower. than the older subjects did for all three variables of evaluation, that is, competence, personal integrity and social attractiveness.While no significant effect was found for socio-economic status (SES) non the variables of personal integrity and social attractiveness, SES was found to have a significant effect on evaluations of competence. In this dimension of evaluation, lowermiddle class subjects rated speakers significantly differently from the middle-middle class and the upper-middle class subjects. The former ranked speakers higher on competence than the middle-middle class and the upper-middle class subjects did.Finally, subjects assigned prestigious professions to NAD speakers, while only non-prestigious occupations were matched with the AD speakers. Additionally, the proportion of times male speakers were judged to have a prestigious occupation was significantly higher than the proportion of times female speakers were judged so.Within the theoretical framework of this study, differential reactions to the guises assumed by the speakers were interpreted as revealing differential attitudes towards the speech varieties. The evaluations are taken to be attitudes not only toward the speakers themselves, but also toward the language forms of the varieties involved. / Department of English

The Swedish school, or more precisely, the school results of Swedish pupils, is a topic widely discussed in media, the newspapers and among teachers and parents. Everyone seems concerned about the knowledge requirements and there are many discussions about how to change the negative spiral. With the change of national study plans from the earlier Lpo94 to today´s Lgr11, many questions have arisen about how to plan and evaluate teaching. Against this background, the aim of this essay is to verify what influence the new national study plan has had on Spanish teaching, the study books in Spanish and evaluation in upper secondary school in the communities of Skövde and Mariestad. Our focus is delimited to the five competences of a language: listen, read, write, speak and communicate. In this essay we part from four hipotheses. In the first place, we believe that the national study plans, Lpo94 and Lgr11, are very similar, but that there is a greater focus on the competence of communication in Lgr11. In the second place, we believe that the tests in the teacher´s guides are more or less adapted to the five competences depending on if they were published before or after the change of national study plans. Our hipothesis is that the newer tests are more adapted to the competences than the older ones. In the third place, we believe that some teachers have adapted (more or less) to the new system and that others have not. In the fourth place, our hipothesis is that those teachers who have adapted to the new system, evaluate all the five competences, with greater frequency and also make their own material to a greater extent than others. The method used in this essay is a comparison between the national study plans and the Spanish teacher´s guides. We have also made surveys among the teachers in the communities of Mariestad and Skövde. The results of our study show that there is a high similarity between the national study plans, but that there is a greater focus on communication in Lgr11 when it comes to knowledge requirements. The tests in the teacher´s guides differ a lot, and not many of them have been republished since the system change. Interestingly, there is only one of the teacher´s guides with tests that correspond to all five competences, and it is a book published before Lgr11. Furthermore, the teachers in our study respond differently on how they believe that they have adapted to the new system. Half of them think that they ii have made no changes at all, but the results show, surprisingly, that all the teachers evaluate the five competences of a language and there is also a tendency to evaluate the pupils more often than before. It seems like the new national study plan has had an impact on all the teachers in our study.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Wendy H. Venet, committee chair; Stuart Galishoff, Charles G. Steffen, committee members. Electronic text (338 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 4, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 308-338).

Univ., Diss.--Bonn, 2000.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-285). Also available online in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-108).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-185).