This thesis will shed light on the mechanics of women's enclosure in Spanish cinema and television since the transition to democracy, particularly convent and prison spaces. The study aims to make an original contribution to the field of Spanish cultural studies by highlighting the tension between these spaces as sites of control and sites of community, a tension which both problematizes and enriches the negotiation of the abject, the excessive, and the inassimilable within Spain. Following some contextual scene-setting laid out in the Introduction, the first two chapters explore how the convent was recuperated in the popular imagination after the end of the dictatorship. The first chapter will examine convent space in three post-transition biopics of the sixteenth century Spanish mystic, Teresa de Jesús: Josefina Molina's 1984 TVE television series, Teresa de Jesús, Ray Loriga's 2007 film Teresa, el cuerpo de Cristo, and Jorge Dorado's recent TV movie, Teresa (2015). This analysis will unravel the concrete and historical forces which have shaped representations of the saint's space, particularly how Teresa's mysticism has imbued the convent with authority as a political tool in defining national identity and gender roles. Equally, it will examine how the ineffable experience of the mystic ultimately makes the space unassimilable to any overarching power structure. The impossibility of assimilating convent space will then be the focus of the second chapter which explores the use of different aesthetic registers to render the convent socially intelligible in two mid-eighties convent films, Entre tinieblas (Almodóvar 1983) and Extramuros (Picazo 1985). The next two chapters focus on the construction and management of Otherness in representations of female homosocial enclosure during the mid-nineties. The third chapter looks at two adaptions of the stage play, Canción de cuna - José María Elorrieta's 1961 version and José Luis Garci's 1994 remake - to examine how the radical Otherness of convent enclosure has been mitigated on screen in order to ease anxieties around unmarried, childless women, and to reclaim the space as part of the national landscape. Chapter 4's analysis of Libertarias (Aranda 1995) and Entre rojas (Rodriguez 1996) will contrast this with a study of how the Otherness inherent to homosocial enclosure has also been exploited as a path towards new imaginings of community and intimacy. The final section will examine gender, memory, and martyrdom in women's prison films since 2000: Las trece rosas (Martínez-Lázaro 2007), La voz dormida (Zambrano 2011), and Estrellas que alcanzar (Rueda 2010). This chapter will consider how enclosed environments have been used to frame martyrdom narratives, problematically situating them at the intersection of traditional Catholic iconography and more contemporary depictions of imprisoned and confined women. While the study focuses primarily on cultural production since the transition to democracy, emphasis is placed throughout on tracing the roots of these representations to earlier hagiography, missionary films, and the cine religioso of the 1950s. These connections not only demonstrate the endurance of the convent and prison as significant sites in the Spanish popular imagination but also their versatility as a signifying force and the need for more nuanced readings of them in cultural studies.

The thesis presents a general analysis of the semantic processes involved in the production of slang in Barranquilla and of its use, particularly in relation to popular culture, socio-economic class and education. The relationship between slang and other areas of language is studied and the corpus presents 282 words and phrases accompanied by a detailed analysis of each item. Slang is a part of the vernacular, which is the most systematic area of language (cf, Labov) and due to its rapidly-changing nature, processes of semantic change which occur throughout the language can be seen in action in slang (cf, Bendezi Neyra, Guamieri, Hildebrandt, Jespersen, Niceforo, Trejo, etc.). The most important mechanism of slang production (66%) is found to be metaphor, which is analysed in detail as a dynamic process, and it is suggested that literal language and metaphor are two extremes of the same continuous process. Within metaphor, function is seen to be the most frequent motivation (64%), the expression of relations, activities and abstract concepts in concrete terms being one of the major uses of slang. Examination of this phenomenon shows the deficit theory (cf. Bernstein and, for general resumé, Dittmar) to be probably unjustified, Notwithstanding, a relationship between slang, socio-economic class and education is established in that working class people, with least formal education, are found to be the greatest producers and users of slang. As specifically vernacular lexicon, slang is an expression of the vernacular culture and its value systems. Relations between slang and culture are analysed on the level of individual items in the corpus and also in a more general and abstract sense in the way in which slang is seen to fulfil in urban society some of the functions of myth (cf. Levi-Strauss, Rosaldo). At the other end of the linguistic scale, comparison and contrast are also drawn between slang and poetry. Throughout the first nine chapters, detailed and numerical evidence is drawn from corpus. The corpus itself presents the meaning of each item, an example of its use, cross-references to many dictionaries in order to provide comparison with the standard and with other regional and non-standard varieties of Spanish, and analysis of the semantic process involved, its motivation, its effects, the reference of tenor and vehicle where applicable and the social distribution of the item. The appendix provides brief discussion of the influence of the mass media.

abstract: The presence of two copula verbs (ser and estar) in Spanish has caused a semantic competition between the two. This semantic competition has been documented from the XII century (Vañó-Cerdá, 1982). Some scholars (Brown & Cortés-Torres, 2012; Cortés-Torres, 2004; Gutiérrez, 1992; Ortiz-López, 2000; Silva-Corvalán, 1994) have demonstrated the presence of this competition in which estar has been occupying structures traditionally reserved for ser in different Spanish varieties. This study investigates the extent to which the extension of estar to contexts previously limited to ser is present in the Spanish of Puerto Rico in adjectival structures (copula + adjective). The investigation analyzed 21 Puerto Rican Spanish speakers, who completed five different instruments (interview, description of a picture, 2 questionnaires and grammar judgment). Nine of the participants completed the five tasks and the other 12 completed the 2 questionnaires. A multi-variable and qualitative analysis were employed to examine the linguistics (class or individual frame of reference, copulas the adjective allows, animacy, susceptibility to change, and type of adjective) and social factors (sex, age, level of education, and bilingualism) that favor the phenomenon. The results showed that type of adjective, copulas the adjective allows, susceptibility to change, and type of questionnaire favored the innovative use of estar. Both analyses showed a clear tendency of the linguistics factors that favor the innovative use of estar. The results of this study concur with previous studies (Cortés-Torres, 2004; Gutiérrez, 1992; Ortiz-López, 2000; Silva-Corvalán, 1994) about the phenomenon in other monolingual and bilingual Spanish dialects. This study confirms Puerto Rican Spanish follows the internal change tendency in Spanish language about the uses of ser and estar. The use of different instruments for data collection provides a clear view of the phenomenon in Puerto Rican Spanish. The use of questionnaires with confirmed estar predictors shows that some adjectives resist the phenomenon more; even with the perfect conditions for the use of estar, the participants did not allowed its use. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2013

This dissertation investigates subject expression patterns in Dominican Spanish (DS). In this variety, the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish co-exist with the widespread use of overt subjects, which are found in specific constructions that are either rare or unattested in other Spanish varieties. Interestingly, these structures co-exist in the Dominican grammar with the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish. While subject expression has been studied in a number of Spanish dialects within the generative and the variationist paradigms, monolingual Dominican Spanish, to the best of my knowledge, has not been investigated in previous variationist work. This study covers this gap by examining a large corpus of spontaneous speech (N=6005) gathered in the capital city of Santo Domingo and a rural area in the northwestern Cibao region. Furthermore, in line with the cohesive approach to syntactic variation developed in recent work (Adger and Smith 2005), theoretical implications are drawn from quantitative results. The results obtained in this study show that null and overt subject patterns in DS are regulated by the same constraints that have been found relevant in previous variationist work, i.e. discourse-related factor groups and Person (Otheguy, Zentella and Livert, 2007). These results depart from previous work in that evidence for language change in progress has been found in subject position patterns, rather than in null and overt subject distribution. When this phenomenon is examined, urban, young, high-middle class and female speakers arise as the social groups leading grammatical restructuring. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is taken into account for testing previous syntactic-theoretical proposals on DS. Taking the cartographic approach to syntactic structure (Rizzi 1997) as a point of departure, it will proposed that multiple specifier positions are available within the TP and CP fields to host strong and weak subjects. This proposal, in turn, makes it possible to account for the Null Subject Parameter profile displayed by synchronic DS without resorting to competing grammars in the minds of the speakers.

Although controversial, the theory that the Romancero (ballad genre) resulted from the disintegration of cantares de gesta in the late Middle Ages is generally accepted in current Spanish literary scholarship. The romances (ballads) based on epic themes of Castilian history occupy a key position in this theory, since they are considered to be the oldest and the closest to the epics from which the Romancero originated. In an attempt to justify or to disprove this claim, the present study investigates the thematic contents of the romances viejos based on Castilian subjects. Utilising the edition of old romances gathered by Ferdinand Wolf and Conrad Hofmann in their Primavera y flor de romances, these romances are analysed, and compared on the one hand with the extant epic poems, and on the other with the chronicle texts in which poems no longer extant were prosified. The romances chosen for analysis are from the cycles of the following heroes: Bernardo del Carpio (Chapter I), Fernán González (Chapter II), Infantes de Lara (Chapter III) and El Cid (Chapters IV-VII). The cycle of El Cid is divided into the separate categories of Mocedades de Rodrigo (Chapter IV), the partition of the kingdoms and resulting fratricidal wars (Chapter V), the siege of Zamora (Chapter VI), and the conquest of Valencia and punishment of the Infantes de Carridn (Chapter VII). The evidence acquired by this reanalysis of the romances and their possible sources allows the following conclusions: 1. There is a diachronic continuity in the elaboration of epic texts, as seen in the romances of Fernán González, the Infantes de Lara and the Cid series. Some of these reelaborations were in all probability in prose while others were in verse. In the latter case, a tendency is demonstrated toward the restriction of the narrative to a few popular motifs, and in particular that of the confrontation between king and vassal. The authors of the romances took up this confrontation motif in creating some of the most popular ballads of the genre. 2. There is a diachronic continuity in the transmission of the original, unelaborated epic material, both in oral and in written form. This conservatism is seen in the romances of Bernardo del Carpio. and in those dealing with the partition of the kingdoms and the siege of Zamora. 3. There was clearly erudite participation of chroniclers and others in the reworking of epic material, as seen in the romances of the Infantes de Lara and the Cid series. Some of this reworking involved the favouring of certain epic poems which best reflected the chroniclers' historiographical points of view, but in other cases these unknown authors even created new episodes or reinterpreted ambiguous points to give a new turn to the old narratives. 4. In the process of transmission of epic narratives, some prose texts were written by adapting chronicle material to make it more appealing to a popular audience. The present investigation has found evidence of the creation of many old epic romances by resort to these popular adaptations. Thus, chronicle sources appear to be of greater importance in the origin and development of the romances viejos, and in the transmission of epic themes, than current theory allows. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This research seeks to establish a connection between the Hermetic tradition and the paranormal phenomena found in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera --- “Un alma en pena” (1862), Póstumo el transmigrado (1872) and Póstumo el envirginado (1882) --- and Benito Pérez Galdós´s La sombra (1870) and “Celín” (1871). By establishing a Hegelian influence in their works, we uncover the possible origin of these paranormal events. German Idealism, so widespread during the first half of the 19th century, seems to have given both authors access to new currents of thought, allowing them to explore the union of art with the metaphysical. Thought is given precedence over sensation and Idealism prevails over Empiricism. Nature is now seen to be spiritual, as well as spatial, and among the major exponents of this movement is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), whose philosophy states that human knowledge is based on the “Idea,” a concept in which nature and spirit fuse. Hegel holds the traditional hermetic conception of philosophia perennis that supposes a universal truth common to every culture, religious tradition, and belief upheld by humankind. By examining the Hegelian influence in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera and Benito Pérez Galdós, and relating major passages of their works to the precepts contained in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Emerald Tablet, and the Kybalion (1908), we uncover a subtle, sometimes explicit, presence of this esoteric doctrine, which allows the authors to explore the metaphysical side of life.

Este estudio identifica un conjunto de narrativas españolas, publicadas entre 1994 y 2008, que contienen personajes anoréxicos, con el fin de analizarlos y ubicarlos dentro del panorama literario español. Sin olvidar el contexto más global, este estudio se enfoca en los textos que contienen periodos de hospitalización para el tratamiento de la anorexia, Billete de ida y vuelta (1999) de Gemma Lienas, "Debilitamiento" (2002) de Andrés Barba, Estela: Diario de una vida adolescente (1997) de Javier López Garcìa, La foto de Portobello (2004) de Vicente Muñoz Puelles, Mi tigre es lluvia (1997) de Carlos Puerto, Morir de hambre: Cartas a una anoréxica (2002) de Luis Martìnez de Mingo, Peso cero (2007) de Antonia Romero, Porque eres mi amiga (2008) de Ana Pomares y Rosas blancas para Claudia (2005) de Carlos Puerto. Primero, y a base del criterio diagnóstico para la anorexia que propone la Asociación Psiquiátrica Americana, se analizan los personajes anoréxicos para establecer la veracidad de su anorexia, asì estableciendo el realismo de los textos. Luego, se indaga sobre las manifestaciones de control que resultan en los estados de descontrol, demostrando que la anorexia se puede leer como una crisis de identidad en los personajes anoréxicos. Después, se analizan los temas de vigilancia y normalización en los programas de hospitalización según las ideas de Michel Foucault sobre el Panóptico de Jeremy Bentham y su aplicación a los programas de hospitalización por Mebbie Bell. Se considera el alto nivel de reincidencia después de los periodos de hospitalización y, por lo mismo, se compara la terapia de hospitalización con otras terapias alternativas, vistas en Peso cero y Sara y la anorexia: El triunfo del alma sobre la mente (2006) por Nieves Mesón, concluyendo que los programas más sutiles consiguen con mayor eficacia la recuperación de la anorexia. Entonces, se analizan los cambios económicos, socio-históricos y culturales que ocurren en España en las décadas anteriores al aumento de los casos de anorexia, particularmente la abertura de la economìsa española y su entrada en la Comunidad Económica Europea en 1986, el fin de la dictadura de Francisco Franco y los consecuentes cambios en el papel de la mujer en la sociedad española y los cambios culturales en cuanto a la alimentación; se demuestra cómo estos cambios contribuyen al aumento de los casos de anorexia y cómo se ilustran dentro de los textos bajo consideración. Debido a la relación entre estos factores y la anorexia, se propone que las chicas anoréxicas, por llevar la crisis de la transición española en sus cuerpos, reflejan la crisis de identidad de España después de la muerte de Franco. Finalmente, se lleva a cabo un análisis literario de las obras en cuestión, estudiando los temas posmodernos de fragmentación e intertextualidad, concluyendo que la narrativa sobre la anorexia ilustra bien la condición anoréxica y, por lo mismo, se considera una literatura posmoderna para una enfermedad igualmente posmoderna, fragmentada y llena de múltiples voces. Encima, por su conexión con la cuestión de identidad, se propone que este cuerpo textual se considere una extensión de la literatura española posfranquista que trata el tema de la identidad. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / May 28, 2009. / Postmodernism, Fiction, Eating disorders, Spain, Identity, Intertextuality / Includes bibliographical references. / Brenda Cappuccio, Professor Directing Dissertation; Virgil Suárez, Outside Committee Member; Roberto G. Fernández, Committee Member; Delia Poey, Committee Member.

The present study reports the findings of two self-paced reading tasks (N = 98). The primary experiment (subjunctive task) investigated the effects of lexical preference on L1 Spanish and L2 Spanish readers' processing of the subjunctive during online sentence processing. Participants of various proficiency levels (intermediate, high intermediate, advanced and native Spanish speakers) read sentences that were either ±Form or ±Meaning. The variable "Form" was operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical expression of modality in the main clause of a sentence and the mood marker (indicative or subjunctive) on the subordinate verb. The variable "Meaning" was operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical-semantics of the subordinate verb in a sentence and the action or situation depicted in a corresponding image. The secondary experiment (local agreement task) investigated the same learners' processing of localized subject-verb agreement violations during online sentence processing. The results of the subjunctive task revealed that only native speakers demonstrated sensitivity (i.e., increased reading times as measured via a self-paced reading methodology) to modality-mood mismatches (±Form). Intermediate through advanced-level L2 learners demonstrated sensitivity to sentence-image mismatches (±Meaning) only. In the local agreement task, only intermediate L2 learners were not sensitive to grammaticality violations. These findings are discussed in light of the Lexical Preference Principle (VanPatten, 2004, 2007) and the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2011. / April 28, 2011. / Spanish Subjunctive, Sentence Processing, Lexical Preference, Input Processing, Shallow Structures Hypothesis / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Leeser, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Kaschak, University Representative; Carolina González, Committee Member; Patrick Kennell, Committee Member; Gretchen Sunderman, Committee Member.

The goal of this dissertation is to formulate a novel characterization of subjunctive complements in Spanish, based on semantico-pragmatic and syntactic evidence. The analysis is informed by, and has consequences for, theories that the pragmatic and semantic components of the grammar interface with the syntax. Thus, the proposal carries implications for the interpretive components of the grammar at the C-I interface. I argue that the indicative mood, in Romance, corresponds to propositions which carry assertive force. Data from Greek and Bulgarian provide evidence for a syntactic representation of this feature. I provide evidence for a novel tripartite classification of subjunctive clauses: (i) those that are lexically-selected by volitional verbs and carry strongly intensional semantics, (ii) those licensed by a non-veridical operator (i.e. negation) and carry anti-veridical semantics and (iii) those which lack illocutionary force, with the subjunctive mood surfacing as the default (uninformative) mood in complements to emotives and negated epistemics. Complements to emotive and negated epistemic predicates are the only subjunctive complements which may be extensionally anchored (to the real world), yet are incompatible with ‘point of view’ phenomena, which is unexpected in extensional contexts. The data indicate that the subjunctive surfaces in uninformative contexts, in the absence of (intensional or assertive) illocutionary force. The observations lead to a novel syntactic analysis, relying on Speas and Tenny’s (2003) representation of pragmatic arguments, which captures the fact that subjunctive clauses are anchored to a particular individual (either the matrix subject or the speaker). I propose that subject obviation occurs only in deontic and causative contexts, a novel hypothesis supported by data which illustrate that the addition of an evaluative component (an epistemic ordering source) renders subject obviation violable. I argue that a feature-checking relationship between the subordinate Seat of Knowledge position and matrix deontic or causative v anchors the complement proposition to the matrix subject’s model of evaluation. Co-reference is then banned due to a semantico-pragmatic parameter setting in Romance which disallows a de se (self-ascribing) reading in finite contexts, which facilitates the processing of pronominal reference. I argue that the semantico-pragmatic status of subjunctive complements to negated epistemic predicates overlaps with those to both emotives, which are evaluative, and those to other negated predicates (i.e. perception verbs, verbs of reported speech), which are evidential. Their dual status accounts for the (previously unobserved) overlapping syntactic and semantic properties exhibited in their subjunctive complements. Partee’s (1991, 1995) proposal for a tripartite structure of negation elegantly captures the interpretive facts. Subjunctive complements to negated evidential predicates are interpreted in the scope of negation, while those to evaluative (emotive) predicates are interpreted in the restrictor, with those to negated epistemics allowing both options. Two different types of negation are identified, following Horn’s (1989) analysis. The pragmatic classification of the predicate as either evidential or evaluative determines the type of negation with which it may surface. Metalinguistic negation surfaces with evaluative predicates, and does not scope into the complement clause. True negation-triggered subjunctive (i.e. evidential contexts) results from the scope of descriptive negation into the complement clause, which carries a negative clause-type feature. I show that negation-triggered subjunctive clauses constitute unbounded events, which is attributed to their anti-veridical status. In conclusion, the analysis characterizes subjunctive clauses in Spanish, and carries implications for cross-linguistic analysis. More research is needed to verify the claims cross-linguistically, and the analysis lacks a precise characterization of indicative complement clauses which, like subjunctive clauses, require a more fine-grained characterization.

My dissertation "Género, clase, etnia y raza en la (re) presentación de la mujer inmigrante y extranjera en Argentina (1880 -1930)," studies the various ways in which the representation of immigrant and foreign women, who arrived to Argentina between 1880 and 1930, were shaped by the modalities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class in literary and visual texts. I approach this study with an understanding that the before-mentioned politics of difference are social constructions that reflect and perpetuate the prevailing distribution of power and privilege in a society. I look at novels, plays, travel literature and photography, re-envisioning canonical texts from a different critical direction. Thus, my dissertation casts new light on the representation of immigrant and foreign women by expanding the range of readings and exposing a patriarchal attitude towards the changing role of women in an unstable social structure. Drawing from theories such as gender, performance, ethnic studies, and visual culture, I emphasize the link that exists between the way the immigrant and foreign female bodies are seeing, and ways of structuring desire according to the logic of commodity capitalism. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2006. / April 28, 2006. / Clase, Raza, Performance, Teatro, Eugenesia, Argentina, Inmigración, Género, Etnia / Includes bibliographical references. / Jean Graham-Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; Brenda Cappuccio, Professor Directing Dissertation; María Morales, Outside Committee Member; Santa Arias, Committee Member.