The current study was conducted to obtain preliminary data on the Nova Multilingual Neuropsychological Battery (NMNB) from a sample of 95 undergraduate and graduate university students (46 monolingual English and 49 bilingual English-Spanish speakers). The measure consisted of 39 subtests and an effort measure in English and Spanish, developed to account for language and cultural factors hypothesized to influence neuropsychological test results. The subtests included measures of mental status, reading comprehension, short-term and long-term verbal and visual spatial memory, short-term and long-term verbal and visual spatial recognition memory, motor coordination, processing speed, serial learning, anomia, and executive functioning. An acculturation measure was also administered. It was hypothesized that there would be a significant difference in performance between the Bilingual Spanish group compared to the Monolingual English and Bilingual English groups, with anticipated better performance in the Monolingual English and Bilingual English groups compared to the Bilingual Spanish group. It was also hypothesized that there would be a significant positive correlation between level of acculturation and test performance. Results of ANCOVAs, controlling for the effects of age and education, compared the performance of 20 bilingual participants on the Spanish version of the test between the 46 English monolinguals and 29 bilingual participants administered the English version of the test. Results of the ANCOVA's did not generally support the hypothesis at the p < .01 level that bilingual speakers administered the Spanish version of this measure would perform significantly lower compared to bilingual speakers or monolingual English speakers administered the English version. The subtest Verbal Command was significant for poorer performance in the Bilingual Spanish group compared to the Bilingual English group. The subtest Categorical Fluency was significant for poorer performance in the Bilingual Spanish group compared to the Monolingual English group and the Bilingual English group. The results of Pearson Product-Moment correlations (p < .01) did not support the hypothesis of a positive correlation between acculturation and test performance for the bilingual groups. Only three of the 39 subtests were correlated with acculturation in the he Bilingual English group. These results were inconsistent with prior research on neuropsychological test performance for Spanish-speaking populations. Previous research on several Spanish neuropsychological measures administered to Spanish-speaking participants, such as the Mini Mental State Exam, Digit Span, and the Spanish Naming Test, typically resulted in significantly poorer performance for bilingual or monolingual Spanish speakers compared to English speaking participants administered the same tests in English. Additionally, preliminary research with acculturation and neuropsychological assessment had suggested that higher levels of acculturation would result in better neuropsychological test performance. However, these results should be interpreted with caution as there were limitations to this study which included a small sample size, a sample of higher education level participants, and exposure to the English language and the U.S. educational system. Future studies should focus on development of normative data for the older adult population, individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury and monolingual Spanish speakers so that information can be made available for this underserved population.

published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Natural language enables speakers to organize and highlight the information they want to convey. The linguistic analysis of this organization, known as Information Structure (Lambrecht, 1994), investigates the different strategies used in various languages to mark important information, such as focus constituents, within larger utterances. Research on K'ichee' has predominantly documented the syntactic strategies used to mark constituents for focus and has yet to analyze the role of intonation (Can Pixabaj & England, 2011). While the use of intonation in focus marking in different varieties of Spanish has received more attention than in K'ichee', the consideration of its role within bilingual contexts is under documented (O'Rourke, 2005; Simonet, 2008). This dissertation addresses these gaps in the literature by analyzing the intonational contours associated with contrastive focus constituents in both languages of Spanish-K'ichee' bilinguals and comparing these contours cross-linguistically. These analyses investigate different suprasegmental features of contrastive focus within different syntactic structures and their correlation with the individual level of language dominance of each bilingual. This study provides evidence that these bilinguals prosodically mark contrastive focus in both languages in similar ways. The first significant finding is that an earlier alignment of the intonational events, and not a greater pitch span, is the most consistently used strategy in both languages. Additionally, while a greater pitch span is not consistently used to mark contrastive focus, it is the only suprasegmental feature that is correlated with bilingual language dominance in both Spanish and K'ichee'. Finally, while some dialect-specific phonological features provide evidence of transfer between the two languages, the features that are the most similar in both languages and possibly the most prone to convergence are the same that are consistently used to mark contrastive focus, i.e., the alignment of intonational events. The present study contributes to the ongoing analyses of Information Structure, intonation, and bilingualism, and it is proposed that frameworks such as the Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonation (Pierrehumbert, 1980), Accomodation Theory (Giles & Powesland, 1975), and the Effort Code (Gussenhoven, 2004) can be extended to these findings on the role of the location of intonational events in both prosodic contrastive focus marking and convergence of intonational systems of bilinguals. / text

Transpacific Investment Corporation –TCI– is a private entity determined to take advantage of the increasing market opportunities arising between Asia and Latin America. TCI is to be incorporated under Guatemalan law in November 2003. The corporation plans to start its operations in Taiwan by February 2004, pioneering into the Spanish Language Industry. The Spanish Language Division of TCI will offer price-competitive opportunities to study Spanish and do tourism in Guatemala. The Division’s tasks will be distributed between two agencies: a Promotion and Recruitment Agency in Taiwan and a Coordination Agency in Guatemala. The latter is in charge of selecting the highly-qualified Spanish Learning Centers and Local Tour Operators that will be responsible for executing the language learning and tourism activities provided to TCI’s clients. Additionally, the Coordination Agency will select adequate insurance and security services to ensure maximum safety for the participants. The promotional efforts will be targeted at university students currently participating in Spanish language courses, and the marketing mix has been designed according to their needs. The leaders of this venture believe that there is a promising opportunity on this field because of the latent popularity of the Latin culture and the price advantages that Guatemala is capable of offering. Currently, more than 1,300 Taiwanese students participate in Spanish language courses. With its diverse products, TCI estimates it can attract at least 33 students on the first year of operations, 49 students on the second year, and 55 students on the third year. These numbers represent, respectively, market shares of 10%, 15%, and 20%, of conservatively defined potential markets. The initial investment required for the venture is slightly above NT 500,000. If the market share goals are achieved, it will be possible to reach the payback period in 13 months, and to enjoy net income above NT 200,000 for the second year, and above NT 800,000 for the third year. These results yield a return-on-investment ratio higher than 1.44.

No description available.

Mas allá de la realidad objetiva y de los hechos históricos verificables que su nombre denota, la nueva poesía socio-política se estudia aquí como un extenso sistema literario que genera su propia coherencia y su inagotable red de posibilidades significativas. Nuestro enfoque es asimismo una manera de concebir histórica y analíticamente la trayectoria del discurso hispanoamericano. El hecho de que la nueva poesía socio-política sea comprensible en su totalidad al considerar el sustrato ideológico del cual surge, nos conduce a la formulación de un modelo analítico ideológico-semiótico que se adecúe a la realidad de esta poesía. Tal modelo manifiesta la interrelación dinámica que existe entre la estructura de coherencia y la estructura de significación verificando así la funcion normativa que ejerce la ideología sobre el texto. Más que nada, este proyecto se ha fundado en la necesidad de esclarecer el proceso de construcción de un nuevo sistema poetico. El juego de relaciones intertextuales y contextuales apuntan a una revisión de valores estético-ideológicos que fundamentan literariamente un nuevo sistema de prioridades. De aquí el repaso de la historia de la poesía; una historia en construcción que ha empezado a negar el criterio positivista, evolucionista y oficialista utilizado hasta ahora. El nuestro es un enfoque que surge desde una perspectiva crítica distinta, la cual considera los factores socio-económicos y además intenta responder tanto al rigor analítico como a las exigencias culturales del presente. La creciente conciencia de las relaciones de dependencia generan una politización de la conciencia, que en el plano cultural, configura una nueva estetica cuya caracterización se establece en el tercer capítulo. Las nuevas técnicas representacionales se esclarecen al analizar la obra de tres poetas. En la poesía de Roberto Fernández Retamar y Pedro Shimose es posible estudiar la cualidad "conversacional" del código utilizando el concepto de intertextualidad como principio constructor y como principio de intercalación y además la relación de contigüidad entre el lenguaje literario y el natural. Finalmente, se estudia el concepto de la patria, utilizando la categoría espacial, para ejemplificar el impulso ideológico revolucionario y su plasmación en la interioridad textual.

Este estudio analiza el contenido político en la poesía lírico-amorosa del poeta Garcilaso de la Vega y las repercusiones que ha tenido en el desarrollo y evolución de la literatura y la cultura del Siglo de oro español. En esta investigación se demuestra que existen motivaciones políticas específicas en el discurso lírico de Garcilaso, poeta considerado como el más amoroso, emotivo y sincero del Renacimiento español.La aproximación analítica aquí propuesta obedece al hecho de que la crítica tradicional ha dejado de lado el reconocimiento de las implicaciones que la poesía de Garcilaso ha tenido, en términos de lo político, en este período histórico-literario. Los criterios tradicionales generales en torno a los poemas de Garcilaso han señalado que sus poemas mejores logrados han sido aquellos en donde el poeta expresa sus más profundos, emotivos y sinceros sentimientos por su dama.Uno de los cometidos de este estudio consiste en demostrar que el valor de la poesía de Garcilaso no ha sido apreciado a cabalidad debido a la utilización del criterio de sinceridad para aproximarse a ella. Asimismo, el objetivo principal de este trabajo es establecer que mediante el reconocimiento del factor político en su poesía, así como la descripción y las formas en que es presentado, es posible revalorar la trascendencia que Garcilaso tuvo dentro del contexto de la evolución de la poesía española de los siglos XVI y XVII.

Cuerpos en disputa, mujer e imaginarios de nación en Hispanoamérica: Juan Francisco Manzano, Eva Perón y Reinaldo Arenas begins with the premise that the values and requirements of a patriarchal society focuses on female icons of symbolic strength and weight. As icons, women are associated as being the center of the monogamous, heterosexual family and therefore, the image of Nation. In Latin America each hegemonic national project has elevated female icons that are a compact synthesis of that nation's essential and defining values. From that idea our research expands to examine how those hegemonic national discourses and imageries are refuted in the nineteenth century through other antagonistic discourses, each in turn putting forward other paradigms of women or other bodies on the literary plane. These test gender issues, sexuality and morality, and the authorized bodies of Woman/Nation are contrasted with other discordant, subversive, fictional faces. Our objective is to discover these images of rebellion, and evaluate the literary, political and ideological dialogue that has been established through these hegemonic female icons.In this sense, the discourses related to Manzano, Evita, and Arenas, three representative figures of diverse successive historical stages within the region throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries --from colonial slavery, populism and communism, to the postmodern-- corroborate that, in effect: Protests and revolutions have presented their own icons of woman or other subversive or discordant bodies in the face of female paradigms set by those in power.The theoretical and critical apparatus is based on the contributions of feminist criticism on women in literature, art and Latin American politics (Helena Araújo, Hélène Cixous, Lucía Guerra-Cunningham, Josefina Ludmer, Francine Masiello and Elaine Showalter), and studies on the links between sexuality, power and society (Judith Butler, bell hook, Michael Foucault, Edward Said and G. Ch. Spivak), as well as research on the formation of societies and national imagery in Latin America since the early nineteenth century (Mabel Moraña, Walter Mignolo and Ángel Rama), all of which is framed in the context of literary and aesthetic movements from neoclassicism to post-modernity.

Representations of prostitution are often used to negotiate changing meanings of gender and economy during times of turmoil. This dissertation examines the Brazilian films, O Céu de Suely (2006), Baixio das Bestas (2007) and Deserto Feliz (2008) and two Mexican films El Callejón de los Milagros (1995) and ¿Quién diablos es Juliette? (1996) to better understand how they deal with representations of prostitution in a rapid transition to neoliberalism. In order to better understand this process, I develop a concept called "incomplete resistance." This term connotes the practice of denouncement without indictment. That is, the existence of prostitution and the conditions that compel women to sell sex are lamented, but without identifying the real underlying causes. Additionally, several of the films examined in this dissertation decry the conditions that lead women to be prostituted, but simultaneously encourage the viewer to take pleasure in the process. By contextualizing the films within the changing film industries of Brazil and Mexico, I seek to illuminate the connections between gender, prostitution films and governmentality.

My dissertation focuses on the life-writing produced by three authors from the first half of the XX century in Spain. These autobiographical texts were written by women who were part of the cultural and political scene of pre-civil war Madrid, and who lived in exile, mainly in Latin America countries - Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. Each of these authors start the reconstruction of the past in three distinct ideological projects: philosophic in the case of María Zambrano (1904-1991); leftist political thought in the case of María Teresa León (1903-1988); and feminist in the case of Concha Méndez (1998-1986). An interdisciplinary theoretical framework forms the basis for my analysis of these texts. This includes the ideas of Sidonie Smith, Sylvia Molloy, and Beatriz Sarlo, and premises of Mikhail Bakhtin, specifically the relationship between the author and the characters in artistic production, and the representation of space and time, as understood under the concept of chronotope. Reading these autobiographies under those theoretical principles allows me to elaborate some ideas about what was it like to be a woman, writer, and intellectual in the same historical and political time period. At the same time, it promotes a discussion about the appropriation strategies and the resistance possibilities against the hegemonic discourses of the era, mainly those related to literary creation as well as gender representation.