Browsing by Author "Weinberg, Miranda"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    A Comparative Analysis of the Vitality of Welsh and Irish
    (2020) Morrison, Eva; Weinberg, Miranda
    The Welsh and Irish languages, the indigenous languages of Wales and Ireland, respectively, have experienced significant declines in their speaker populations since the beginning of English settlement in their homelands. This decline has not occurred to the same extent in both languages; in the early 21st century, Welsh is habitually spoken by a much larger population, both in absolute numbers and proportion of its indigenous territory's total population, than Irish. This is despite both languages having been the subject of intense revitalization efforts since the 20th century and having official status alongside English in their respective countries. This thesis uses historical data on economic conditions, institutional involvement in language maintenance, and patterns of language shift to elucidate the source of this disparity.
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    Arabic-French Code switching in the Maghreb: An Examination of Changes in Syntax and Perceptions
    (2020) Brown, Amatullah; Weinberg, Miranda
    This paper examines Arabic-French code switching in the Maghreb using data found on Twitter. Using the work of Bentahila & Davies (1983) as a reference, I found that the syntactic rules governing Arabic-French code switching in this region have remained the same; namely, code switching can occur at all boundaries beyond word boundaries as long as it does not violate restrictions within the two languages. Moreover, by considering the results of past studies concentrating on perceptions regarding code switching in the Maghreb, I conclude modern perceptions of Arabic-French code switching in the Maghreb are less negative than past perceptions. Finally, despite Arabization movements in each country post-independence, it seems that French is still regarded as a more sophisticated language and is still taught in schools and used heavily in more technical fields.
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    A Comparative Analysis of the Vitality of Welsh and Irish
    (2020) Morrison, Eva; Weinberg, Miranda
    The Welsh and Irish languages, the indigenous languages of Wales and Ireland, respectively, have experienced significant declines in their speaker populations since the beginning of English settlement in their homelands. This decline has not occurred to the same extent in both languages; in the early 21st century, Welsh is habitually spoken by a much larger population, both in absolute numbers and proportion of its indigenous territory’s total population, than Irish. This is despite both languages having been the subject of intense revitalization efforts since the 20th century and having official status alongside English in their respective countries. This thesis uses historical data on economic conditions, institutional involvement in language maintenance, and patterns of language shift to elucidate the source of this disparity.
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    Intertextuality Beyond the Hashtag: How Members of Rose Twitter Respond to Breaking News
    (2020) Clairmont, Dylan T.; Weinberg, Miranda
    In this thesis, I examine the communal linguistic strategies that members of Rose Twitter, a loosely organized community of socialists and leftists, employ when reacting to breaking news events. I selected four breaking and evolving news stories during the year of 2020 and created a corpus of tweets from 200 members of Rose Twitter. I use a framework of intertextuality to analyze the webs of connection among the tweets and demonstrate how all tweets build upon past tweets and other textual data to facilitate community building. I specifically analyze conventions of naming, ideological phrase attachment, and joking. Ultimately, this thesis attempts to push back on claims that Twitter fosters the creation of echo chambers by demonstrating the active process of democratically building upon past tweets to form current opinions and language.
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    “I’m Certainly No Language Police”: Language, Race, and Identity Negotiation Among White K-8 Teachers
    (2022) Poxon, Luca; Weinberg, Miranda; Fernald, Ted
    Drawing on concepts from critical race theory and critical whiteness studies, scholarship on raciolinguistics and racial identity, and methods from grounded theory and discourse analysis, this thesis explores the following research questions: 1) How do White teachers of students of color understand language, race, and their own role as raced people teaching language? 2) How do they act on these understandings? Interviews with five White K-8 educators show how particular combinations of understandings of race, language, and self produce raciolinguistic and pedagogical tensions; these include knowing that the concept of “academic language” is racialized and power-laden while also believing that it is necessary for students to learn, alongside the practical challenges associated with implementing critical pedagogies. Even as some of the interviewed teachers explicitly rejected discourses of appropriateness and code-switching-as-necessary, the raciolinguistic ideologies circulating in state policy and broader society produced intense dilemmas for them as White educators committed to antiracism. As a result, the teachers used strategies to discursively manage 1) their distance from Whiteness and 2) race’s relevance to language, thus mitigating some of the raciolinguistic tensions. In addition, the teachers’ pedagogical strategies reduced the immediate harm of White supremacist raciolinguistic ideologies, but left the ideologies themselves unexamined and unchanged.
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    Linguistic Ideologies in Fiction Podcasts
    (2020) Hignite, Mary Emma; Weinberg, Miranda
    This thesis is a linguistic analysis of fiction podcasts, focused on the research question: how do linguistic ideologies and stereotypes function in fiction podcasts? To this end, I used both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis investigated whether there is a correlation between a character’s role in a show and the type of language variety they speak. The results of this analysis showed no strong relationship between these factors; all character types were made up of majority *SAE speakers, illustrating the effect of the Standard Language Ideology on the podcasts. Additionally, speakers of three regional varieties, Southern English, New York City English, and Upper Midwest English together made up the majority (87.1%) of all speakers of regional varieties; this result illustrates the salience of these three varieties in American society, and analysis of specific characters who speak these varieties showed the stereotypes closely associated with them. The qualitative analysis focused on specific elements of storytelling in which linguistic stereotypes and ideologies play a role. The results showed linguistic ideologies and stereotypes at work in four specific story elements: humor, character building, worldbuilding, and relationships between characters. Stereotypes about Southern English were present in three of these categories (humor, character building, and worldbuilding), supporting the quantitative finding asserting that variety’s salience. Overall, I conclude that continued research into fiction podcasts will benefit the field of linguistics and creators & consumers of fiction podcasts.
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    "Say, Say, My Playmate": Music and Language Socialization in Children's Clapping Games
    (2021) Coberly, Grace; Weinberg, Miranda
    This thesis uses the framework of language socialization to investigate the socializing potential of children's clapping games. Adapting Schieffelin and Och's 1986 definition of language socialization to refer to music, I establish that 1) music socialization is the coincidence of socialization through music and socialization to use music, and 2) music learners are active contributors to their own socialization. I reinforce these claims by drawing connections between a number of practices and terms — routine, variation, improvisation, evaluation, and common vernacular — in both linguistic and musical settings. My analysis of data borrowed from Curtis (2004), Hubbard (1982), Marsh (1995, 2006), and Merrill-Mirsky (1988), shows that routines, variations, and musical features in clapping games are evaluated and acted upon jointly by multiple members of a given group, demonstrating the performers' reliance on a common musical and cultural understanding. I conclude that music socialization is a tangible and active process, and that a detailed comprehension of its principles would benefit researchers and educators alike.
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    Social Factors Behind the Usage of Women’s Language in English- Japanese Translation – Through an Analysis of “In the Company of Women”
    (2020) Komatsubara, Nanako; Weinberg, Miranda
    Japanese consists of many sets of word endings which can identify a certain aspect of the speaker, such as being rich, poorly educated, manly, feminine, by being used. In particular, a set of word endings known as women’s language is used extremely often in translated works, while in reality women do not used women’s language frequently during conversation. This thesis focuses on identifying possible factors which affect a translator’s language choice when translating a women’s voice from a foreign language through an analysis of the Japanese translation of “In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs”. Through this analysis, I argue how gender norms which define femininity, and values regarding sexuality in Japan are significant factors in a translator’s criteria of whether to assign women’s language to a certain person or not.