Linguistic projection and the ownership of English: solidarity and power with the English language in Egypt

This thesis investigates aspects of English usage in Egypt, including any possible linguistic projection of solidarity or power with other Egyptians, and the degree, if any, of linguistic ownership of English. As in many other Expanding Circle contexts, English realizes its role in Egypt as lingua franca in order to fulfill educational and business transactions. English is used to such a degree in the Egyptian context that it could at some point become its own variety of World English. Yet, it is possible that a speaker could produce either English or Arabic in different situations in reaction to perceived social cleavages between him- or herself and the interlocutor. The research presented here is interested in the possible degrees of linguistic projection, the effect a speaker intends language choice to have on the hearer, and linguistic ownership, the degree to which a speaker of a language believes that he or she owns the language, that Egyptians may possess as they use English. The data was collected in an English-medium university environment in the greater Cairo area. Undergraduate participants completed a questionnaire, and a limited number also participated in a follow-up interview. Data suggest that participants use English to project solidarity with other English-speaking Egyptians. Participants are aware of how others may use English to project power, yet no one admitted to projecting power. In line with other research, participants also demonstrated a weak sense of ownership of the language at best, however through the use of English mixed with Arabic, Egyptians do use an endonormative form of English that may demonstrate ownership. Finally, there is little evidence to demonstrate a relationship between linguistic projection and ownership, but the investigator speculates that a linguistic projection of solidarity, which implies mixing of Arabic and English, would encourage a greater sense of ownership of English. Classroom implications are also discussed, including encouraging greater use of Arabic in the classroom, supporting Egyptian influences in English speech, and managing relations between English speakers of different perceived proficiencies

Its Own Little City : Service Work in Truck Stops

Montana truck stops act as a meeting place for long-haul truckers, vacationers, local commuters, and the workers simply trying to earn a living. The employees at such truck stops must navigate working-class customer service norms while interacting with a unique and diverse set of customers. The ethnographic and interview data that I collected during the 2020 offers a unique view of how customer service employees fared during political unrest, global health concerns, and financial struggle. Additionally, this study highlights the power dynamics that exist in the service industry by examining how such dynamics manifest in the interactions surrounding face masks, sexual harassment, and unhappy customers. My findings also suggest that interacting with customers can be the source of both connection and frustration, depending on the customers’ moods and behaviors. The qualitative nature of this study allows me to tell the stories of those who are often overlooked in academia and beyond. Although truck stops occupy little space in most people’s day-to-day experiences, the interactions that occur in these workplaces are dynamic, interesting, and sometimes contradictory. My research offers a glimpse not only into the microcosm of truck stops, but also provides valuable insight about society as a whole

Crossing from Hearing to Deaf Worlds: Hearing Border Crossers as Participatory Designers in Healthcare Instruction

The Deaf population faces substantial communication barriers in accessing quality health care. Many healthcare professionals struggle to communicate with Deaf individuals because they have little awareness of how to interact with these patients in culturally sensitive ways. This study sought to understand the perspectives and experiences of hearing border-crossers -- hearing people who cross borders, figuratively, to interact and communicate with Deaf people. Hearing border crossers hold useful knowledge that will shed light in facilitating communication between Deaf patients and hearing healthcare professionals. Using symbolic interactionism as the epistemological framework, qualitative interviews were conducted with three clusters of hearing border crossers--those with deaf family members, those who work professionally with deaf people, and those who interact with deaf people in everyday community settings. Direct observations of hearing-Deaf interactions at public spaces offered further insight into hearing border-crossers\u27 experiences. Focus group data from Deaf consultants were combined with interview and observational data to include at least a partial Deaf perspective on hearing border crossers\u27 accounts. The analysis examines how hearing border crossers enter Deaf worlds, how they gain competence and negotiate difficulties, and what strategies they offer for successful interactions. The dissertation offers an instructional design planning approach that incorporates community perspectives. Ideas from this study were extended and the analysis generated the elements of a learning environment where hearing and Deaf people might interact and learn to communicate effectively. Implications from the study are developed for healthcare instructio

Asian American Community College Presidents: An AsianCrit Analysis of their Approaches to Leadership

This study explores the experiences of five current and former Asian American community college presidents including their career transitions into executive leadership using an AsianCrit analysis for framing their narrative experiences. The literature review situates the experiences of Asian American community college presidents in various contexts by providing a brief summary of several historical moments and political movements that have shaped the realities they currently confront as higher education leaders. This study employed a Critical Race Theory (CRT) approach to counter storytelling to analyze the participants’ narratives both individually and thematically based on their social identities as Asian Americans and as people of color. The findings revealed that their approaches to leadership have been influenced by several sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts that are directly linked to their racialized identities as Asian Americans. The results also highlighted the value of leadership strategies and techniques to navigate whiteness in the workplace and the intersectional impacts of gender, generation, and race on approaches to leadership. The participants shared advice for aspiring Asian American leaders such as creating spaces Asian American employees through affinity groups and providing ongoing trainings to inform others about the unique experiences of Asian American professionals in higher education. This study ends with implications for practice and theory

Attitudes towards Finnish-accented English

The thesis opens with a discussion of what attitudes are, and develops with a review of studies of attitudes towards pronunciation error, attitudes towards foreign accents and perception of foreign-accented speakers. The empirical part of the thesis attempts to identify how native (British) and Finnish listeners of English react to and evaluate typical segmental features of mispronunciation in the English speech of Finnish men and women of various ages. Two experiments using modifications of the matched-guise technique were conducted, one to consider error evaluation and to establish a hierarchy of segmental mispronunciation, the other to examine speaker evaluation, the image of the speaker created by the mispronunciation. Recordings of Finnish-accented English were presented to male and female listeners of various ages, and reactions collected. Statistical analyses of the results were carried out and the following general conclusions were drawn: the English labiodental lenis fricative /v/ when mispronounced in the typical Finnish manner as a labiodental frictionless continuant [u] is not tolerated by native English listeners at all, though it is highly tolerated by Finnish-speaking listeners (and Swedish-speaking Finns) themselves; the degree of mispronunciation in Finnish-accented English seriously affects listeners' estimations of the speaker's age, bad mispronunciation prompting under-estimation of age and good pronunciation over-estimation; both Finnish-speaking listeners and English-speaking listeners have almost identical clear pre-set standards about what constitutes `good' and `bad' pronunciation; a Finnish speaker's phonemically `better' and `worse' pronunciation affects the image listeners have of the speaker, status/competence traits in particular being up-graded for better pronunciation, solidarity/benevolence traits remaining broadly unaffected, and Englishspeaking listeners generally being more positive towards the Finnish-accented speakers than compatriot Finns

Celebrating diversity: the significance of cultural differences on reading comprehension processes of the young adult EFL learner in a matriculation preparation programme in Israel

Reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) is a key to success in academic studies in Israel. As Israel is a cultural melting pot, adult students come from widely diverse educational backgrounds, often determined by their cultural environment. They arrive at the university or college classroom with vastly different approaches to learning and reading, in general, and to reading in EFL, in particular. The challenge for the EFL teacher is to help students draw from their cultural toolkits while exposing them to new tools so that they can reach their full learning potential. The rationale of the current inquiry is that in order to tailor a programme that takes into account students' needs, a better understanding of the impact of cultural background on their learning process is essential. This inquiry was guided by three main research questions: How do differing cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds impact upon adult students’ approach to and process of learning reading comprehension in English? How do these backgrounds impact upon progress and achievement in reading comprehension in English? And which teaching approach or approaches can best address the range of needs of a culturally diverse student group? To address these questions, an action research study was conducted using a case study approach. Thirty-nine young adult students who participated in a year-long matriculation preparation programme in a teachers' college in Israel were examined. The programme was based on providing students with both bottom-up and top-down reading skills, with particular emphasis on reading strategies. The learning process that students underwent generated qualitative and quantitative data through class observations, interviews, and student records. The data indicated that student background played a significant role in how learning, reading, and EFL were approached. Family background, whether more 'traditional' or less 'traditional', reflected students' cultural background, echoed by a school system sharing a similar mindset and approach to EFL pedagogy. As a result, students' background impacted upon their classroom behaviour and social engagement. Cultural distinctions were apparent at entry level, but were not determining factors in student progress and achievement over the course of the year. Students with greater intercultural competence adopted different learning approaches and reading strategies from those with which they had been educated in their cultural environment and appropriated them as their own. These students also made the most significant progress in their EFL reading comprehension, regardless of background. For students to share their diverse learning approaches and adopt new ones from one another, as well as the new strategies offered by the programme, the establishment of a 'third space', or classroom culture, was crucial. Providing such a space allowed students to exchange learning methods, examine their own, and finally adopt those that were most effective for them. Enhanced reading comprehension at the end of the programme resulted from a process of several cycles of integration and engagement. Those students who reported feeling more integrated within mainstream Israeli society, in general, were also those who more easily integrated within the classroom culture. These students were also more socially engaged in class and showed greater engagement with texts in English. Consequently they made greater progress and reached higher achievements. When teaching EFL reading comprehension to a multicultural class of students, it is argued that a classroom culture should celebrate their diversity and allow them to voice their distinct learning approaches. At the same time, their voices should be harmonized through a unified learning approach, based on the application of reading strategies and engagement with a text

Down the Deer Path: Reflections on the Future of Hunting in America

This collection of chapters delves into the dramatically shifting landscape of hunting sports from a personal perspective of a young hunter. As older hunters age out of the sport, hunter-funded conservation initiatives are in danger of losing support. This work examines the nature of relationships between hunters, their prey, and their worldview, as well as the elements of hunting that appeal to new hunters, and the challenges they may face as they become the hunters of the future

The Pacifican, April 6,1995

https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/pacifican/1726/thumbnail.jp

Saudi Women\u27s Society: Perceptions of Saudi Arabian Women Living in the Upper Midwest

This research posed three broad questions about perceptions of adult Saudi Arabian women living in Midwestern states of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Specifically, the questions explored were: (I) What were the women experiencing while living in the Midwest? (2) What did the experiences mean to the women? and, (3) How did the women interpret their experiences? The purposes of this research were to amplify the women\u27s \u27\u27voices\u27\u27 and to add to the limited base of qualitative research on Saudi Arabian women. Interviews and brief observations of 13 native Saudi women were the main for1ns of data collection, and rigorous data analysis methods inherent in a grounded theory approach were done. From the methodologies used, a low-level substantive theory was presented, supported with quotations and observations, and illustrated in a visual model. The quotations and visual model further explained the meanings and interpretations associated with the women\u27s perceptions. The final theory showed that the women were experiencing, referred to as the central phenomena, (I) an appreciation of American services and a positive view of Americans, and (2) mixed/negative reactions to the Midwest, concerns about American culture, and negative American perceptions of Saudi women. The causal conditions, those factors that may cause phenomena to appear, were identified as the religious/cultural no1ms of Saudi Arabia and the women\u27s reasons for coming to the Midwest. In response to the phenomena, the women used several strategies to adjust to the Midwest. These strategies were (I) to maximize positive perceptions by using time in the Midwest to pursue educational opportunities and engage in activities, and (2) to minimize negative perceptions through religion, family, and friends. Several contextual and intervening factors that influenced the women\u27s choice of strategies were identified. Three consequences of using the strategies were: (I) most of the women did not plan to remain in the U.S., (2) positive changes and exchanges in viewpoints about and with Americans, and (3) the realization that most Americans had little knowledge about Saudi women. Finally, benefits, personal reflections, and recommendations for future research were offered

Final MA Portfolio

This portfolio contains papers on Urban Education and teaching speakers of African American Language/ African American Vernacular English. As the capstone to my Masters in English with a Specialization in Teaching, I have chosen four papers to revise and resubmit: “Intertwining Narratives: Stories of the I-280 Bridge Collapse,” “Reshaping Attitudes: Tailoring Urban Education to fit the African American Student,” “The Study of Language in a Multi-Dialectical Classroom,” and “Youth Acquisition and Ownership Is Crucial Language Vitality.” Intertwining Narratives is a report on the I-280 bridge collapse in Toledo. Reshaping Attitudes is an explanation of some best practice in urban education. The Study of Language in a Multi-Dialectical Classroom focuses on educating students who primarily speak the African American Language variety of English. Finally, Youth Acquisition discuses the topic of language death