The Names of Us English: Valley Girl, Cowboy, Yankee, Normal, Nasal, and Ignorant

A commonplace in United States (hereafter US) linguistics is that every region supports its own standard; none is the locus (or source) of the standard. Historically that is a fair assessment, for no long-term centre of culture, economy and government has dominated in the US

On living an intercultural life: Reflections of a suburban U.S. soccer mom 15 years after HNGR

Reflections on the course of the author\u27s life subsequent to graduating from the Human Need and Global Resources program at Wheaton College

Science Hunters: An inclusive approach to engaging with science through Minecraft

Science Hunters is an outreach project which employs the computer game Minecraft to engage children with scientific learning and research through school visits, events, and extracurricular clubs. We principally target children who may experience barriers to accessing Higher Education, including low socioeconomic status, being the first in their family to attend university, and disability (including Special Educational Needs). The Minecraft platform encourages teamwork and makes science learning accessible and entertaining for children, irrespective of background. We employ a flexible approach that adapts to the needs of the users. More than 8000 children have been engaged in the first four years, with overwhelmingly positive feedback

Exploring the Influence of Object Similarity and Desirability on Children's Ownership Identification and Preferences in Autism and Typical Development

This study investigated how ownership identification accuracy and object preferences in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influenced by visual distinctiveness and relative desirability. Unlike typically developing (TD) children matched on receptive language (M age equivalents: 58.8–59.9 months), children with ASD had difficulty identifying another person’s property when object discriminability was low and identifying their own relatively undesirable objects. Children with ASD identified novel objects designated to them with no greater accuracy than objects designated to others, and associating objects with the self did not bias their preferences. We propose that, due to differences in development of the psychological self, ownership does not increase the attentional or preferential salience of objects for children with ASD

Oregonian Perceptions of American Regional Speech

Although much is known about the varieties of American speech from a linguistic standpoint, less work has been done which examines folklinguistic attitudes and beliefs about those varieties. Perceptual dialectology studies have been done in several areas of the United States; however, no research to date has examined the perceptions of west-coast residents. In this study, the attitudes of Oregon residents towards American speech are examined through the use of hand-drawn maps and ratings of degree of difference, correctness, and pleasantness. The results of the ratings data are analyzed primarily using Chi-Square Tests of Independence, Multi-Dimensional Scaling, and K-Means Cluster Analysis. Results of the study indicate that overall, residents of Oregon exhibit a good deal of linguistic security. They tend to agree, in general, with the perceptual dialectology of respondents from other geographical areas, although there are a few noticeable differences in their ratings

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Face-Threat and Face-Management in Potential Complaint Situations

Within the pragmatics literature, a number of studies have investigated the speech act of complaining. In most cases, the researchers have failed to define a complaint before proceeding with analysis. The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical definition of a complaint and to examine in-depth the linguistic details of the speech act of complaining, with a particular view to illuminating the linguistic devices employed in managing the face of the participants involved in Potential Complaint Situations. In addition to dealing with micro-level questions regarding how complaints are realized in various circumstances, this study also sheds light on macro-level issues related to how individuals create and maintain appropriate kinds of face-management in conversational interaction. Data in the study were collected through interviews, discourse completion tests and ratings tasks and were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative means. The situations examined in the study varied in terms of three sociolinguistic variables: gender, power and social distance. The respondent group consisted of European-American students at a Midwestern university, aged 18-25. Results of the study indicate that while complaints can be and sometimes are made directly, it is more often the case that some kind of face-management is employed. Options for managing face include the choice of opting out of performing the face-threatening act, as well as performing the complaint indirectly or utilizing mitigation. How and when complaints are made is affected by the gender, power and social distance dynamics, as well as particular characteristics of the situation. This study also illuminates the importance of examining speech acts within the social and cultural contexts in which they occur. It points to the importance of the hearer as a co-constructor of meaning within the conversation and the effects of the surrounding discourse on the identity and function of the speech act under investigation

The Consequences of Conflicting Stereotypes: Bostonian Perceptions of U.S. Dialects

This study examines the perceptual dialectology of residents of eastern Massachusetts. The data reveal detailed attention to perceived dialect boundaries, particularly within the northeastern U.S., but also in other regions of the country. As is commonly the case in perceptual dialectology work, the respondents use the tasks presented to them to differentiate their home area from other states. In doing so, however, they exhibit an interesting mix of linguistic security and insecurity. The analysis suggests that respondents have internalized two common but conflicting American stereotypes of Boston residents – the educated elite and working class descendants of immigrants – and rely on these stereotypes when evaluating the home area

A Space In-between: Red Rock

A conversation from the points of view of Laura Hartley's work with rural women and Margaret Somerville's work with Aboriginal place stories and their intersection with a specific place, Red Rock