Student perceptions of community-engaged scholarship courses: Developing a sociolinguistic corpus on the U.S.–Mexico Border

The well-documented benefits of community engagement experiences have resulted in its incorporation across a wide variety of disciplines, from health care (Alexander et al., 2020) to aviation science (Belt & Sweetman, 2021) to statistics (Schanz & Giles, 2021). The field of sociolinguistics is no exception with plentiful examples of community-engaged scholarship (CES) or “research of mutual benefit to community and academic interests” (Delugan et al., 2014, p. 155). One way that linguistics and language courses have integrated CES is through the development of community-based sociolinguistic corpora or collections of informal interviews with community members. In these courses, students are trained in sociolinguistic methods as research assistants to conduct, transcribe, and analyze sociolinguistic interviews. Although personal experience and practitioner reports attest to the benefits of students participating in building sociolinguistic corpora, there has been little research documenting student perceptions. Additionally, there is a dearth of research on CES experiences involving underrepresented college students, including students of color, first-generation students, and low-income students. The present study examines the perceptions of underrepresented college students on CES courses where they participate in developing a community-based sociolinguistic corpus

Do 72-Hour Waiting Periods and Two-Visit Requirements for Abortion Affect Women's Certainty? A Prospective Cohort Study

PurposeThis paper examines how Utah's two-visit requirement and 72-hour waiting period influence women's certainty about their decision to have an abortion.ProceduresThis study uses data from a prospective cohort study of 500 women who presented at an abortion information visit at four Utah family planning facilities. At the information visit, participants completed a baseline survey; 3 weeks later, they completed telephone interviews that assessed their pregnancy outcome, change in certainty, and factors affecting changes in certainty.Main findingsOverall, 63% reported no change in certainty owing to the information visit and 74% reported no change in certainty owing to the waiting period. Changes in certainty were primarily in the direction of increased certainty, with more women reporting an increase (29%) than a decrease (8%) in certainty owing to the visit and more women reporting an increase (17%) than a decrease (8%) owing to waiting. Changes in certainty in either direction were concentrated among the minority (8%) who were conflicted about their decision at baseline. Learning about the procedure, meeting staff, and discovering that the facility was a safe medical environment were main contributors to increased certainty.ConclusionMost women were certain of their decision to have an abortion when they presented for their abortion information visit and their certainty remained unchanged despite the information visit and 72-hour waiting period. Changes in certainty were largely concentrated in the minority of women who expressed uncertainty about their decision before the beginning of the information visit. Thus, individualized counseling for the minority who are conflicted when they first present for care seems more appropriate than universal requirements

Measuring decisional certainty among women seeking abortion

ObjectiveEvaluating decisional certainty is an important component of medical care, including preabortion care. However, minimal research has examined how to measure certainty with reliability and validity among women seeking abortion. We examine whether the Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS), a measure widely used in other health specialties and considered the gold standard for measuring this construct, and the Taft-Baker Scale (TBS), a measure developed by abortion counselors, are valid and reliable for use with women seeking abortion and predict the decision to continue the pregnancy.MethodsEligible women at four family planning facilities in Utah completed baseline demographic surveys and scales before their abortion information visit and follow-up interviews 3 weeks later. For each scale, we calculated mean scores and explored factors associated with high uncertainty. We evaluated internal reliability using Cronbach's alpha and assessed predictive validity by examining whether higher scale scores, indicative of decisional uncertainty or conflict, were associated with still being pregnant at follow-up.ResultsFive hundred women completed baseline surveys; two-thirds (63%) completed follow-up, at which time 11% were still pregnant. Mean scores on the DCS (15.5/100) and TBS (12.4/100) indicated low uncertainty, with acceptable reliability (α=.93 and .72, respectively). Higher scores on each scale were significantly and positively associated with still being pregnant at follow-up in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses.ConclusionThe DCS and TBS demonstrate acceptable reliability and validity among women seeking abortion care. Comparing scores on the DCS in this population to other studies of decision making suggests that the level of uncertainty in abortion decision making is comparable to or lower than other health decisions.ImplicationsThe high levels of decisional certainty found in this study challenge the narrative that abortion decision making is exceptional compared to other healthcare decisions and requires additional protection such as laws mandating waiting periods, counseling and ultrasound viewing

La extensión de estar a través del tiempo y el espacio: Un estudio diacrónico de los siglos XIII-XX y sincrónico de Hermosillo, Sonora y el Sur de Arizona

Este estudio consiste en dos análisis: el primero es un análisis diacrónico que traza el avance de la cópula estar invadiendo al ámbito de ser en el español del siglo XIII al siglo XX basado en el Corpus del Español de Davis (2000-) y que discute el mecanismo diacrónico que promueve el avance, la gramaticalización; el segundo es un análisis sincrónico variacionista que compara la extensión de estar en contextos donde normativamente se espera ser en las variedades de español habladas en Hermosillo, Sonora, y en el Sur de Arizona. A través del análisis de 1,300 ocurrencias en 40 entrevistas, este estudio determina los factores sociales y lingüísticos que condicionan la realización de esta variable entre grupos bilingües y monolingües. Estudios variacionistas anteriores detectaron un uso de la variable en contextos monolingües (Gutiérrez 1992; Cortés-Torres 2004; Alfaraz 2012) y bilingües (Silva- Corvalán 1994; Ortiz-López 2000; Gutiérrez 2003; Lowther y Lindsey 2005; Salazar 2007), con una aceleración en su uso en algunas comunidades bilingües. Los factores significativos de los estudios anteriores incluyen: tipo de adjetivo (Gutiérrez 1992; Silva- Corvalán 1994; Cortés-Torres 2004; Alfaraz 2012), educación (Gutiérrez 1992; Cortés- Torres 2004), edad (Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Alfaraz 2012) y género (Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994). Los resultados del análisis diacrónico indican que desde el cambio del latín al español medieval, estar empezó a tomar el lugar de ser. A través de una discusión de las definiciones de la gramaticalización y los rasgos de procesos de este tipo, concluimos que la extensión de estar se caracteriza como un proceso de gramaticalización. Los resultados del análisis sincrónico muestran un uso innovador de estar de 16.2% en Hermosillo y 20.8% en el Sur de Arizona, porcentajes comparables a los estudios anteriores. La procedencia del hablante (Hermosillo/Sur de Arizona) no es estadísticamente significativa y la distribución de los factores es bastante parecida en las dos comunidades. Esto surgiere que el bilingüismo (español/inglés) no resulta en una aceleración del uso innovador en este corpus, lo cual concuerda con Ortiz-López (2000) y Lowther y Lindsey (2005) y difiere de Silva-Corvalán (1994) y Salazar (2007). Los factores de tipo de adjetivo (edad, tamaño), grado de menos atención y nivel académico más bajo favorecen el estar innovador. Los resultados de este estudio concuerdan con estudios anteriores en cuanto a los factores que favorecen el uso innovador, los tipos de adjetivo (Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Cortés-Torres 2004) y nivel académico (Gutiérrez 1992; Cortés-Torres 2004). Este estudio contribuye al conocimiento de la variable en general y provee evidencia que no hay una tendencia general de una aceleración del uso innovador como resultado del bilingüismo (español/inglés)

The Integration of Lone English Nouns into Bilingual Sonoran Spanish

Using data from Arizona, United States, the present study seeks to further our understanding of lone other language items (LOLIs) in bilingual discourse and their status as either borrowings or codeswitches by measuring the degree of incorporation that can indicate a LOLI's status as a borrowing or codeswitching. To accomplish this aim, nouns from 40 sociolinguistic interviews from 8 Spanish monolingual speakers from Sonora, Mexico, 8 English monolingual speakers from Arizona, and 24 Spanish-English bilinguals from Arizona (from Sonoran families) are compared. Codeswitching can be defined as the "juxtaposition of sentences or sentence fragments, each of which is internally consistent with the morphological and syntactic (and optionally, phonological) rules of the language of its provenance" (Poplack, 1993, p. 255). Borrowing involves the incorporation of LOLIs from a donor language incorporated into a recipient language and need to be morphologically and syntactically adapted into the recipient language (Poplack, Sankoff, and Miller, 1988; Sankoff, Poplack, and Vanniarajan, 1990). Accordingly, the key difference between codeswitching and borrowing is that borrowings are morphosyntactically incorporated into the recipient language while codeswitches are not incorporated. It is important to note that in terms of LOLIs' status, phonological integration has been discarded for being too variable and therefore not a reliable factor in discerning one-item codeswitches from borrowings (Poplack and Sankoff, 1984; Poplack, Sankoff, and Miller, 1988). In order to measure the degree of incorporation that can in turn indicate the LOLI's status as a borrowing or a codeswitch, the present study applies a sociolinguistic comparative method to loanwords, following Poplack and Meechan (1995, 1998) by comparing nouns from Spanish (recipient language), nouns from English (donor language), and LOLIs from English in Spanish discourse. Since phonology has not been applied to the method of analysis, this study also seeks to explore if phonological integration is correlated to morphosyntactic integration of determiner realization of LOLIs. The results show, in accordance to previous studies, that the LOLIs overall act morphosyntactically like patrimonial Spanish words in terms of the variables that condition determiner usage. In terms of how phonological integration interacts with morphosyntactic integration, it does seem that the two correlate. LOLIs with Spanish morphology are more morphosyntactically similar to Spanish patrimonial nouns and LOLIs with English phonology are more morphosyntactically similar to English patrimonial nouns in both overall frequencies and the factors that condition determiner usage, leading to the hypothesis that LOLIs that are integrated phonologically are established borrowings and LOLIs that are not integrated phonologically are either codeswitches or nonce borrowings. We provide further evidence for this hypothesis by examining the pauses and false starts that are present before LOLIs with Spanish versus English phonology. The results indicate that LOLIs with English phonology are more often preceded with pauses and false starts than LOLIs with Spanish phonology. The findings of this study suggest that phonological integration is a factor that should be brought back to the discussion on discerning LOLIs' status as a borrowing or a codeswitch

Negotiating normalization: The perils of producing pregnancy symptoms in prenatal care

In this paper, I argue that pregnant women confront a "double-bind" in complying with medical directives to report pregnancy symptoms: the combination of the routinization of prenatal care, understandings of fetal subjectivity, and the cultural discourse of maternal sacrifice create a situation in which women are at risk of failing as either as good patients, good mothers, or both. Longitudinal, in-depth interviews were conducted with 64 pregnant women in the New York metropolitan area. I found that health care providers make women's embodied experiences a priority of surveillance, connecting symptoms to fetal well-being and emphasizing timely reporting of these symptoms to medical authorities. I found that women generally accepted this connection between symptoms and fetus, but were often perplexed as to which symptoms they needed to communicate to their providers when time constraints on routine prenatal appointments limited women's ability to comply fully. Women also reported cultural pressures to "suffer nobly" the symptoms of pregnancy, no matter how uncomfortable. As a result, women found themselves with considerable responsibility for identifying problems in their pregnancies, with no clear way to adhere to the multiple and sometimes opposing mandates for managing symptoms they encountered.USA Pregnancy Gender Symptoms Compliance Mothering Typification Body Prenatal care