De metafoor is een effectief stijlmiddel omdat het veel persuasieve kracht kent. Zo kan een metafoor de overtuigingskracht vergroten door bijvoorbeeld een concreet en levendig beeld van zaken te...Show moreDe metafoor is een effectief stijlmiddel omdat het veel persuasieve kracht kent. Zo kan een metafoor de overtuigingskracht vergroten door bijvoorbeeld een concreet en levendig beeld van zaken te schetsen. Echter, de persuasieve werking van metaforen wordt betwist: diverse studies vonden conflicterende resultaten. Een mogelijke verklaring hiervoor is dat er in de onderzoeksopzet van deze studies geen rekening is gehouden met een belangrijke variabele: de directheid van de metafoor. Dit betreft de linguïstische dimensie. Deze houdt verband met de manier waarop de metafoor is vormgegeven. Dit kan direct (‘A is als (een) B’) of indirect (‘A is (een) B’) zijn. Deze studie onderzocht daarom de invloed van de directheid van de metafoor op overtuigingskracht. De onderzoeksvraag die dan ook centraal stond was: “In hoeverre wordt de overtuigingskracht van reisadvertenties beïnvloed door het gebruik van directe en indirecte metaforen?” De invloed van directheid is getoetst met behulp van het communicatief activiteitstype reisadvertenties. Reisadvertenties zijn rijk aan metaforen. De kenmerken van een metafoor komen dan ook goed van pas in reisadvertenties, waar overtuiging het primaire tekstdoel is en vaak onbekende vakantiebestemmingen concreet omschreven moeten worden. Dit onderzoek draagt tevens bij aan de studie naar reisadvertenties. Er is voor dit tekstgenre nog weinig experimenteel onderzoek gedaan op het gebied van overtuigingskracht. De onderzoeksvraag is beantwoord aan de hand van een (online) experiment met een 2 x 2 mixed factorial design. Metafoor (zonder metafoor vs. met metafoor) en Directheid (direct vs. indirect) vormden de onafhankelijke variabelen. Er is onderzocht of deze invloed hadden op natuurlijkheid en overtuigingskracht. Uit de resultaten bleek dat reisadvertenties zonder metafoor natuurlijker waren dan reisadvertenties met metafoor (p = .008). Er werd geen verschil in overtuigingskracht gevonden (p = .50). Het effect van de directheid van de metafoor was noch significant voor natuurlijkheid (p = .11) noch voor overtuigingskracht (p = .11). Aanvullend onderzoek is nodig om vast te stellen of er inderdaad geen effect van Directheid op natuurlijkheid en overtuigingskracht is, aangezien er een trend werd waargenomen in de data. Vervolgstudies kunnen zich tevens richten op de interactie tussen interpretatieve diversiteit en directheid van de metafoor of tussen semantische rijkheid en directheid van de metafoor. Daarnaast kan toekomstig onderzoek visuele metaforen aan het onderzoeksdesign toevoegen, aangezien in dit onderzoek enkel de invloed van verbale metaforen is getoetst.Show less
De opkomst van YouTube-sterren brengt nieuwe manieren om je te verontschuldigen met zich mee. Deze verontschuldigingen worden aangeboden binnen het zogenaamde actietype YouTuber apology. In deze...Show moreDe opkomst van YouTube-sterren brengt nieuwe manieren om je te verontschuldigen met zich mee. Deze verontschuldigingen worden aangeboden binnen het zogenaamde actietype YouTuber apology. In deze scriptie wordt onderzocht welke strategische manoeuvres worden ingezet in YouTuber apologies om tot een verzoening te komen tussen de beledigers en beledigden. Daarnaast wordt er ook gepoogd antwoord te vinden op de vragen “Hoe is het mogelijk dat de naam van een actietype niet strookt met de daadwerkelijke inhoud?” en “Wat zijn dan wel de voorwaarden voor het actietype YouTuber apology?” Om deze antwoorden te vinden, wordt er een corpusonderzoek gedaan op basis van checklists die zijn opgesteld aan de hand van de theorieën beschreven in hoofdstuk 2. Als eerste wordt er een volledige uiteenzetting van het actietype YouTuber apology gegeven, om daarna, aan de hand van deze uiteenzetting, de strategische manoeuvres die gebruikt worden in de YouTuber apologies te duiden. Al met al worden er twee strategische manoeuvres consequent gebruikt in de YouTuber apologies, namelijk het inspelen op de vriendschapsband met het publiek en het opwekken van medelijden door afbreuk aan het zelfbeeld. Deze strategische manoeuvres zijn beide van de categorie “aanpassing aan het publiek” en spelen specifiek in op de band die YouTubers hebben met hun fans. Het is dus meer van belang dat ze verantwoording afleggen aan hun fans, dan dat ze hun verontschuldiging aanbieden aan de originele beledigden. Daarnaast is het zo dat een actietype een naam krijgt van het publiek en niet van onderzoekers. Hierdoor is het mogelijk dat de naam van een actietype niet strookt met de inhoud ervan. Het is van belang om in het achterhoofd te houden dat een actietype niet gelijk is aan een taalhandeling. Wanneer een onderzoeker de randvoorwaarden van een actietype onderzoekt, is het dus aan hen om cultureel bepaalde randvoorwaarden te omarmen en niet om ze uit te sluiten.Show less
The traditional knowledge of indigenous people plays a crucial role in conserving various plant and animal species. In societies with a long pastoral tradition, they present distinctive expertise...Show moreThe traditional knowledge of indigenous people plays a crucial role in conserving various plant and animal species. In societies with a long pastoral tradition, they present distinctive expertise about herding animals, as they have been the main source of livelihood for many centuries. The goal of this study is to describe and analyze the ethnotaxonomy associated with shepherding and animal husbandry in the village of Morgongiori, Sardinia, aiming to show how traditional knowledge and biodiversity are encoded and classified in the language. The way in which Sardinian speakers talk about the domain of animal husbandry reveals how they categorize it and how they think about it; this study hence shows the important function of language as a key to understand speakers’ perspectives, and worldviews. Overall, this research sets a positive example for future studies. It provides an analytical approach to investigating the features of the Sardinian linguistic landscape, an area that has received little attention in linguistic research. The preservation of biocultural diversity goes hands in hands with the understanding and preservation of the linguistic practices of a community: these are key to understanding the traditional knowledge through which speakers make sense and interact with nature.Show less
Translation research that specifically involves museum labels, the small, wall-affixed plates adjacent to museum exhibits that include text about the exhibits in question has been limited,...Show moreTranslation research that specifically involves museum labels, the small, wall-affixed plates adjacent to museum exhibits that include text about the exhibits in question has been limited, especially when it comes to art museums and translation from one Germanic language to another. This thesis therefore primarily aimed to determine which translation procedures, i.e., which specific techniques used at a given point in a text, were used in the translated texts on labels of nine Dutch art museums in the Dutch provinces Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland that receive both national and international visitors. Since translation procedures are usually related to a translation strategy, an overall orientation of a translated text, a secondary aim of this thesis was to determine whether the observed translation procedures were related more to the translation strategy domestication or foreignizing. Not all the labels of the nine museums were included for research: only the labels of paintings from two specific time periods were, namely the Renaissance and the Golden Age. This selection was based on the assumption that it would be more likely that the translated texts on these labels would be adapted to the pre-existing knowledge of foreign visitors. The analysis of the texts on the selected labels reveals the application of twenty-two translation procedures. The majority of these procedures is linked to English language norms, which makes it possible to relate these to the strategy domestication. A minority of the procedures relates to the strategy of foreignizing as they involve the use of words that are uncustomary in English. This ratio is in line with the literature: it has been discussed that domestication is a more dominant strategy in translation than foreignizing. What is surprising is that there is a significantly lower percentage of procedures that relate to the strategy domestication in three museums. It is argued that this may be due to the fact that these museums are located in large Dutch cities and are popular with international visitors. It is suggested that the curators of these museums had a stronger preference for the application of procedures that relate to the strategy foreignizing because of the exoticizing effect that this has on their international visitors.Show less
Possession is a foundational concept for humans to express, and understanding its intricacies is crucial to piecing together how humans experience the world. However, although possession may be a...Show morePossession is a foundational concept for humans to express, and understanding its intricacies is crucial to piecing together how humans experience the world. However, although possession may be a universal in typological linguistics, it has not been researched under a psycholinguistic. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to ascertain whether two languages’ (Irish and English) different representations of possession can influence how speakers process possessive sentences. The data was collected using a picture-sentence matching task with reaction time acting as a proxy for processing and the psycholinguistic variable of note. The statistical analysis showed that Irish possessive sentences were processed quicker than English possessive sentences. It was concluded that this effect derives from the embodiment necessary to make sense of active English possessives in comparison to passive Irish possessives. This implies that embodiment plays a role in processing possessive sentences in Irish and English.Show less
The present thesis takes on the topic of how polarity focus works in the Catalan language. It focuses on the sequences formed by a polarity element sí “yes” or no “no”, combined with que to...Show moreThe present thesis takes on the topic of how polarity focus works in the Catalan language. It focuses on the sequences formed by a polarity element sí “yes” or no “no”, combined with que to introduce a clause, forming sí que, sí que no and no que no sentences. These sequences have been studied in the literature individually, but not a lot has been said in terms of comparison. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to compare and analyze the sentences introduced by these sequences, as well as their distribution based on their triggers and the context they appear in. The account given indicates various findings. Firstly, sí/no + que sequences can introduce answers to polarity questions, as well as respond to a previous utterance indicating polarity emphasis. Moreover, they can also be used in contrastive settings. However, the three sequences cannot always appear in the same contexts unrestrictedly. Case and point, it is argued that sí que no and no que no are not interchangeable, despite both of them seemingly denoting negative polarity emphasis.Show less
The tritone paradox is a compelling auditory illusion discovered by Diana Deutsch in 1986. Upon hearing a tritone interval (i.e. a tone pair related by half an octave) such as A#-D, any one...Show moreThe tritone paradox is a compelling auditory illusion discovered by Diana Deutsch in 1986. Upon hearing a tritone interval (i.e. a tone pair related by half an octave) such as A#-D, any one listener might hear it ascend, whilst another listener might hear the same interval descend. The illusion is based on Shepard tones (1964), which are simple to identify in terms of pitch class, but complex in terms of specific relative tonal height. This makes it difficult for two of such tones spaced at an equal distance to determine which tone is higher than the other. However, much remains unknown about the different interpersonal factors that contribute to the mental strategies that lead to deciphering the complex intervals as either ascending or descending. Previous research suggests that not someone’s musicality, but the language variation spoken and heard during childhood might influence their perception of the tritone paradox. More specifically, it is thought that experience pertaining to the pitch range of a language would shape our general interpretation of which pitch classes are heard as higher or lower than others, in turn affecting our perception of the tritone illusion (Deutsch, 1987, 1990, 1994, 2004, 2007; Deutsch et al, 1991). In an attempt to unravel this psychoacoustic mystery further, this study examines the relationship between musical, spoken, and perceptive behaviour of people who had grown up in the Netherlands speaking Dutch as their first language. Therefore, a group of 29 native Dutch participants were recruited for an online experiment. After completing a short background survey, the participants received a perception task in which they needed to identify tritone paradox intervals as either ‘falling’ or ‘rising’, and they were asked to record themselves reading aloud a passage of text, from which F0 measurements were drawn. Additionally, participants were presented with a tailored version of the Musical Ear Test (Correia et al., 2021, adapted from Wallentin et al., 2010), a standardised test to index their level of musicality. Based on the findings from these tasks, it was concluded that a) Dutch listeners of the tritone paradox follow a perception pattern similar to Californian American listeners (their mental orientations of the pitch class circle, reflecting which pitches they generally perceive as relatively higher than others, are both centred around peak pitch classes C-C#); b) level of musicality is not a key factor in someone’s perception of the tritone paradox; and c) (Dutch) pitch range in speech does not correlate with perception of the tritone paradox. Nevertheless, since the (confirmed) hypothesis that Dutch and Californian listeners react similarly to the illusion was based solely on pitch range literature, it is expected that future replication of the study with a larger and more balanced participant population, and an improved methodology pertaining to spoken data collection could find more conclusive support for the theory that spoken pitch range influences tonal perception. Doing so would further contribute to gaining insight in the psychological connections between our spoken language and how we personally experience the auditory world around us.Show less
Songbirds are used as a model of language acquisition due to the parallels between birdsongs and human language. While previous comparative research has focussed on syntax, phonetics, and phonology...Show moreSongbirds are used as a model of language acquisition due to the parallels between birdsongs and human language. While previous comparative research has focussed on syntax, phonetics, and phonology, prosody remains understudied in this context. Intensity is significantly present both in human language and in zebra finch songs. In human language, it is part of prosody which is used for conveying meaning and as part of a language’s phonology. In both humans and songbirds, vocalisations are learned and comparative studies on different aspects of vocal learning processes contribute to a greater understanding of the learning process. This thesis studied seventeen zebra finch nests to analyse whether intensity levels were based on the position within song units or based on the element type. Structured levels of intensity could indicate a pattern resembling prosodic patterns in human language. The results show a strong correlation between the intensity levels based on element type and a slightly less strong correlation between intensity levels and the position in the motif. This suggests that incorporating intensity in a song is part of the vocal learning process for zebra finches, similar to human language, indicating a suprasegmental role.Show less
When individuals receive compliments, they often want to accept them while maintaining modesty, creating a dilemma in how to respond. Studies on compliment responses have demonstrated various...Show moreWhen individuals receive compliments, they often want to accept them while maintaining modesty, creating a dilemma in how to respond. Studies on compliment responses have demonstrated various strategies that people employ in these situations. Given that text messages have become a large part of communication nowadays, it is interesting to determine which compliment response strategies are utilised in text messaging, as it has different response possibilities and limitations than face-to-face interaction, and has not been studied yet. Therefore, this study examines the responses to compliments (among acquaintances) via text messages. These responses are categorised to provide an overview of the strategies used in written communication. The results indicate that ‘accepting’ strategies were the most frequently employed, with ‘thanking’ being the most common response, generally accompanied by an emoji or affectionate words (e.g., “aww,” “my love,” “homie”). Even ‘deflecting’ strategies were predominantly only used in combination with an accepting strategy.Show less
This thesis revolves around the role of translators in the negotiation of translation norms. While translation norms are commonly believed to regulate translator behaviour, little is known about...Show moreThis thesis revolves around the role of translators in the negotiation of translation norms. While translation norms are commonly believed to regulate translator behaviour, little is known about how they are broken, challenged or validated by translators as agents. This thesis investigated how Dutch novice translators, in a context of medical translation, negotiate coexisting or competing translation norms and tested if their behaviour can be explained through a risk-management model. In order to do this, the participants completed a translation ranking task that contained translations, with varying degrees of intervention, in order to uncover any dominant norms. The ranking task was followed up with a number of focus-group interviews to compare the quantitative data qualitatively to the participants’ attitudes towards norm-breaking and presumed norms. The quantitative results show a clear tendency among the participants to move away from high-intervention translations. The qualitative data analysis indicates that the participants come into contact with various norms, including the arguably dominant norm of literalness in medical translation. In addition to that, it indicates that the participants’ tolerance of intervention depends on a number of factors that relate to the risks and rewards associated with norm-breaking. It is argued that novice translators indeed do apply a strategy of managing and weighing translation-related risks, thereby validating and negotiating norms, which helps explain why certain norms are preferred over others in different situations.Show less
Academic writing is a challenging, complex, and demanding task (Rahimi & Zhang, 2018), especially for learners of English as a second language (ESL), who face additional challenges in mastering...Show moreAcademic writing is a challenging, complex, and demanding task (Rahimi & Zhang, 2018), especially for learners of English as a second language (ESL), who face additional challenges in mastering genre and disciplinary conventions (Hanauer et al., 2019). Despite English's crucial role in academia, higher education institutions sometimes inadequately address the writing difficulties faced by ESL students (Lim & Phua, 2019). Amid these challenges, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly AI-powered chatbots, offer potential solutions (Kohnke et al., 2023). ChatGPT has garnered significant attention in education for its ability to provide real-time feedback and writing assistance (Lo, 2023; Rasul, 2023). However, its integration into academic settings has sparked ethical debates concerning plagiarism, academic integrity, and the authenticity of students' work (Lund et al., 2023; Rahimi & Abadi, 2024; Rowland, 2023), leading to a reluctance among students to acknowledge their use of ChatGPT openly. This study investigates the use and perceptions of ChatGPT among nine (n=9) ESL (Research) Master students in Linguistics at Leiden University. A qualitative approach involving in-depth, semi-structured interviews was adopted. In line with previous studies (Farhi et al., 2023; Ngo, 2023; Nguyen, 2023; Shoufan, 2023), the findings reveal that students employ ChatGPT for academic writing. The primary uses include brainstorming, paper structuring, argumentation, paraphrasing, and grammar and vocabulary checks. Motivations for usage include low confidence in writing in English, and limited knowledge and practice of the academic genre. While students can distinguish between AI- and human-authored texts, they generally view ChatGPT positively for its supportive role. However, concerns about plagiarism and dependency persist, indicating a need for clearer guidelines and ethical considerations in its use.Show less
This thesis investigates the preferences in usage of English verbal loans compared to their Dutch equivalents and identifies the socio-pragmatic and linguistic variables that are assumed for users...Show moreThis thesis investigates the preferences in usage of English verbal loans compared to their Dutch equivalents and identifies the socio-pragmatic and linguistic variables that are assumed for users of English verbal loans. The respondents that participated in this research were asked to complete one of the two questionnaires that were used and were asked to either choose between English verbal loans or their Dutch equivalents or share their assumptions on speakers who use English verbal loans or their Dutch equivalents. By collecting this data and analysing the differences between the preferred usage of English verbal loans or their Dutch equivalents and the assumptions around a speaker’s age or occupation based on their usage of verbal loans or Dutch equivalent(s), it was possible to draw a conclusion based on these socio-pragmatic variables. This thesis concludes that users who prefer the use of English verbal loans over Dutch equivalents are primarily found in the age group of 18 to 26 years old, while users who prefer Dutch equivalents are found in an older age group (between 40 to 50 years old). Speakers that used English verbal loans are, additionally, assumed to be ‘young’ and fall into the age group of 18 to 26 years old and are also assumed to have English-prone occupations/social roles. In comparison, speakers that use Dutch equivalents are assumed to be older (between 40 to 50 years old) and are assumed to have Dutch-prone occupations/social roles.Show less
The subject of characterisation is defined by Jonathan Culpeper (2001) as the way a reader perceives a character and is therefore a very important part of the reading process. The choices made by...Show moreThe subject of characterisation is defined by Jonathan Culpeper (2001) as the way a reader perceives a character and is therefore a very important part of the reading process. The choices made by the translator may have an impact on the way a character is described and therefore also impacts the way a character is perceived by the reader. According to Zeven and Dorst (2021) and Chen and Song (2023) the choices made by the translator may influence the way the gender of a character is depicted and thus may influence the way a reader might perceive the gender of said character. One of the target audiences on which changes to the depiction of gender might have a large impact is children. Children are partially shaped by the literature they come across and thus the way gender is depicted in books and subsequently translated might shape the way they perceive this subject. This thesis focuses on the way the possibly stereotypically girly depiction of a transgender girl is changed by the translator's choices, how this affects the characterisation and the stereotypical nature of this characterisation and what effect this has on the reader. By performing a comparative analysis of several excerpts in which Melissa, the main character of the American middle grade novel 'Melissa' and its Dutch translation 'George', performs stereotypical femininity, the answer to the question 'In which ways is the stereotypical characterization of a transgender girl influenced by the choices made by a translator and what effect does this have on the story?' is found. The results of the analysis provide a similar conclusion to other studies on changes made by the translator regarding female gender stereotyping: the choices made by the translator do influence the characterisation of gender, even if said influence is minimal and it has very little effect on the story.Show less
