This thesis explores vowel mergers in the South Asian community of East Lancashire and the social factors affecting these realisations. Possible (non-)mergers north/force and face/goat are examined...Show moreThis thesis explores vowel mergers in the South Asian community of East Lancashire and the social factors affecting these realisations. Possible (non-)mergers north/force and face/goat are examined for a total of seven speakers by means of a word list reading, and sociolinguistic interviews with all speakers provided data on social factors such as socioeconomic background, social mobility, and identity. Like Standard British English, there is a merge of the lexical sets north and force, following what has been described as the first force merger. However, face and goat present a non-merger that behaves differently compared to the known northern English standard. Unlike a northern, monophthongised realisation of both vowels, all speakers gravitate towards a more southern, diphthongised realisation of face. Goat, however, remains a monophthong for all within this small dataset. The deviation found in the face lexical set might be explained through the social factor of social mobility, as all speakers express a desire to rise above the lower to working-class environment they have grown up in. At the same time, if the maintenance of monophthongised goat is an indication of loyalty to their identity, an argument can be made for the lacking desire of the younger second-generation British South Asians to give up their distinguishing dialectal features.Show less
This Perceptual Dialectology study of three dialects spoken in the South of Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands (Roosendaals, Oudenbosch, and Ruchpens) explored to what degree people from these towns...Show moreThis Perceptual Dialectology study of three dialects spoken in the South of Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands (Roosendaals, Oudenbosch, and Ruchpens) explored to what degree people from these towns are aware of the dialect features that make up their dialect, what these dialect features are and if these people are aware of the differences and similarities between their own dialect and that of the other two towns. The participants were thirty dialect speakers who are born, raised and still residential in one of the three studied towns. Interviews were held with these participants in which they were asked about their views on and knowledge about their own dialect and that of the two other towns. From these interviews it has become clear that, although Roosendaals, Oudenbosch and Rucphens have similarities, they do differ from each other on a lexical and a phonetic level. Most importantly, the results suggest that one’s level of sociophonetic awareness of their dialect relates to what degree they are capable of speaking Standard Dutch.Show less
The twenty-first century has seen an increase in prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness, with usage guides, language blogs and even automated Twitter bots offering advice on what is or...Show moreThe twenty-first century has seen an increase in prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness, with usage guides, language blogs and even automated Twitter bots offering advice on what is or is not permissible within Standard English. Using comments posted below-the-line (BTL) by members of the public, in response to a regular column on language use in The Times titled “The Pedant”, written by Oliver Kamm, this thesis examines grassroots prescriptive attitudes – defined as attitudes held by non-linguists towards language correctness – towards prescriptive ideologies and a specific usage problem: less with countable nouns. This thesis concludes that a small majority of BTL posters hold well-documented grassroots prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness.Show less
While swearing is a type of linguistic behavior we exhibit ourselves and experience with others in daily life on regular basis, it has received fairly little attention in relation to Dutch so far....Show moreWhile swearing is a type of linguistic behavior we exhibit ourselves and experience with others in daily life on regular basis, it has received fairly little attention in relation to Dutch so far. Though it is noted by various researchers that the influx of English-borrowed swearwords is continuously growing and gaining popularity (Rassin & Muris, 2005; Zenner, Speelman & Geeraerts, 2014; van Sterkenburg, 2008a, 2008b; Hindriks & van Hofwegen, 2014), little to no research has been conducted on its current role and proportion within the current Dutch swearing lexicon. This thesis seeks to provide an insight on the current swearing lexicon in Dutch with special regards to the role of native Dutch swearwords and Englishborrowed swearwords within this lexicon. The data for this research have been obtained through a survey that was filled in by 153 native speakers of Dutch who were born and raised in the Netherlands and raised monolingually. The main findings of this thesis showed that native Dutch swearwords are still preferred to Englishborrowed ones but also that their use is context-bound and situation-bound; in more serious situations, speakers preferred the use of Dutch swearwords, while in less serious situations they were more inclined to use an English-borrowed swearword. Furthermore, sociolinguistic factors such as age and gender influence a speaker’s swearing while regional background, educational background, religiosity and level of English do not. Though this study provides a small-scale insight on the current swearing lexicon and swearing behavior in Dutch, a larger-scaled study on swearing in Dutch with a broad variety of participants would definitely prove useful and interesting.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The current paper set out to investigate new dialect formation in progress in the Dutch new town of Dronten. Designated in the early 1960s, this city provided to be an excellent place to study new...Show moreThe current paper set out to investigate new dialect formation in progress in the Dutch new town of Dronten. Designated in the early 1960s, this city provided to be an excellent place to study new dialect formation in progress. This study looked into the phonetic characteristics of this variety of Dutch and it was examined how this variety could be defined. Further, the time scale of koineization was addressed. Lastly, the perceived degree of standardness was studied, based on a claim made by Scholtmeijer (1992). Interviews and an online survey provided data that shed more light on these issues. The current study has identified a number of remarkable phonetic features, such as lowering of the first element of (ei) and devoicing of (v) and (z). However, these features seem to be part of a more general tendency found in Standard Dutch and are therefore not exclusive to the Dronten variety of Dutch. In addition, Dronten Dutch was associated with a high degree of perceived standardness, as expert analysis as well as the online survey confirmed. Note, however, that this applies particularly to second-generation speakers, revealing evidence of focusing towards a more homogeneous linguistic variety in this generation.Show less
Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
closed access
The present thesis centres on languages and linguistic features encountered in the documentary texts from the Dead Sea region, focussing on the documentary texts from Wadi Murabba’at and Nahal...Show moreThe present thesis centres on languages and linguistic features encountered in the documentary texts from the Dead Sea region, focussing on the documentary texts from Wadi Murabba’at and Nahal Hever. Especially those features that might tell something about the identity of the people responsible for the production of these documents will be examined in detail. The overall aim is to detect these features and to explain them in light of their cultural background: to what extent do the formal and linguistic features visible in the documentary texts convey elements of conscious choices and unconscious linguistic patterns relating to the identity of the people who wrote these texts and how can these features be explained? It will be attempted to answer this general question through two key-objectives: 1. Through determining linguistic features and patterns of language choice in selected case studies. 2. Through explaining these features in light of their cultural-historical background.Show less
This paper sets out to investigate Lithuanians’ attitudes towards foreign languages in the light of political, cultural, and historical situation that Lithuania witnessed during the turn from the...Show moreThis paper sets out to investigate Lithuanians’ attitudes towards foreign languages in the light of political, cultural, and historical situation that Lithuania witnessed during the turn from the 20th to the 21st century. The aim of this paper is twofold: 1) to determine what type of identities Lithuanians ascribe to speakers with foreign accents and 2) to establish the motivations behind choosing Lithuanian versus foreign languages in daily life. The research that was carried out in Lithuania consisted of two parts. The first part of the research used attitudinal study and the second part used a questionnaire distributed around Lithuania. These tools were used to assess Lithuanian opinions of six speakers with various accents, and to analyse the rationale for choosing either the mother tongue or a foreign language in different situations. The results showed that the attitudes towards foreign speakers of Lithuanian differ between the capital city and the smaller town chosen for this study, and that the main reason for choosing Lithuanian over foreign languages in daily settings is more often based on the emphasis of national identity. The findings also suggest that while for the respondents in the smaller town chosen for this study, a standard Lithuanian speaker was an ultimate example of a successful person, the respondents in the capital city saw an American speaker of Lithuanian as the most prosperous individual.Show less
In 1956, the Chinese government began to encourage people all over the country to speak Mandarin in accordance with government policy. This policy was regarded as an effective way to remove...Show moreIn 1956, the Chinese government began to encourage people all over the country to speak Mandarin in accordance with government policy. This policy was regarded as an effective way to remove linguistic barriers among the different provinces, but later it was found that it was also one of the most important reasons behind the vanishing of dialects. Shanghainese 上海话 (Shanghaihua), is the indigenous language in Shanghai. It developed rapidly in the first half of the last century and is regarded as a cultural symbol by the local people of Shanghai. It enjoyed a dominant position in the area until the implementation of the national language policy. After 2000, more and more local people in Shanghai have begun to speak Mandarin in daily life. This thesis aims to study political, social and cultural factors which have led to this kind of linguistic change. I will explore the social function of Shanghainese and give an analysis on why and how people speak specific languages in various social domains. After demonstrating that the social function of Shanghainese is at present rather limited, I will investigate the prevalence of the awareness that favors saving the language and promoting local culture in Shanghainese for the goal of retaining local uniqueness. The thesis will consist of five chapters. The first chapter will include the introduction of Shanghainese, the interdependent relationship amongst languages, society and people and the central question and research methods. The second chapter will be the literature review. Then, I will discuss about how the social context has impacted peoples’ attitudes to Shanghainese and Mandarin and explore incentives behind the switching of languages. Different public and private space, including schools, governmental institutions, media, work places, home and so on, will be analyzed respectively in the third chapter. In ‘Chapter Four’, I will sketch how people consider Shanghainese to be a key part of their cultural identity. The last chapter will be the conclusion of thesis.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Discourse markers and tag questions have garnered much attention in present-day discourse analysis, but research into their ways in the past has only been conducted recently. The present study...Show moreDiscourse markers and tag questions have garnered much attention in present-day discourse analysis, but research into their ways in the past has only been conducted recently. The present study looks at discourse markers and tag questions from a socio-historical perspective, with as its focus the Late Modern English period. The study investigates five discourse markers (oh, ah, well, why, and you know) and tag questions by analyzing their distribution across four variables (gender, social class, intimacy, and setting). The corpus was created by the author by way of a selection of Jane Austen’s fictional works during a twenty-five year period (1792–1817) and has been analyzed by manual text-based analysis and by lexical analysis software. The findings indicate that there are significant correlations regarding discourse marker use and the variables gender (i.e. female speakers) and social class (i.e. lower-middle class). Furthermore, the analysis of the tag questions has demonstrated that the function of tag questions differ regarding the gender of the speaker. The study also discovered that the use of both discourse markers and tag questions are particularly a feature of the speech of silly or manipulative characters.Show less
