The country of Iran is currently governed by an Islamic regime and religion is a significant notion not only in the ruling system but also in the social and private life of the citizens. The field...Show moreThe country of Iran is currently governed by an Islamic regime and religion is a significant notion not only in the ruling system but also in the social and private life of the citizens. The field of linguistic landscape concerns the visibility and salience of languages on all the signs in a given territory or region and the landscape of cities as social constructs are deeply affected by the two forces: the governments from the top and the people from the bottom. This research explores the religious signs in the linguistic landscape of the city of Najafabad in Iran. The aim of this research is to see how religion manifests in the city and how it functions in the landscape of the city. In order to conduct the research, the signs with religious content are collected, and studied in terms of language use, font, theme and agency. The results reveal that the number of top-down signs surpasses the bottom-up signs. In analysis, it is concluded that in the landscape of the city of Najafabad, religion functions as an ideological tool for managing the landscape and promoting the ideology among the citizens.Show less
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 thesis explores how intelligible Czech accented English is to foreign speakers and what pronunciation issues Czech learners of English have. With English language becoming the world’s lingua...Show moreThis thesis explores how intelligible Czech accented English is to foreign speakers and what pronunciation issues Czech learners of English have. With English language becoming the world’s lingua franca, there has been a significant change in the attitude towards English pronunciation teaching over the years. This paper introduces the change from the Nativeness Principle, that focused on sounding native-like, to the Intelligibility Principle, the goal of which is to have a clear pronunciation enough to converse comfortably with other speakers of English. This paper’s focus is particularly on the Czech accented English and its understandability in conversation. Mutual intelligibility is what Jenkins (2000; 2002) aimed at when putting together a list of core pronunciation features one should focus on when learning English. This Lingua Franca Core (LFC), as she named it, serves as a base for this paper. In this study, recordings of less advanced Czech learners of English were collected and analysed, in order to pinpoint the main pronunciation mistakes. These were compared to Jenkins’ LFC to establish how intelligible the Czech accent is. Selected bits of the recordings were also sent to responders through a survey, to find out what their opinion on the Czech accent is. The main findings of the analysis showed that less advanced Czech learners substitute English vowels with Czech ones, they put stress on the first syllable in every word and pronounce English weak vowel forms as full ones. They also struggle with the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless dental fricatives, and they insert a glottal stop in between words, creating clear boundaries. The survey results showed that these aspects of Czech English mainly constitute a problem in isolated words. When context is provided, the Czech accent proved to be quite intelligible and some of the pronunciation features even helped with intelligibility. The study concluded with pronunciation tips for English learners.Show less
In a pronunciation evaluation task, 30 Dutch students of English Language & Culture responded to questions about the ‘correctness’ in pronunciation of 4 speakers of global Englishes. This...Show moreIn a pronunciation evaluation task, 30 Dutch students of English Language & Culture responded to questions about the ‘correctness’ in pronunciation of 4 speakers of global Englishes. This included two L1 speakers (from London and New Delhi), and two L2 speakers (from Groningen and Zhengzhou). Follow-up interviews were conducted with 10 participants for further insight. Results showed that the pronunciations were ranked as most to least correct in regard to their similarity to RP. However, three factors were highly influential in participants’ evaluations. Firstly, prosodic features were found to be the defining feature of ‘good’ pronunciation. Secondly, identification of a speaker’s accent affected participants’ overall evaluations. Finally, a speaker was thought to have a lower standard of pronunciation if they did not have an RP accent, regardless of how easy they were to understand. Overall, English was found to be indexical of the UK or USA due to RP and GA being the standard pronunciation models, and if these teaching models are to continue to be the norm, there is an overwhelming need to increase the use of other pronunciation models as stimuli in the classroom to address the practical realities of using English today.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
Abstract Nowadays, early foreign language learning in the Netherlands is booming and generally preferred over language learning starting at a later stage due to its presumed positive effects on...Show moreAbstract Nowadays, early foreign language learning in the Netherlands is booming and generally preferred over language learning starting at a later stage due to its presumed positive effects on pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar acquisition (Groot & Deelder, 2014). In (early) second language acquisition classrooms, native speaker teachers are often preferred over non-native speaker teachers due the model of language they can present; native speakers have reached the so-called target L2 learners try to obtain (Cook, 2008, p. 185). Furthermore, in the Netherlands, it is generally assumed that learners who are taught by a native speaker will become more proficient in the target language than learners who are taught by a non-native speaker, especially in terms of pronunciation (SLO, 2011). However, hardly any research has focused on whether this assumption is true. This research attempts to fill this gap by examining whether early English language learners taught by a native speaker attain a more native-like pronunciation than learners taught by a non-native speaker. Pupils of two Dutch primary schools were tested on their English pronunciation (segmentals), with one group following an early learning programme in which they were (partly) taught by a native speaker teacher, and another group following such a programme during which they were taught by a non-native speaker. Results show that learners taught by a non-native speaker produce more native-like consonants than speakers taught by a native speaker. In addition, learners taught by a non-native speaker produce fewer Dutch-like vowels than learners taught by a native speaker. However, it cannot be concluded with certainty that, therefore, the learners taught by a non-native speaker also produced more native-like vowels. Yet, based on the results of this research, it can be concluded that, in terms of pronunciation, learners taught by a native speaker teacher are not more native-like than learners taught by a non-native speaker. It is arguable that being taught by a native speaker teacher does not lead to better pronunciation results.Show less
For various Dutch students at secondary education the English national written exam is a difficult hurdle to take. Most students understand the contents of the texts they have to read, but make too...Show moreFor various Dutch students at secondary education the English national written exam is a difficult hurdle to take. Most students understand the contents of the texts they have to read, but make too many errors in answering the exam questions. Exam training, which consists of teaching tekst structures and reading strategies, does not always lead to better results. For students it can be of great importance to know where and why they go wrong in answering exam questions. In this study systematic error analysis (SEA) is applied in order to find out why students go wrong in answering exam questions. Students had to explain why they chose a particular answer and where they found the answer in the text. The outcome of the error analysis was used as a source for exam training. The outcome of this study showed that SEA as a source of exam training does not lead to immediate repair of students' errors. Despite the fact that students' explanations on why they gave a particular answer were correct, it did not lead to significantly more correct answers.Show less
