School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
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Item'Outside the Machine': The Displaced Woman in Paris( 2022-09)In this thesis, I focus on the female protagonists in novels and short stories by Jean Rhys, Nancy Huston and Leila Slimani. Although each writer comes from a different background, culture and era, their protagonists are remarkably similar. Thus, I consider whether the ‘displaced’ woman who appears in Rhys, Huston and Slimani’s narratives is a literary archetype, which traits define her as such and what causes her to feel displaced. To answer these questions, I draw upon the theories of Julia Kristeva, Simone de Beauvoir and Gilles Deleuze to examine and compare each protagonist’s childhood, life experiences, emotional temperament and self-destructive behaviour. This process reveals the lasting impact of early trauma and the reality of feeling displaced from an interior and exterior perspective.
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ItemIndexing the Co-creation of meaning in Gay manga: A multimodal discourse analysis of Japanese men's language, visual style, and narrative structure.( 2022)Within both Japanese sociolinguistics and popular discourse, gendered language has been a salient and heavily debated topic of study and cultural politics. In popular culture, Japanese women’s and Japanese men’s language have been under constant scrutiny as markers for the state of heteronormative gender roles, seemingly representative of any change in gender roles, which if perceived as losing their monolithic nature, was a danger to Japanese society. The nature of this intense cultural scrutiny lies in entrenched ideologies of gender and sexuality, which prescribe a naturalised linguistic history to both Japanese women’s language and Japanese men’s language as traditional aspects of Japanese culture, themselves constructed speech styles (Nakamura, 2014). It is these very ideologies which the analysis of this thesis seeks to interrogate and trouble. The LGBT+ community is itself a resistance to heteronormative ideology; the very existence of queer identities troubles the binary heteronormative configuration of gender and sexuality. The doctoral project explores the indexical potential of Japanese pornographic gay manga utilizing multimodal analysis. Of particular interest is exploring the indexical field of heteronormative “Japanese men’s language” and how it might be subverted within homoerotic contexts. Whilst Japanese women’s language has a long history of study, Japanese men’s language has only really been closely interrogated in the last twenty years (by researchers such as Cindi Sturtz-Sreetharan, Momoko Nakamura, Shigeko Okamoto, and Janet Shibamoto Smith), and even then, existing research has not explored how gay men or mediatised representations of gay men make use of Japanese men’s language. The thesis analyses three stories from gay manga, each from three different authors, Terujiro, Gai Mizuki, and Miyoshi Hiromi. Analysis explores how ideological “Japanese men’s language”, visual style and narrative structure co-create meaning and index character archetypes, desire and eroticism. The thesis is concerned with how these elements work together, interacting with ideologies and discourses of gender and sexuality to generate meaning. Analysis particularly examines the function of narrative to overcome roadblocks toward reaching erotic and emotional fulfilment, finding that stories conclude in ‘happy endings’ in the spirit of queer hopefulness. The thesis contributes to the understanding of not just Japanese men’s language but also gay manga as a genre within pornography. Findings show that the use of Japanese men’s language is complex and very much not limited to expressing heterosexual masculinity, rather its use in gay manga is subverted to express queer desire as part of its indexical potential. Furthermore, the thesis shows that gay manga are semiotically rich texts which not only co-create meaning through a multimodal semiotic sign system but also function to tell stories of not just desire, but also of joy and hopefulness.
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ItemPerceptual modification of nonnative phonemic sequences( 2023)This thesis investigates how native language (L1) segmental phonology and phonotactics interfere with the perception of phonological structures in a nonnative or second language (L2). Previous research has shown that nonnative listeners at times modify the phonological structures of an L2 based on the regularities of their L1 phonology, and that they sometimes experience perceptual difficulties in distinguishing L2 contrasts. The present thesis presents a total of five case studies focusing on different kinds of L1-L2 phonological mismatch, all of which trigger different corresponding modification strategies, including neutralisation (contrastive phonemes become non-contrastive), substitution (replacing a target phoneme with a different segment), epenthesis (perceiving an illusory segment when there is no target), and deletion (failing to perceive a target segment). These perceptual modification strategies are investigated through a series of psycholinguistic experiments relying on established methods in the field (e.g., categorisation, identification, and discrimination), and newer methods such as mouse tracking for triangulating on the cognitive processes involved in perceptual modification strategies. The thesis also explores whether extensive experience with the target language and especially the expansion of the L2 vocabulary, is predictive of L2 listeners’ ability to accurately perceive novel phonotactic structures. The findings of the present thesis have strong implications for extending the prevalent theories of nonnative speech perception, including the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM, and its extension, PAM-L2; Best, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007), the Vocabulary Model of Rephonologisation (Vocab; Bundgaard-Nielsen et al., 2011a, 2011b, 2012), and the Automatic Selective Perception Model (ASP; Strange & Shafer, 2008; Strange, 2011). On the basis of the experiments conducted, this thesis argues that while perceptual assimilation is the fundamental mechanism for understanding nonnative (L2) segmental perception, the current frameworks must be extended to also allow cross-language category mapping for more complex phonological structures (i.e., phonemic sequences) in order to understand how L1 phonotactic expectations interfere with segmental perception in L2 speech perception.
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ItemConcealed from the eyes of the banquet’s guests: The ‘Officers of the Mouth’ at the court of Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara( 2022)This thesis presents a comprehensive study of an unexplored aspect of the court of Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (1534–1559), that is, the roles, duties, and organisation of employees known collectively as the “officers of the mouth”, officials devoted to food-related professions inside the duke’s household. More specifically, it investigates and analyses the contribution these officers made to the efficiency and economic growth of the duke’s court. It draws primarily on unexamined archival material including registry books and numerous inventories from across the several household departments responsible for procuring, storing, and preparing food. By doing so it presents the first available prosopographic study exclusively concerned with the officers of the mouth working at Ercole II’s household and presents a complete database featuring the main characteristics of their roles. Furthermore, this thesis takes readers from food markets, wholesalers, and specialist suppliers to the court’s food pantries, credenze (ornate sideboards used to store silverware and expensive plates), and kitchens, where the officers and other ducal employees prepared the duke’s favourite dishes. It also details the duties of the officers of the mouth who made the d’Este household a highly-organised machine. From there, I take the information I gathered on the officers of the mouth from my primary sources and critically examine it within the context of descriptions and other information available in gastronomical and household treatises of the period. My aim here was to provide an in-depth knowledge of contemporary society’s perception of the roles of these officers and how that perception played out in their public image.
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ItemThe Development of L2 Interactional Competence in Mandarin Chinese: Comparing Role Plays and Elicited Conversation( 2022)Developmental studies on L2 interactional competence (IC) have largely focused on English as the target second language (L2), while little attention has been given to IC development in L2 Mandarin Chinese. Among existing studies on IC, role plays and elicited conversation tasks have been commonly employed, but no studies have compared role plays and elicited conversation tasks with a view to investigating what specific interactional features each of these two methods is able to elicit. This study focuses on two major issues. Firstly, I investigate the development of IC with Mandarin Chinese as the target L2. Three major interactional features, namely reciprocity, topic management, and preference organization are examined. Secondly, this study compares role play and elicited conversation tasks in order to explore the question of whether or not these two methods are able to elicit different kinds of information regarding IC development. The data were gathered from 54 L2 learners of Mandarin at four different proficiency levels, and 12 L1 Chinese native speakers. Each of the L2 participants was assigned to a dyadic group with a partner at a similar proficiency level. Each pair of participants did one elicited conversation task, in which they discussed an assigned topic, and two role plays designed to elicit requests and refusals. The data were analyzed using Conversation Analysis (CA). This study found that beginner and lower-intermediate level learners tended to perform social actions in a “pass-partout” (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon–Berger, 2015, p. 262) manner without considering the interactional context or the interlocutor. Lower-level learners also showed a minimal degree of collaboration and engagement in the interaction. As L2 proficiency grows, upper-intermediate and advanced level learners used more diversified tools to accomplish interactional goals and they showed a growing level of context sensitivity and recipient design. A higher level of mutuality, collaboration, and active recipientship was also observed among the upper intermediate and advanced level learners. These developmental trajectories were identified across the areas of topic management, reciprocity, and preference organization. However, some gaps were found even between advanced level learners and Chinese native speakers, indicating that L2 proficiency is not entirely the same as IC. With regard to the methodological comparison, the current study found that the elicited conversation tasks were more capable of eliciting topic management abilities, including topic extension and topic shift. The role plays were more capable of eliciting abilities related to the relationship between large-scale sequential organization and the management of disaffiliative social actions. Reciprocity is a unique interactional feature and was only observed in the elicited conversation tasks. This study adds to the body of L2 IC research by focusing on a language that has historically received little attention in the field, namely Mandarin Chinese. The results of the study can shed light on L2 pedagogy, testing design, and open up avenues for further L2 IC research.
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ItemTimebound: identity and political change in British, Austrian, and Spanish Eurovision( 2022)In the Eurovision Song Contest, nations compete in a European setting for the title of best annual song. This framework has implied two facets of identity, the national and the European. In this thesis, I ask if political change causes change in ESC identity expression across such a long duration, a question that could provide nuanced cultural knowledge of the European Union’s integrative successes. My research employs interpretive sociology, multimodal analysis, and semiotic representational theory to infer how politics influence signs of national and European identities in Austria, Spain, and the United Kingdom’s ESC performances
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ItemFair vs. useful: Evaluating the fairness and validity of interpretations and uses of remote Aboriginal students’ national reading test performances( 2022)Background: The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLaN) has been administered to students across Australia since 2008. The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) maintains that NAPLaN testing provides a reliable and rich measure of the foundational literacy skills of all Australian school students. Furthermore, ACARA posits that a student’s test score is useful for making decisions about their level of English reading achievement in relation to year-level standards, compared to other students across Australia, and for guiding decisions about future English reading instruction. ACARA asserts that ‘extensive processes’ have been put in place to ensure that NAPLaN test scores provide parents and classroom teachers with a ‘valid and reliable measure’ of literacy and numeracy for all Australian students. Despite ACARA’s assurances, concerns regarding the fairness and usefulness of using NAPLaN data to make decisions about the literacy achievements of remote Aboriginal students, particularly those students who are English language learners (ELLs), continue to grow in both the academic literature and the wider public discourse. Purpose: In the fields of language testing and educational measurement, judgements of student achievement are considered claims made on the basis of data. The appropriateness of these claims relies on the quality of inferences that underpin the claim. This dissertation project, situated in the culturally and linguistically diverse context of Australia’s Northern Territory investigated the fairness, validity and usefulness of using Year 3 Aboriginal students’ NAPLaN reading test performances for their intended purpose. Method: This study used Kane’s (2013) interpretation/use argument framework to structure a logical argument that lays out the series of inferential links which connect observations of NAPLaN test performances to claims based on test scores about a student’s level of English reading ability and future teaching and learning needs. Rather than problematising ‘the gap’ between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students, this within-population study gathered student-level achievement data from 65 Year 3 Aboriginal students (age 8 – 9 years old) who had completed NAPLaN that same year. Statistical analyses were used to investigate the relationship between students’ English grammar, vocabulary, word recognition skills, working memory, and the NAPLaN reading test scores of Aboriginal students from different English language learning backgrounds and levels of remoteness. Reading grades reported on students’ report cards and transcripts of interviews with teachers and school leaders were also analysed to investigate whether NAPLaN data extrapolates beyond the testing environment and is considered by educators to be a useful measure of and for their students’ learning. Findings: The findings of this study indicate that NAPLaN testing provided participating students, including those students who learn English as an Additional Language or Dialect with an equitable (fair) opportunity to demonstrate their standing on the construct of reading ability, as defined by the Year 3 national minimum reading standard. The findings suggest that Aboriginal students who speak Aboriginal English, Kriol or an Aboriginal language are on average acquiring the English language and literacy skills assessed by NAPLaN later than their peers who speak Standard Australian English. However, school leaders and classroom teachers from very remote schools who participated in this study all expressed the view that the NAPLaN reading test did not provided them with useful information about their students’ learning. These educators consistently reported that most of their students learn English as an additional language or dialect and had not yet mastered the prerequisite Standard Australian English language and literacy skills required to access NAPLaN reading test-items. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that NAPLaN test scores provide a reliable and accurate measure of students’ reading achievement compared to national year-level standards. However, the findings also suggest that the English language and literacy development of students who live in communities where English is not widely spoken, do not typically conform nor catch-up to the reading achievement milestones of their Standard Australian English-speaking peers. Rather than problematising the test or the score, this study has highlighted that it is the interpretation of NAPLaN test scores against a Standard Australian English norm that is the issue. This research calls for educational assessments that recognise linguistically diverse students’ language and literacy learning pathways.
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ItemMind the Gap: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of First and Second Language Fluency in Spanish Speakers of English( 2022)This thesis is a cross-linguistic analysis of spoken and perceived fluency in first language (L1) Spanish and second language (L2) English in the context of an English as Foreign Language (EFL) setting. This study focuses on spoken fluency, or speech fluidity, in terms of three sub-dimensions: utterance, phonological, and dialogue fluency, and then connects these to judgements of perceived fluency. For this purpose, fluency is described from the perspective of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST; De Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007), where the development and deployment of fluency cannot be seen as separate from the context in which these occur (Segalowitz, 2016). The research project also problematises the methods and materials used in the study of spoken and perceived fluency to contribute to the replicability and falsifiability of second language fluency (SLF) research. To achieve these aims, I designed three studies to answer five research questions. The data used for these studies were audio recordings from 24 Spanish speakers of English as an L2 and the assessment of these samples by 20 raters coming from the same linguistic background. Study 1 is concerned with finding which measures can best account for speech fluidity. The results point to a series of measures being well suited to account for L1 and L2 speech fluidity while others were reflective of other aspects of broad fluency. In terms of utterance fluency, this subdimension was defined by measures accounting for speed and dysfluencies (dysfluent pause rate and duration and drawl rate). In the case of phonological fluency, rPVI-C, pace, and measures of pre-boundary lengthening seemed to best account for speech timing. These findings were corroborated by means of an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). For dialogue fluency, interactive mechanisms and turn-taking management measures could offer an accurate portrayal of the co-construction of fluency in dialogue. Study 2 provides an in-depth exploration of the nature of spoken fluency by exploring how L1 speech fluidity influences L2 production and the way in which phonological and dialogue fluency modulate utterance fluency. The results showed that L1 fluency influenced speed of speech and fluent pause behaviour. Conversely, measures of dysfluencies were found not to be influenced by L1 behaviour. Transfer from the L1 to the L2 at the level of speech timing was mostly attested at the level of vocalic interval duration and sentence-level stress. Dialogue fluency in the L1 and L2 shared the same characteristics. In terms of the interaction between sub-dimensions, utterance fluency was influenced by speech timing, which affected the duration of speech units and, therefore, speed. Dialogue fluency interacted with utterance fluency in the sense that scaffolding and efficient turn transitions resulted in faster speed and fewer dysfluencies. Study 3 intends to describe the connection between spoken and perceived fluency. Results showed that raters were mostly influenced in their judgements by speed and the instantiation of dysfluencies. Speech timing in terms of pace also had a bearing on perceptions of fluent speech. Perceived interactiveness was positively influenced by the presence of interactive mechanisms, shorter duration of turns and turn transitions. This study also revealed that raters pay attention to different aspect of speech fluidity when assessing L1 and L2 fluency. Speed was the most important factor for judgements of fluent speech in the L1, while the presence of dysfluencies had a higher bearing on L1 perception. Ultimately, this study contributes to narrowing down the concept of spoken and perceived fluency. It also provides an in-depth description of fluency by contributing to the definition of measures of dialogue fluency and the incorporation of speech timing as an aspect of speech fluidity (i.e., phonological fluency). Simultaneously, it contributes to SLF research by describing what characterises speech fluidity and perceived fluency in an understudied population. Finally, this project helps in advancing the field in terms of the systematisation of methods and materials that lead to the much-needed replicability of SLF research.
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ItemThe Dynamics of Contemporary Pitjantjatjara: An Intergenerational Study( 2022)This thesis investigates several areas of Pitjantjatjara grammar, drawing attention to the ways in which the language varies between and within generations, and the ways that the language is being both adapted and maintained by young adults. The primary goal of the thesis is to find out how young people are speaking Pitjantjatjara today, against a backdrop of rapid social change and language contact. How does their language use differ in comparison to older generations, and to previous descriptions, and what areas of the grammar are being changed or maintained? Pitjantjatjara is one of only a dozen Australian First Nations languages that have been continuously transmitted since colonisation, and which are still being acquired by children as a first language today. Many Pitjantjatjara speakers have noticed that the language is changing and are concerned about its future. In light of speakers' concerns, which are presented at length, this thesis investigates six topics in the language: phonetics and phonology, verbal morphology, case-marking, possession, nominalisation, and negation. Each of these presents a different picture of a dynamic system in constant flux, with different patterns of variation and change, maintenance and innovation, simplification and complexification. To investigate these issues, a corpus of over 40,000 words was recorded in Pukatja/Ernabella (SA). This corpus was designed to capture spontaneous speech among different generations of women. In addition, I draw upon an annotated collection of previously published texts, from the substantial body of previous description and documentation of the language. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is used to investigate variables and grammatical structures of interest. In some areas, such as the phonetics and phonology, there are numerous differences between generations; over a dozen variables are described. In the verbal morphology, there is variation in both derivational and inflectional morphology. This appears to be system-internal, not motivated by language contact, and shows an overall maintenance of a complex and interesting system. The syntax of case is fully maintained, although there is some change in case allomorphy, and a new, innovative use of the inclusory construction that has not been documented elsewhere. Possession is an area where contact-induced change has been reported in many languages, including in Pitjantjatjara. However, variation in this domain appears stable between generations, and influenced by subtle semantic, pragmatic, and lexical factors. Nominalisation shows significant morphosyntactic complexity, which is described in detail. Complex sentence structures utilising nominalisations are being fully maintained, with no reduction in the range or use of subordination constructions among young people. Negation is also an area with significant complexity in Pitjantjatjara, and which is typologically unusual in many respects. While there is currently no variation in negation between generations, there are some differences to previous descriptions, and this can shed light on broader questions of how negation constructions evolve. Overall, my findings do not point to a single identifiable youth variety, a radical break between `traditional' and `contemporary' Pitjantjatjara, or to any significant grammatical borrowing from English. The thesis makes a descriptive and analytical contribution to our understanding of Pitjantjatjara phonology, morphology, and syntax, pointing out several areas of typological and theoretical interest. It also adds to the growing body of work describing variation, change, and contact in contemporary Aboriginal language varieties. The findings of this thesis show the benefits of embedding the study of variation and young people's language within language documentation.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableVictor Hugo, Theopoet: Investigating a Phenomenology of Divinity in Selected Exile-Period Poetry( 2022)This thesis argues that there is a theological poetics within Victor Hugo’s exile-period poetry worth developing. While decades of scholarship have compiled criticism on Hugo’s religious thought during his exile from France (1851-1870), most have tended towards historical and biographical or sociological explanatory frameworks that do not interface with either theology or philosophy of religion as theoretical disciplines. A major exception has been Jean-Pierre Jossua’s 1980 study, entitled “Essai sur la poetique theologique de Hugo,” which identified a specific poetics displaying both positive and negative representations of divinity in his poetry. Beginning from Jossua’s study, we propose to re-examine these polarities through close readings of excerpts taken from several major works: Les Contemplations, Dieu, La Fin de Satan, and La Legende des siecles. In doing so, the primary contention of this thesis is that a phenomenological reading of each text offers the capacity to elaborate on Hugo’s theological poetics. Through studies of key passages that concern the intersection of God, nature, and humanity, we argue that Hugo presents a phenomenology of divinity that is ultimately grounded in a theological understanding of the modern subject. Our foundational research question is the following: how does Hugo represent the modern subject as participating in religious experience? We argue that each of these religious experiences that Hugo represents are best understood as threshold experiences, wherein the human and the divine merge. Our hypothesis for each reading is founded on this paradoxical but central phenomenality of divinity across his exile-period poetry.