Thesiss

This study investigates language use, language acquisition, and identity construction among Senegalese immigrants in Paris and Rome. Whereas previous research in second language acquisition (SLA) has focused on the relationship between identity and language use in single sites, …

We have never denied other people the right to identify and express their ownself apprehension. It is always others, beginning with the European colonizers who attempted to eradicate our own sense of identity, who have done this. (Soyinka, 1985, p. 31) The words of Wole Soyinka,…

I began this research with a desire to understand how the use of dialogic processes within the Muntada (The Arab Forum on Sexuality, Education and Health), a Palestinian-Israeli Arab organization dedicated to addressing issues of sexuality and sexual health, engaged the communit…

Throughout its history, the Western rhetorical tradition has promised an alternative to violence or, as I.A. Richards puts it, a way to reduce "misunderstanding." The presumption is that understanding, listening, and analyzing lead to conflict mediation, resolution, and thus les…

In Lebanon, the symbolic value of language has held prominence in religious and secular nationalist discourses and ideological struggles over the last century, as bilingual educational practices spread through missionary and colonial institutions. This dissertation examines the …

This dissertation explores the construction of identity in conversations about literacy with a group of ten Arab graduate students of English, attempting to answer the question: "How do Arab graduate students of English construct their identities through their literacies in Arab…

This dissertation is concerned with investigating the construction of the identities of a place, that is, the way we spatially, socially , and mentally create, understand and give meaning to a place of habitations. Significantly, the dissertation focuses on Kula, a small Anatoli…

Al-Jazeera asserted itself in the global media scene shortly after the attacks of September 11th, 2001 in the United States. The station's regional prominence had already been entrenched in the new Arab media environment before it was overshadowed by the station's newfound globa…

Public schools rarely teach the languages spoken in New York City. Thus, many ethnolinguistic communities have to rely on ethnic mother tongue schools. Research on these schools is limited despite their importance in shaping the identities of children from different ethnic backg…

The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct a sociocultural linguistic study on Ethiopian immigrants in the Denver metropolis. It specifically examined language practice of Ethiopian immigrants at home and in church. The study centered on three Ethiopian Orthodox parish chur…

This dissertation interrogates the assertion in postcolonial scholarship, especially from the work of Homi Bhabha that the construction and performance of hybrid identities act as a form of resistance for marginalized communities against structures of oppression. While this stud…

Constructing a new identity is at the heart of this study. It develops a system of cultural identity by utilizing collective memory theory and a translation model of critical contextualization to analyze Kazak Christian practices. The reconstituted memory is integrated with cont…

This dissertation identifies and contributes to filling several gaps in research on stance, with an eye toward the role of stancetaking as a means of identity construction. The case in focus is one at a cultural border, with data coming from relatively unstructured interviews I …

This study examines the identity construction processes of multilingual undergraduate university students taking the Foundations of Academic Literacy (FAL) course at Simon Fraser University (SFU). I conducted an ethnographic study with an interpretative approach to highlight the…

An ethnographic case study of the impact of globalization, language policy, and language learning on identity construction was carried out at a public high school (Sekolah Menengah Atas Negeri [SMAN]) 1 Balada in Bima Regency, Indonesia mainly during June, July, and August of 20…

With strong financial support from the Israeli government and North American Jewish philanthropies, the Birthright Israel gift offers students free trips to visit Israel in order to foster their Jewish identity and connection to Israel. In June 2000, nineteen Georgetown Universi…

The past three decades have witnessed a rapid growth in the number of international teaching assistants (ITAs) in U.S. colleges and universities. Since the early 1980s, the dominant line of ITA research has focused on ITAs’ instructional discourse with the goal of developing eff…

This thesis examines low-ranking British soldiers’ memoirs in the nineteenth century to determine the extent to which they identified with Christianity and how their expressions of faith differed from each other. Using twelve narratives published between 1811–1863, it finds that…

This dissertation is a qualitative study of the effects of Greek Orthodoxy on the gender and religious identity meaning-making of five Greek-American women. The emergent themes from this study indicate that participants’ gender and religious identities were heavily influenced by…

This dissertation investigates instances of identity building in the Americas at the close of the nineteenth century, particularly as they were expressed through the built environment. Three cities serve as case studies for the various ways in which leaders in the Americas built…