This thesis aimed to investigate the impact of adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on the perception and identification of lexical tones. Eleven participants were asked to listen to and identify four different pitch contours: high to low, high to mid, low to high, and low to mid. Seven of the participants did not have ADHD and four had been formally diagnosed before their participation. Results showed that the ADHD group performed better than the non-ADHD group overall, and that the ADHD group improved in the second half whereas the non-ADHD group did not.

International students’ identity negotiation has become a foremost aspect to be examined in the fields of applied linguistics, psychology, and intercultural communication. However, the scholarly focus has predominantly centered on the experiences of international students from culturally prominent or extensively studied backgrounds other than Indonesia. Although there is existing literature covering Indonesian families living abroad, it has not adequately addressed the dynamic and multifaceted experiences of Indonesian graduate students specifically studying outside Indonesia, nor the factors influencing their identity and language shifts. The present study aims to investigate the complex cross-cultural adaptation of Indonesian students, contributing to an understanding of their identity and language shifts while navigating lives in transnational contexts, including academic, social, and cultural settings. A total of 6 Indonesian graduate students who enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs in the United States participated and shared their narratives in the interview processes. By employing thematic analysis, the findings demonstrate that the participants’ adaptations during their relocation contribute to their identity and language shifts in several ways. First, the adoption of localization as the personality becomes the foremost way to contribute to their identity shift. The participants’ active and passive internalization of languages and cultures enable them to create a hybrid identity and negotiate their transnational belonging. Second, their language shifts can be seen in their language choice and the maintenance of Bahasa Indonesia. The participants tend to maintain the use of Bahasa Indonesia and can practice code-mixing and code-switching between English and Bahasa Indonesia while interacting with other Indonesians at the same time. The study also reveals the changing of directness employed by the participants. They emphasize to use of more direct utterances while communicating due to their adaptations to the new cultural norms. Therefore, these changing performances enable overseas Indonesian graduate students in transnational contexts to (re)construct their identity. This present study suggests further research to use different types of data collection including observation and ethnography to obtain a more inclusive and deeper analysis of the experiences of overseas Indonesian graduate students. In addition, this study also allows us to address a more comprehensive understanding of Asian students as a whole and helps to avoid stereotypical Asian students’ identities in previous research.

This research consists of an eye-tracking study examining the efficacy of eye gaze indexing (EGIX) in manipulating viewer eye gaze and enhancing second language (L2) fingerspelling comprehension in American Sign Language (ASL) through a controlled laboratory experiment. The study consisted of two groups and two conditions, EGIX+/EGIX- to test the effect of EGIX on participant eye gaze (EG) behaviors and fingerspelling comprehension using eye-tracking software and a comprehension quiz. The results indicate that participant EG was the same regardless of whether the signer used EGIX.The results also indicated that participant comprehension scores were the same regardless of whether the model used EGIX. Several statistical analyses of comprehension and EG metrics found that as hand fixation duration, mouth fixation duration, number of hand fixations, and number of mouth revisits increased, comprehension performance decreased. On the other hand, the Area of Interest metrics did not affect performance or only revealed weak trends. The decreases in comprehension may highlight that the students who struggled with comprehension looked more and longer at the mouth and hand as coping strategies to try to glean additional information from mouth grammar or that they were struggling to identify each letter handshape, rather than a causal relationship with EGIX. Word length effect on comprehension was statistically significant, though varied by word length. Importantly, constraints from name origin may have played a role in the distribution of the comprehension decrease since words of Greek origins cause greater statistically significant reductions in performance. The qualitative results show that students have a keen awareness of where they look while viewing signed videos. Noticing and perceived helpfulness did not show statistically significant impacts on performance universally. However, some students who reported noticing and reported the EGIX+ as helpful increased their score by 10% or higher on the mean comprehension of EGIX+ words. The pedagogical takeaway is that the benefits of using EGIX to help novice to intermediate signers with fingerspelling comprehension are inconclusive. EGIX+ may provide substantial benefits for some individuals, but the effects are not generalizable.

Southern United States English (SUSE) is North America’s most stigmatizedregionalized dialect, leading to generational decline and underrepresentation from characters in primetime television. This study explores the representation of SUSE features by 80 local news broadcasters in eight Southern affiliates, all outside major metropolises. This sociophonetic study surveys the PIN-PEN merger and Stages I and II of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) — /aɪ/ glide weakening and /e/-/ɛ/ proximity. The PIN-PEN merger was found to be widespread among broadcasters, with 49/80 (61%) having a PIN-PEN Pillai score less than 0.3, considered “merged”. /aɪ/ glide weakening was subtly present, despite being a marked SUSE feature: /aɪ/ was overwhelmingly diphthongal, but the median and Q3 variants (measured in Euclidean distance from 20% to 80% duration) ended in the lower half of the vowel space, showing a general lack of glide raising. Lastly, /e/-/ɛ/ proximity had marginal representation: Only 11/80 (14%) broadcasters had a non-sonorant /e/-/ɛ/ Pillai score less than 0.45, and the median Pillai score was 0.664, establishing that an advanced SVS is not typical. The best predictors for the PIN-PEN merger were attending a Southern college, being African American, and being male — all factors of socialization. Contrastingly, the (mutually exclusive) best predictors of /aɪ/ glide weakening were more products of stylization — occupational role and the subregion that hired the broadcaster (whether the audience was a ‘Deep South’ market). For /e/-/ɛ/ proximity, the interaction of gender and Southern college attendance was statistically significant, as only men with Southern college backgrounds generally had this apparently stigmatized feature. Age was not found to be significant for any feature, subverting expectations that younger speakers keep SUSE at ‘arm’s length’. TV market size was impactful for each feature but repeatedly (narrowly) missed the p=0.05 threshold for statistical significance. Sports anchors led in SUSE forms for each feature, showing SUSE as an asset; investigative reporters, however, had the least SUSE /aɪ/ and /e/-/ɛ/ variants. Gender had strong explanatory power for each feature, inferring that men tended to ‘lean in’ to SUSE’s positive solidarity traits, but women tended to incorporate SUSE less often due to its negative competency traits.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the ways neurodivergent people engage with tone and intent, in spaces where the expression of such things is missing the audible and visual cues that exist in face-to-face communications. Interviews were conducted with four participants who self-identify as neurodivergent, with each of the interviews seeking to understand their experiences with the written expression of tone and intent. The interviews shed light on how direct, semi-direct, and indirect tone indicators are used as tools for understanding the intent and tone of a message, as well as which of the three types of tone indicators are the most helpful in practice. The interviews also touched on how social interactions in digital spaces are often viewed through a neurotypical lens, and thus make understanding the sociolinguistic rules of digitally-based interactions difficult for neurodivergent individuals who are expected to know said rules without being told. Through the course of the interviews, participants expressed a desire for people as whole to be clearer about their tone and intent when communicating in digital spaces, and that tone indicators are vital for communicating such things.

Nonlinguists’ attitudes towards language are a major factor in the process of language change. Therefore, linguists are interested in examining how language varieties are perceived. Several studies around the world have demonstrated that ideologies play a major role in shaping how people perceive certain dialects, how social meanings are associated with these varieties, and how linguistic communities are shaped in part by these beliefs. However, little attention has been given to language attitude in the Arab region, and in the Saudi context particularly. Moreover, none of the attitudinal studies in the region have tried to investigate Najdis’ attitudes towards their own dialects. Using a conceptually presented attitudinal approach, this study bridges the literature gap by examining 1041 Najdis’ language attitudes towards two of the main dialects there: The Najdi Urban and Najdi Bedouin varieties. The study answers the following questions: How do Najdis perceive the Najdi Urban and Bedouin dialects, and what are the frequently associated characteristics with these varieties? The results of the quantitative analysis show that Najdis’ language attitudes can be discussed with and reduced to two themes: modernity and traditionality. The Urban Najdi dialect was perceived as modern. Contrarily, the Bedouin Najdi dialect was considered traditional. Each social group tended to rate their dialect higher than the other group did in both factors, indicating in-group loyalty. Also, both groups showed high levels of linguistic security.

The dynamic and rich expressions in social media such as Twitter are regarded as instigators of social change. The tweets from the debates on the Saudi royal decree granting women the right to drive in Saudi Arabia provide a platform for examining the public’s role in shaping national ideologies and societal changes. These tweets are subjected to Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies, guided by the theories of Critical Discourse Analysis. Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, Hashtag selection, and Sketch Engine, is utilized to analyze a corpus comprising of 6,000 tweets from the supporters and opponents of the royal decree on women driving. The corpus includes tweets posted when the ban lifted in September 2017 and when licenses were issued in June 2018. The researcher further supplemented the computer processing of text with manual examination. The outcomes revealed discursive strategies and themes of opponents and supporters discourse. The Findings show that the anticipated negative and positive outcomes from the decree are used to justify the tweeters positions. Furthermore, the analysis shows that while the conservative oppositions’ pleas are from a protectionist stance, the supporters’ excitement are from the initiation of societal change that will advance the welfare of women. The major two themes of the anti-decree tweeters are (a) disappointment of the decree through supplication and (b) negation of visible presence of woman drivers. On the other hand, the major two themes of the pro-decree tweeters are a) analogy comparisons and b) celebrations. The findings further indicate the classification of tweeters to an in-group and out-group membership which justifies the referential and predicational strategies used by tweeters.

The livestreaming platform Twitch allows users to engage with one another and with content creators, known as streamers, in real-time, creating a cyclical pattern in which viewers and streamers simultaneously influence one another and co-construct the livestreams. While this active engagement has resulted in numerous benefits, it has also led to a surge in toxic behavior – actions meant to disrupt the flow of the livestream and harm the streamer and viewers involved. Toxic behavior is often directed at individuals who do not conform to the norms of a space or community. Because Twitch evolved out of an interest in video game spectatorship, and video game culture is burdened by the gamer stereotype, which typecasts gamers as young, white, male, and cishet, Twitch users who do not fit this identity category (e.g., women; black, Indigenous and people of color [BIPOC]; queer people; etc.) are labeled as threats to the perceived homogeneity of video game (and Twitch) culture. This project examines toxic discourses surrounding three women Twitch streamers, considering how the streamers’ performances, community-building efforts, and methods of regulation impact the levels and types of toxicity in their livestreams. A critical technocultural discourse analysis of 30 hours of livestreaming data reveals diverse approaches to managing toxicity. While all three streamers expressed that they neither liked nor approved of toxic behavior, their methods of addressing it varied greatly, from active channel moderators and explicit rules to public acts of moderation. Furthermore, the manifestation of toxicity differed across the three streamers’ communities, signaling that the streamers’ strategies impact not only users’ willingness to engage in this behavior but also other viewers’ responses to this issue. Twitch’s positioning as a service provider, which places most of burden of regulating user behavior on streamers, further complicates this problem, as streamers are largely responsible for enforcing Twitch’s rules as well as their own, leading to disparate and conflicting social norms and enforcement patterns. This project underscores the need for Twitch and its streamers to create standardized methods of behavior regulation that are inclusive and hold users accountable for their behavior.

Grammaticalization is viewed as a progressive process by which words are altered over time from a lexical status to a grammatical status. Verbs with posture, motion, and volition meanings are crosslinguistically prone to grammaticalize into tense, mood, and aspect markers (TMA), making for a particularly interesting topic of study. In Arabic dialects, the active participle of posture verbs (APPVs) jaalis/qaaʕaɪd ‘sitting’ and gaayem ‘standing’, the motion verbs raħ ‘he went’, and the b-imperfective are commonly referred to as instances of grammaticalization. Yet, there is very limited research that supports this argument. APPVs are sometimes regarded as grammaticalized auxiliaries or Aktionsart markers, while raħ and the b-imperfective are both viewed as future tense markers. There is, however, evidence from Saudi Najdi Arabic (SNA) that challenges these findings. This dissertation describes the grammaticalization process of the APPVs, the motion verbs raħ, and the b-imperfective in SNA. It also proposes a new precise syntactic analysis for the three elements and their sources of grammaticalization, using two approaches. First, to account for the evaluation of the three elements’ grammaticalization in SNA, I focus on four universal grammaticalization principles and mechanisms: namely, desemanticization, extension, decategorialization, and erosion. I follow Hopper and Traugott’s (2003) Cline theory to provide a description of the reanalysis stages. To account for the syntactic analysis for these elements and their sources of grammaticalization, I use the Cartography Program. The data examined reveal that SNA is most grammatically related to other Arabic dialects and not Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), allowing me to trace the grammaticalization process of the APPVs, the b-imperfective, and the motion verb rah from their original function as lexical verbs to TMA markers of progressivity or futurity. I show that the APPVs have undergone semantic extension, semantic bleaching, and decategorialization, but not phonological reduction (erosion). Syntactically, the findings indicate that the future irrealis b-imperfective occupies the head of MP, the prospective future raħ occupies the head of ProspP, and the APPVs in pseudocoordination constructions have two syntactic structures: (i) progressive aspect markers in the head of ProgP and (ii) light verbs base-generated in the head of vP.