Germanic and Slavic Studieshttp://hdl.handle.net/10012/98822024-03-28T13:02:49Z2024-03-28T13:02:49ZGerman Heritage Language Attitudes in Ontario: A Case Study about the German Language in German-Canadian FamiliesHezel, Annemarie Luisehttp://hdl.handle.net/10012/203992024-03-20T02:31:00Z2024-03-19T00:00:00ZGerman Heritage Language Attitudes in Ontario: A Case Study about the German Language in German-Canadian Families
Hezel, Annemarie Luise
This thesis aims at investigating language attitudes expressed by members of German-Canadian families (n=12) in semi-structured interviews. The analysis draws on methods from the field of Interactional Linguistics and focuses specifically on a linguistic and structural analysis of the collected interview data. Three of the four families speak predominantly German as their family language (home language) while one family exclusively speaks English. The parents and children were interviewed separately in order to ensure the possibility of subsequently comparing the results of both data sets in the discussion section. The analysis largely focuses on implicit and explicit language attitudes toward the German language as well as the way the participants position themselves and others in the interviews. In the process of structuring and organizing the collected data the following four categories were established: (1) Individual-Affective Factors, (2) Practical-Economic Benefits, (3) Potential Obstacles, and (4) The future of German in Canada.
2024-03-19T00:00:00ZEvaluation of Computer Aided Translation (CAT) Tools in the Translation Process: A Plea for Complementing CAT-Tools with Corpus Linguistical Tools and MethodsHinderer, Dorahttp://hdl.handle.net/10012/203272024-02-02T03:30:55Z2024-02-01T00:00:00ZEvaluation of Computer Aided Translation (CAT) Tools in the Translation Process: A Plea for Complementing CAT-Tools with Corpus Linguistical Tools and Methods
Hinderer, Dora
The demand for translations of high quality is on a peak while the budget and time
resources are low. Consequently, translators need technological support and use
Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. Using the open-source tool OmegaT,
this thesis investigates how CAT tools support the translation process. The objective
of the study are political texts published by the European Parliament. The analysis
further demonstrates that CAT tools have certain constraints. Using parts of the
monolingual corpus DeReKo, the thesis exemplifies how these limitations can be
overcome by using corpora as an additional resource during the translation process.
This thesis contributes to the improvement of CAT tools as the main
technological resource used by translation experts and outlines weaknesses which
negatively impact their work. The findings can be used for optimizing all types of
technology dealing with language data because they show how natural language must
be understood to process it automatically. Furthermore, the approach taken in this
work with regard to the critical examination of available resources can be applied in
the future to evaluate and optimize new translation tools.
2024-02-01T00:00:00ZGerman Accent Bias – The negative Connotation of the German Accent in English among German Speakers.Stuckler, Angelinahttp://hdl.handle.net/10012/203022024-01-27T03:31:09Z2024-01-26T00:00:00ZGerman Accent Bias – The negative Connotation of the German Accent in English among German Speakers.
Stuckler, Angelina
In a globalized world, multilingualism is prevalent, with English as one of its major lingua franca. However, a German accent in English is often perceived as a lack of linguistic competence. An accent is seen as an indicator of otherness or incompetence and can result in major negative outcomes, such as discrimination, a smaller probability of economic success and social inequality or exclusion.
Current research shows an internalized hatred of German accents among Germans. The research is based on an extensive literature review and analysis of interviews with German expatriates. Data are analyzed qualitatively to examine linguistic bias toward German accents in English. The results indicate that German English L2 speakers evaluate the German accent negatively. This linguistic bias is manifested in critical comments about a perceptual accent. The theses of this research are firstly, who can recognize and negotiate negative assessment of German accentuated English. Secondly, which mechanisms are they using to evaluate the accent, both implicitly as well as explicitly in a negative way? And lastly, how did the connotation of the accent change over time and which reasons are stated for the avoidance and dislike of a German accent? The results illustrate how this bias becomes relevant in interactions and is revealed through self- and other positioning.
The results confirm a negative connotation of the German accent and show that these evaluations play a role in interactions. It becomes clear that the causes and effects of this connotation are subject to change over time and can lead to negative perceptions and linguistic biases. The results offer clues for dealing with the German accent in English, especially for German as a foreign language, to reduce or overcome the negative connotations.
2024-01-26T00:00:00ZAnalysis of the (Co-)Construction of Cultural Belongings in Several Episodes of a Korean-American PodcastBauermeister, Christina Jasminhttp://hdl.handle.net/10012/202942024-03-27T21:15:59Z2024-01-26T00:00:00ZAnalysis of the (Co-)Construction of Cultural Belongings in Several Episodes of a Korean-American Podcast
Bauermeister, Christina Jasmin
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the “transnational turn” (Pence & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 495) in social, literary, and linguistic studies can be observed as a response to new forms of mobility and global interconnectedness, facilitated by rapid developments in the technological field and the spread of mass media and social media (Noh et al., 2013). This sociolinguistic study therefore investigates a specific small part of social reality construction (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 1996) in one such digital and transnational new domain: in podcast conversations publicly available on YouTube, in particular four episodes of the show “Get Real” produced by Dive Studios, involving speakers with American, Korean, Canadian, and German affiliations. Using the method of interactional analysis (Imo & Lanwer, 2019), I investigate how the speakers co-construct their cultural belongings as individuals and as a group in the conversations through (dis)claiming cultural and linguistic knowledge. The analysis employs Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & Van Langenhove, 1991; Van Langenhove & Harré, 1994) combined with the expert-novice model (Reichert & Liebscher, 2012), examining negotiations of levels of epistemic authority that construct speakers’ belonging to certain abstract cultural group identities, which builds on a conceptualization of culture “as an inventory of knowledge” (Busch, 2009, para. 44). Findings of the analysis reveal the embeddedness of the podcast in the specific ethnographic context of transnational Korea. The mapping of the discursive moves of the speakers in diagrams shows how the speakers relationally position themselves as belonging to more than one cultural community, co-constructing their own transnational new space that is both part of and in-between other larger cultural spaces. While doing so, they still move within the allowances and constraints of ‘transnational Korea’, drawing on its discourses and established personas and constructing different types of Other while constituting themselves as “authentically belonging” at the same time. Their concurrent embeddedness in global social phenomena such as the Korean Wave as well as being steeped with local Korea-specific discourses and ideologies is one of the findings of this thesis. Moreover, the subject position of “transnational Korean” or “Korean” appears to be closed off to certain people groups based on such local ideologies. This can be seen in the troubling effect of a German American immigrant speaker, whose co-membership in the Korean group identity is largely denied. These findings show that transnational German research, as suggested by Pence and Zimmerman (2012), will have to consider local ideologies and ethnographic constraints applying to the social space that the German abroad navigates and relates to.
2024-01-26T00:00:00Z