VOICES
OF NEW YORK
ANTHROPOLOGY/LINGUISTICS
288 • Spring 2011
|
VOICES
OF NEW YORK
ANTHROPOLOGY/LINGUISTICS
288 • Spring 2011
|
(home) |
Paper Abstracts |
Emily Wiegers, "Français Role Play: Parallels of French Language Acquisition and Cultural Mimicry" This
paper examines the way in which American college students combine their
acquisition of the French language along with body gestures of the head
and hands identified as “French”. Observations were made during four
classes at Queens College in New York, three at a beginning level and
one at an intermediate level with students in the approximate age range
of 18-25. A positive correlation was observed to exist between students
exhibiting “French” body gestures and their overall fluency with the
French language. This paper compares similar findings to a study done
in Harvard in which college students were instructed to mimic French
movement, resulting in an overall improvement in their French language
ability. Additionally, numerical comparisons of gesture occurrences
examined between males and females show that females have a higher
incident rate of body gestures and showed French language improvement
exceeding the males. |
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Jeremiah Werner, "Pragmatics and Iconicity in Commerce: Starbucks Lingo and Its Significance" This paper seeks to explicate
the parallel nature of Starbucks lingo with natural language and the
implications of the commercialization and commodification of language
as a means of efficiency and branding. Beginning with a preliminary
ethnography of the language of Starbucks through qualitative
participant observation, it includes the abstract description and
genesis of Starbucks lingo as a means of iconicity within the coffee
industry and the standardization of this lingo as a means of efficiency
in product delivery. Starbucks lingo is notoriously known for its
pseudo-Italian nature which mimicries several parallel features of
natural language in social interactions, specifically that of identity
indexed through linguistic resources. Analyzing situations of
incompatible discourse practices; e.g. customers who refuse to use the
lingo and how employees handle those situations linguistically, I
attempt to showcase how language is a pervasive element of human social
interaction and a few consequences of the commercialization and
commodification of language. |
John Valente, "House Music All Night Long" The origins of house music are actually quite
interesting since there are a few instances for the start of it. One of
them are that in the late 1970’s there was a club in Chicago called The
Warehouse and the people who came there were gay blacks and Latino men;
Legend Frankie Knuckles was the DJ there. Frankie Knuckles went into a
bar one day in the southside of Chicago and on the outside of the bar
there was a sign that said “we play house music.”(“House”) Now the
story behind it is that the DJ that worked in that bar put that up
because house music is what he found at home and the music he listened
to at his house was soulful and disco hits and this information was
spread out to other people. Other DJs thought about this and started to
think about what this DJ said and tried to make newer music
incorporating what “house” music is. Another case in point that I have
heard about in which house music was invented was that since most of
the music was produced at home, there was new music coming out and this
was called the house music. House music is a type of dance/electronica
music genre that was invented in the early1980’s in Chicago. Soon after
it became popular, other cities such as New York, Miami, and Detroit
started to introduce this type of music to the people. Not too long
after this, by about the mid to late 1980’s, it was being introduced to
Europe starting with The United Kingdom. One of the key elements
to house in sense of how it originates from is incorporated with a mix
of soul, disco and funky grooves. |
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Recent
immigration has brought hundreds of languages to our city, but what
happens to these languages and their speakers once they are here in New
York? What effect do they have on the English spoken here?
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Jaspinderjit Singh, "The Desi Beat- The affiliation of South Asian Americans with popular Hip-Hop culture" In
the late 1970s Hip-Hop/ Rap were two musical genres that outburst into
the lives of the Urban minority youth in the United States. The genre
not only not only symbolic for a sense of unity but also portrays a
sense of self-expression. Now thirty years later there is something
similar that is happening among tt the South Asian Youth In the United
States. Hip-Hop and Hip-hop culture has not only stepped into the lives
of South Asians in American, but has spread across to the other side of
the world into lives of people that before never heard of this
phenomena. With its out spoken lyrics and its ways of expressing views
against conventional politics, Hip-Hop has created a whole new culture
on its own, eliminating the misconception that those who take part in
Hip-Hop/ Rap culture are “trying to act black”. This paper not only
explores the lives of South Asians that participate in Hip-Hop/ Rap
culture, but also how Hip-Hop/ Rap culture has found its way into the
lives of those who have little of no access to it. |
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Jasleen Chandhoke and Tanya Simons, "'GUESS WHO?' Can People Really Tell the Difference Between Queens and Nassau Speech?" In
a dialect identification experiment, Queens College students were asked
to make two judgments based on brief speech samples: First, whether the
speakers were from Queens County or Nassau County, and second, to
determine the ethnicities of the speakers. The purpose of these
questions was to determine if there is an obvious difference between
Queens and Nassau speech, and to look for correlations between
perceptions of race and perceptions of residency. Our results
showed that there are no differences that are easily identified; these
findings regarding regional differences are parallel to those of
William Labov. In addition, our data revealed no patterns
connecting perceptions of residence and ethnicities. |
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Brandon Shalim, "U MAD BRO: Study on the Discourse Community of Internet Meme Watchers/Creators" This document is the research on the
discourse community of internet memes. How to determine a person’s
literacy in internet memes, and who makes up the internet meme
community. I investigated these questions in my paper through
interviews and discourse analysis to draw a general conclusion. |
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Marlon Lackeyram, Can People Really Distinguish South Asians From Other Ethnicities Using Only Their Sense Of Hearing? My
study specifically focuses on dialect identification in New York.
I am very interested in discovering how well people can identify a
South Asian American dialect from another dialect. To this date,
I haven’t found any other studies conducted about South Asian American
dialect identification. This made it more interesting to me
because I can address a topic that a lot of people would like to learn
more about. |
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Nicole King, "Americanization: Accounts of 1st and 2nd generations from Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago in Queens, NY" This paper will discuss the
importance of the West Indian Creole in Queens, New York. The
West Indian Creole is facing a language shift more so than language
maintenance. Ethnographic interviews and participant observations
for both 1st and 2nd generations from these countries were held to
discover the overall importance of the West Indian Creole, if the 2nd
generation is leading the Creole into a language shift, and to discover
the factors that are leading this shift. One possible factor is
the adaption of the majority language in Queens, New York, Standard
English. Findings revealed this along with other multiple factors
are involved in leading a language shift. This language shift
from the West Indian Creole to Standard English reveals speakers to
become Americanized by adapting the language along with the cultures
and values of Americans. |
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Lawrence Gaier, "By golly, that hop is hip! An evaluation of the cohesive potential of Hip Hop" In
this essay, I explore several dimensions of Hip Hop culture. These
include, but are not limited to, race, industry, and societal cohesion.
As a culture whose art form is based upon several key social aspects,
its very fabric as a communicative medium is inherently evolving with
society. I briefly discuss the historical context in which Hip Hop
culture emerged, as well as the factors that have shaped it to become
what it is today. As Hip Hop culture varies by its content and
motivations, the latter of which has only recently become a clearly
identifiable issue, I seek to understand how Hip Hop has evolved as a
function of its ever-changing body and how it will continue to do so. I
draw upon the works of various authors in order to examine how Hip Hop
has permeated throughout much of modern society from the very street in
which it originated, and the effects this has had on its industry and
common perceptions. By conducting interviews with Hip Hop performers
(MCs), enthusiasts (listeners), and teachers (professor of Hip Hop
theatre) of different races and sexualities, I access a widespread
range of beliefs regarding the subject of Hip Hop as a culture and its
potential growth and function. Most importantly, I aim to demonstrate
that Hip Hop is not something one uses or participates in, but rather a
medium of consciousness manifested in certain behaviors and ideas that
different people embody; not the tool for which it is so commonly
misused today. |
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Lisa Fogelman, “A Qualitative Study of the Differences Between Italian-American and Greek-American English in New York City.” This
research paper is looking to see if there is a difference in the speech
of Italian-Americans and Greek-Americans from a dialect identification
task. It is also looking to see if people base what they choose the
ethnicity to be influences how friendly or intelligent they believe the
speaker to be. I am also looking to see if the ethnicity of the
speaker has to do with how well they can identify the ethnicity of the
speaker. The data, for the most part proved to be inconclusive; much
more extensive work would have to be done in order to garner any sort
of results. However, interesting aspects were found in the results,
such as how stereotypes play into the formation of opinion of what the
perceived ethnicity is. |
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Adrian Dominguez, "Everyone’s A Critic: Discourse Analysis in Written and Oral Responses to James Cameron’s 'Avatar'” The
movie industry in the past ten years has made extraordinary revolutions
in the cinematic world. What we thought wasn’t possible now brings
astonishment to our eyes. With these new modifications in cinema, the
increase of personal reviews amongst people has increased thanks to the
use of online movie reviews and YouTube. Instead of reading expert
critical analysis in newspapers, we now have internet sources from
everyday people who express themselves in various forms. The forms in
which these reviews are expressed provide depth in the study of
discourse analysis and how many discourses arise from this. Looking at
the end of this first decade, James Cameron’s “Avatar” stirs a lot of
controversy amongst the general public. It’s beauty, alluring cinematic
display and attempt to create an original masterpiece becomes eye candy
to people who want to provide their own criticism. In finding
discourses in Avatar, it is important to study not only the evident
ones, but also the ones which our culture influences in everyday
society (in writing and oral forms). |
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Emily December, "The Voices among the Masses: A Study of the Perceptions of English/Multilanguage Use and Acceptance" This
paper is to bring awareness to a nationwide as well as local political,
social and linguistic issue. The English Plus and Official English (or
English Only) movements will both be highlighted. For both movements,
background research on language policy and language perception will be
presented, with a concentration in Spanish and English. The means of
gathering the data and analysis of local perceptions towards English
and other languages will be presented. Suggestions for improvements
will be given as well. The end of the academic paper will have the
references and the list of the summary, consent form, transcripts and
actual data tables. |
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Kenny Cheng-Fung and Shirley Arana, "Tu vs. Usted: How formal are you?" In
English there are many pronouns but only one that can refer to ‘you’,
‘you’ can be used with anyone, your mother, a colleague, student, this
however is not the case on other languages. While language may be the
most natural thing that comes to humans, how we chose to express
ourselves is strongly influenced by society and social stratification.
In French, German, Italian, Spanish and many other languages there can
be two singular pronouns of address. Both forms of singular pronouns
correlate with social standing, formality and power which makes it very
important to use in context when addressing someone. The variation of
pronoun use can give insight to the dimensions of social life and
contribute to the analytical aspects behind social standing, being that
how we see ourselves often tends to depend on how others see us first.
A person’s constant style of pronoun use, some say, can even give away
his/her own class status, their mood and attitude. Brown and Gilman in
“The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity” state that the “European
development of two singular pronouns of address began with the Latin tu
and vos. In Italian they became tu and voi, in French tu and voi”
and in Spanish tu and vos which is now usted. |
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Claire Beresford, Patterns of Divergence from the Classic New York City Short-a Split
A uniquely conditioned short-a split is one of the features that
constitute the classic New York City dialect. The split manifests when
a speaker alternates between ‘standard’ lax/low /æ/ and a tensed/raised
variant that could be represented by a range of phonetic symbols, for
example /ɛː/, /ɛə /, or /ɪ ə/. The system of conditions
that generates the split has been outlined by Paul Cohen (1970) and
summarized by William Labov (2007), but the first noting of such a
split was made by E.H. Babbitt (1890-1896), who found a historical
correlation with the Old New England system for broad-a. This paper
will first describe the NYC split, next refer to previous research, and
then report on my study which asked and developed a means to answer the
question: Is the NYC short-a split disappearing over time? |
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Abigail Bellomo, "Vintage Slang:
Discourse
Markers 50 Years Ago"
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Astrid Avalos & Andrea Barranco, "Spanish Language Maintenance within Immigrant Families in Queens" This
study explores Spanish language maintenance in communities in Queens,
New York. The study addresses the factors that influence Spanish
language maintenance within families of mixed generations. The factors
observed were those of use of Spanish and English in different settings
and environments, the attitudes towards Spanish language maintenance
within the generations, and the attitudes and views of peers.
Interviews and participant observation of 8 different families composed
of 1st and 2nd generation Hispanics are analyzed to try to establish
which factors actually contribute or discourage Spanish language
maintenance. Living in a country that is extremely diverse but still
dominated by the English language, it is easy to see how each
generation understands how important the English language really is,
but they also find it equally important to compliment it with their
native language, Spanish. |
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Khealzaree Ahmedzay, "Speaking Pashto in NYC: Pashto Language Maintenance and Shift" This
is a research project that will look into the Pashto community from a
sociolinguistic level. It will explore how some Pashto speakers have
shifted to English and others have maintained the Pashto language. In
doing this I focus on factors that would play a role in competence or
usage of the Pashto language. Some factors that influence Pashto
maintenance were speaking Pashto with parents, siblings, and friends,
having ties with family and visiting them often, having parents that
encourage Pashto to be spoken at home, listening to Pashto music and
having a positive perception of Pashtoons’ and valuing Pashto
maintenance. Speakers shifting towards English was due to such factors
as: being in a dominant English speaking society, having more contact
with English speakers, listening to English music, acquiring a popular
culture lifestyle than the Pashtoon culture, and not having strong ties
with family that speak Pashto either here or back home. |
