Arabic-L:LING:New dissertations

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 14 Apr 2006
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1) Subject:New dissertation
1) Subject:New dissertation

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1)
Date: 14 Apr 2006
From:reposted from LINGUIST
Subject:New dissertation

Institution: Al-Azhar University
Program: Ph D in Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2005

Author: Ihab Ahmad Shabana

Dissertation Title: A Pragmatic Study of Aspects of Political  
Discourse in
Press Headlines

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics


Dissertation Director(s):
Muhammad M. Ghaly
Bruce Ingham
Abdel-Rahman Ahmad Sayed

Dissertation Abstract:

Media in general and the Press in particular are among the most  
powerful institutions that disseminate and publicise policies and  
ideologies of the ruling group in a given society. In times of  
crisis, the impact of the press is crucial. It has a significant role  
to play in preparing people for war during the build-up stage or  
rather strengthening the social solidarity and the internal front.

Headlines are a tool used by editors to expose their ideas and render  
them to the reader. They encapsulate the view of the editor and  
reveal his real aim behind reporting a news story in a certain  
manner. In addition, they are the first thing one may read in a  
newspaper. They are usually written carefully and in very concise  
language. Headlines also carry the most influential statements in a  
news story, and thus editors write them in an eye-catching style that  
may entice the reader to read them. The content of headlines does not  
only include the prominent incidents of a news story, but  
encapsulates also the perspective of the editor. Here comes the  
importance of headlines in shaping the minds of the reader. That is  
the editor has the opportunity to better introduce the ideas proposed  
in the speech of the politician in a way that makes headlines  
influential and memorable.

The analytical part of my thesis will focus on the front page  
headlines of a state controlled Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. The  
significance of using Al-Ahram's headlines as data for analysis in  
this thesis is that this newspaper is the mouthpiece of the ruling  
power in Egypt. Moreover, Al-Ahram is known to be widely read by the  
intelligentsia of Egypt, who represent the most influential class in  
the pubic opinion of the nation. The impact of this newspaper is  
derived from the fact that the editor of Al-Ahram during the period  
of analysis, Muhammad Hasanein Heikal, was a close associate of  
president Nasser for two decades. This gave him the privilege of  
being close to the circles of decision making and thus the best  
transmitter of political discourse in the post 1952 Revolution era.  
Being a close adviser of Nasser and the most prominent journalist of  
his generation, Heikal used the headlines of Al-Ahram to spread the  
nationalist discourse that was dominant during Nasser's er!
  a. During the first four years of Sadat's rule, Heikal still  
enjoyed the same unique position as a close advisor.

Within this framework, this thesis attempts to explore the different  
aspects of political discourse in pre the 1967 war and pre the 1973  
war in the headlines of Al-Ahram. The reason for choosing these two  
periods is that the two wars still have consequences not only for  
Egypt but also for the region as whole. It is not an exaggeration to  
say that the two wars had an influence on the balance of power all  
over the world. It is known historically that the 1967 war ended with  
a humiliating defeat to the Arabs with Israel occupying more lands,  
while the 1973 war witnessed the achievement of significant military  
gains by the Arabs. It is also known that Egypt had Nasser in power  
during the 1967 war. After Nasser, Sadat succeeded him in power and  
thus planned the 1973 war. The analysis of the data will attempt to  
identify the main aspects of the political discourse during the two  
wars as reflected in the press-headlines of Al-Ahram. Inaddition,  
analysis will attempt to show whether!
   the political discourse of each leadership was appropriate and in  
the interest of the country or not.


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2)
Date: 14 Apr 2006
From:reposted from LINGUIST
Subject:New dissertation


Institution: University of Delaware
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006

Author: Heidi Altmann

Dissertation Title: The Perception and Production of Second Language  
Stress: A
crosslinguistic experimental study

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition

Subject Language(s): Arabic, Standard (arb)
                      Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)
                      English (eng)
                      French (fra)
                      Japanese (jpn)
                      Korean (kor)
                      Spanish (spa)
                      Turkish (tur)


Dissertation Director(s):
Irene Vogel

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation investigates the effect of native language (L1)  
stress properties on the second language (L2) acquisition of primary  
word stress in light of two recent typological hierarchical models of  
stress: the Stress Deafness Model (SDM) (Peperkamp & Dupoux 2002) and  
the Stress Typology Model (STM) (Altmann & Vogel 2002).  Since  
research on the L2 performance of a diverse sample of L1s with  
respect to both perception and production using the same experimental  
design is virtually non-existent, advanced learners of English from  
seven distinct L1 groups (Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean,  
Spanish, Turkish), as well as native English speakers participated in  
perception and production experiments.  Novel words of two, three,  
and four syllables length consisting of only open syllables (CV) were  
used.  In the perception experiment, subjects listened to a large  
number of tokens of various structures and marked the most stressed  
syllable; in the production experiment, !
  subjects were asked to read aloud tokens from a subset of the  
structures.

The results indicate that, on the one hand, learners with predictable  
stress in their L1 (i.e., Arabic, Turkish, French) had problems  
perceiving the location of stress but they performed most like the  
English native speakers in production, who applied a frequency-based  
common strategy.  On the other hand, learners without word-level  
stress in their L1 (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean) or with  
unpredictable L1 stress (Spanish) showed almost perfect perception  
scores; however, their productions were quite different from the  
control group's.  Thus, it was found that good perception does not  
necessarily underlie good production and vice versa.

While the current findings go contrary to predictions made by the  
SDM, the STM can explain both the perception as well as the  
production results.  Languages with predictable stress, unpredictable  
stress, and without stress are included in this hierarchical model  
with branching parameters.  It was found that positive parameter  
settings impede the perception of L2 stress, while the mere setting  
of the topmost parameter in the hierarchy (i.e., 'yes/no stress  
language') and thus experience with stress in the L1 determines the  
rate of success in production, although L1s with non-predictable  
stress face further challenges.


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End of Arabic-L:  14 Apr 2006