Department of General Linguistics

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https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/47

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Browsing Department of General Linguistics by browse.metadata.advisor "Berghoff, Robyn"

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    Language and place-making: public signage in the Linguistic Landscape of Windhoek's Central Business District
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12) Zimny, Danielle; Oostendorp, Marcelyn; Berghoff, Robyn; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Investigating linguistic landscapes (LLs) has primarily been a matter of assessing language use in public signage. In its early days research in the field focused largely on quantitative analysis and typically drew direct relations between the prevalence (or absence) of languages in the public signs of an LL and the ethnolinguistic vitality of such languages. In recent years, scholars in the field have pointed out the flaws of these assumptions and taken a less determinist approach to LL study. In the present study I apply such a broader view with a multidisciplinary theoretical background. I investigate the public signage of Independence Avenue in Windhoek, Namibia, on the one hand evaluating to what extent Namibia’s language policy (LP) and the real language practices of Namibians are reflected here, and on the other how commercial and non-commercial entities place and design public signs differently and what this may reveal about their identities. In conjunction with this I examine the public signage of online platforms, which have largely been neglected in LL studies. I predominantly draw on literature from LL study, and continue to incorporate LP theory and geosemiotics to explain how public signage is used as a form of place-making by making space meaningful. Data collection for the study included two steps: the first involved taking hundreds of photographs of public signs along the physical space of Independence Avenue, and the second comprised looking at the online signage of the different entities discovered in the LL. The study is predominantly qualitative and aims to discover how language use in the LL exposes language ideologies and language practices, and how signs produced by different entities reveal acts of place-making. The LL reveals a predominance of English both in the physical and online space of Independence Avenue that contrasts with the actual language practices of most Namibians. Furthermore, the findings indicate a division of public signage into zones with markedly different characteristics, with a central zone that appears more exclusive and tourist-oriented, and two peripheral zones that instead resemble sites of necessity. The study is important because it is the first to focus on an LL in Namibia, and in addition reveals possible detrimental ideologies and practices that can be assessed further and possibly resolved.
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    Parallel vs sequential activation during spoken-word recognition tasks : an eye-tracking study
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) McLoughlin, Jayde Caitlyn; Bylund, Emanuel; Berghoff, Robyn; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Through previous spoken word-recognition tasks, bilinguals have demonstrated an ability to access both languages in a simultaneous/parallel manner. Parallel activation contrasts with sequential activation (where only one language is active at any given time). Afrikaans-English bilingual speakers have never been tested for parallel activation and, additionally, both African languages and early bilinguals have been neglected when studying bilinguals’ parallel activation. In this thesis, the extent to which the Afrikaans-English early bilingual mind accesses and makes use of both Afrikaans and English simultaneously is established through an eye-tracking, spoken-word recognition task. Furthermore, this parallel activation is recognised as correlated to the bilingual’s proficiency in English, as well as the age of acquisition (AoA) of English. Thirty-one Afrikaans-English early bilinguals were tested, and were found to have activated Afrikaans through their proportion of looks (eye fixations) made to an Afrikaans phonetically-similar competitor object (e.g., venster, Afrikaans for “window”) when asked to look to the English target (fairy). Participants’ English AoAs were determined through the Language History Questionnaire, and their proficiency in English was tested by means of the standardised LexTALE test. Within these Afrikaans-English early bilinguals, a lower second-language English proficiency was found to increase parallel activation of the Afrikaans first language, as well as an older English age of acquisition (AoA), independently. It is proposed in this thesis that bilingual parallel activation exists rather as a continuum (from purely sequential activation to purely parallel activation of languages), dependent on a range of interacting, individual, structural, and context-specific variables.
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    To buy or not to buy?: a psycholinguistic perspective on code switching in advertisements
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-03) Adams, Doene; Berghoff, Robyn; Bylund, Emanuel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigated the effects of language on consumer’s product evaluation and decision making. The main research questions of this study are “How does the presence of code-switching in advertisements affect consumers’ decision-making as compared to monolingual advertising?” and “How does L1, L2 and code-switching influence product evaluation?”. The study consisted of 151 bilingual speakers. The first language of participants was Afrikaans and the second language of participants was English. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate products and indicated their purchase intention after exposure to advertisements in either their first language, second language or a code-switching format. The results of the product evaluations and purchase intentions of the three different conditions were analysed and compared. The results of in this study contradicts the results of previous studies. No language effects were found on participants product evaluations or purchase intentions. The main factors that possibly explain why no language effect was found is the multilingual context that this study was performed in, high second language proficiency and immersion in the second language.