This research investigates language use in Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) of an urban center of post-Soviet eastern Ukraine The major focus is on how the signs represent linguistic, social and ideological phenomena in the context of competing local, national, and global language ideologies with Ukrainian, Russian and English in Cyrillic and Roman scripts. More than 100 pictures of public signs were selected and analyzed, from more than one thousand photographs.Detailed analyses of the signs show that the `one state - one language' official language policy is not effective in the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine: the signs frequently use Russian, and blend in Ukrainian. There were revealing differences between establishment categories. Bank signs were almost all in Ukrainian, because they are government regulated. In contrast, local clothing store signs used Russian, along with English and European languages to convey `modernity', `prestige' and `high fashion'; other establishment (casinos and electronics stores) mixed Russian and Ukrainian with some English. English and European languages with Roman script were also frequently used to `smooth over' the conflict between Ukrainian and Russian.The genetic closeness of Ukrainian and Russian allows a linguistic phenomenon that reconciles the languages, `bivalency'. Bivalency refers to shared linguistic elements between the languages, allowing the signs to appeal to the local population, while complying with the official Ukrainian language policy. This work analyzes and documents bivalency at phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, introducing a new sensitive tool for quantifying language dominance in signs.The overall conclusion is that signs in the LLs reveal that despite the official language policy, both Ukrainian and Russian appear in signs. In this way, Linguistic Landscapes may predict a future Ukraine in which both Russian and Ukrainian are accepted as official languages.This work contributes several new perspectives to the analyses of LLs. It demonstrates that LLs are multimodal, multilayered and multidimensional to be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective; the methodology integrates Critical Discourse Analysis and grounded theory; LLs are considered as texts analyzed on multiple discourse levels. The work invents and applies continua of bivalency as a multilevel phenomenon. The research focuses on LLs in eastern Ukraine.

The resolution of the language question--whether to maintain the mother tongue, shift to the mainstream language, or try to maintain two or more languages in the family--creates a lot of psychological complications and linguistic reflections. The present study explores how external variables and internal controversies affect the choice of language by an individual family member as well as the family as a whole unit, and how this choice, in its turn, impacts the relationships within the family.This study draws on the several theoretical domains of immigration, psychology, and language acquisition. Relying on these theoretical frameworks, the major findings are synthesized, and a paradigm of language choice at the family level is formulated.A mixed-method research design allows a broad outlook on the Russian-speaking immigrants, comparison of immigrants from the former Soviet Union with immigrants of other nationalities, and restricted and concentrated analysis at the family level. The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) data set helps to address the quantitative part of this dissertation, while the qualitative part is based on in-depth case studies of four immigrant families.Building on the fundamental position that development happens as the result of the resolution of controversies, I suggest that there are four levels of controversy located in the language-choice model: societal, family, personal, and eventual outcomes of these three levels.Four "language choice" profiles, designated as "Amotivational," "Instrumental," "Intrinsic," and "Intrinsic Plus," have emerged out of the theoretical and research findings.The findings show that the crucial characteristics of the families who chose to maintain the mother tongue and foster bi-literacy in their children are the following: (1) a stress on knowing the country of origin and its culture; (2) a declared desire within the family that the children be different from the parents' perception of American children; (3) an emphasis by the parents on the children's "Russianness" and on the formation of that ethnic identity; and (4) an emphasis on a consistently realized, strong language policy at home.

This dissertation study examined school, family, and community partnerships among Hispanic parents whose children were enrolled in a school district’s Migrant Education Program (MEP). I was guided by the following main question: What issues do parents discuss regarding school, family, and community partnerships? Data were collected from interviews, artifacts, and field notes. Participant observation was conducted at the Parent Advisory Council (PAC) meetings and at The Bridge, a clothing distribution program. Findings that emerged from the research demonstrated that the PAC meetings provided a setting where parents created and developed their social networks and became empowered. The parents who informed this study perceived their role in their children’s education as one where parent advocacy was central to the partnerships between families, schools, and communities. With the assistance and collaboration from the MEP, parent volunteers developed The Bridge, first established to assist school families in meeting their children’s basic needs; it later became a central location for local knowledge, social networks, and funds of knowledge. Through work accomplished at The Bridge, parents instilled in their children the value of hard work and learned to navigate the school system. They moved away from oppression, became empowered, and handled tensions. One of the most significant findings in this study was a shift by the parents from performing a standardized set of schooling practices set forth by the school, to developing a program that advanced as needs were assessed and identified. Parents in this study formally organized themselves in order to have a voice in the school (Delgado-Gaitan, 1991).

This dissertation explored the ways in which the everyday life practices of most urban Indians embodied the "modernization of tradition" (Hancock, 1999) and the role that media texts played in facilitating and encouraging this modernization. The research is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from June through December 2005, in the south-Indian city of Chennai, which has traditionally been regarded as a conservative city. Examining the Indian media as a discursive site where normative ideologies are not only constructed but also co-constructed, the study explored and examined how the discourses of tradition and modernity were contested in the south Indian media. It also identified and interpreted the ways in which dominant ideologies at the nexus of color/caste and gender/morality were negotiated by an urban city and its residents in the move towards modernity.Data included three different but inter-related sub-genres of print media texts -- visual images, textual advertisements, and news articles. The primary dataset of visual images consisted of 300 product advertisements culled from four, nationally available, English-language magazines gathered from the two genres of news and film. Textual data sets comprising the matrimonial advertisements and the news articles were gathered from the local editions of two nationally-available English-language newspapers. The broader ethnographic investigation included participant observations, individual formal and informal interviews, and focus group discussions with adult residents of Chennai. The data were analyzed using a multi-discursive and multidisciplinary approach. The analyses were informed by conceptual approaches which included: social semiotics and the multimodal theory of communication, genre analysis, critical discourse and feminist critical discourse analyses, and alternative modernities.In examining the media texts as the site where dominant sociocultural ideologies were being constantly configured and reconfigured, the analyses identified and examined the workings of three interconnected themes - fairness (in relation to skin color), gender, and morality. Through these themes, the dissertation examined the larger contestations and negotiations between the discourses of traditions and modernities as experienced by adult residents of urban Chennai. The discourses of identity construction and reconstruction were thus examined at the nexus of the individual self situated within the larger frame of the city.

This ethnographic study examines the local (Indigenous) language literacy practices and literacy events in their specific sociocultural contexts in two Indigenous language communities in Mexico. The languages of these two communities are among over 200 Indigenous languages of Mexico still spoken today, despite half a millennium of pressure against Indigenous languages by speakers of Spanish. The focus of this study is on how these languages, Mela'tajtol (Isthmus Nahuat), and Ngigua (Northern Popoloca), are being used today in their written form. Both the Mela'tajtol and SM Ngigua communities have a history of literacy practices in their own language, albeit not yet extensive. The social practices surrounding the uses of print compose what I have called landscapes of literacy. In my research I observed new contexts produced through texts and practices in the Mela'tajtol and SM Ngigua language communities. The research brings to light the significance of the geographic, historic and linguistic contexts of both communities, and the importance of recognizing the multilayered relationships of power among those involved in writing their languages. What emerges is a compelling picture of an unprecedented collaboration in each community between bilingual teachers motivated by national pressure to teach reading and writing of their language in the schools, and the principal participants of the study, who are not bilingual teachers, but who hold resources and skills they are eager to share in promoting their language in written form. The dissertation reviews frameworks of language planning and proposes a framework of power and human agency to further describe the layers of social meaning and responsibility identified and described in the research. This symbiotic relationship is also found in the national and international influences and resources for promoting the use of indigenous languages of Mexico in written form at the local levels (including the Mela'tajtol and SM Ngigua languages). UNESCO's recognition of challenges to literacy at the global level are compared to the challenges found regarding literacy in the local languages of the two communities of study. Implications are presented for further research, as well as recommendations for the two communities and other people of power involved in indigenous language cultivation.

This ethnographic study of language use and English language learners in Central Java, Indonesia examines globalization processes within and beyond language; processes of language shift and change in language ecologies; and critical and comprehensive approaches to the teaching of English around the world. From my position as teacher-researcher and insider-outsider in an undergraduate English Department and the community surrounding the university, I engaged in reflections with students and educators in examining local language ecologies; needs for and access to English language resources; and how English majors negotiated "double positionalities" as both members of a global community of English speakers and experts in local meaning systems within which English forms played a role. In order to understand English, language ecologies, and globalization in situ, I triangulated these findings with language and education policy creation and negotiation at micro-, meso- and macro- levels, (Blommaert, 2005; Hornberger & Hult, 2010; McCarty, 2011; Pennycook, 2001, 2010).Globalization is found to be part and parcel of the distribution of English around the world; however, English's presence around the world is understood to be just one manifestation of contemporary globalization. More salient are the internationalization of standards, global corporate and media flows of information, and access to educational and information resources. These are all regulated by the state which, while working to maintain an Indonesian identity, relegates local languages to peripheries in space and time, and regulates access to all language resources, creating an upward spiral of peripheralization wherein the levels of proficiency in local, national, and English languages represent access gained to state-provided educational resources.

My dissertation is titled "Ethnogenesis, Identity, and the Dominican Republic, 1844-Present." The topic is important because of the centuries-long influences of colonialism where peoples' cultural and political identities are emerging through neo-colonial ideologies. The processes of ethnogenesis are embedded in colonialism-enslavement, ethnocide, genocide, and demographic collapse, to name a few. The expansive nature of imperialism has affected the cultural production of identity, to the extent that ethnogenesis can no longer be understood in isolation within particular societies because it operates in sophisticated networks where multilingual and multicultural factions create and re-create distinct identities through a sense of both history and hybridity.The research that I carried out in this study answered crucial questions relevant to a range of issues in the process of identity formation for a cohort of the African Diaspora in the West Indies. Rather than portraying changes as inevitable movements from colonialism to postcolonialism, I placed identity within a much broader scope of understanding in terms of the impact of historical evidence and material culture in the process of ethnogenesis. Probably the most important aspect of my research for academic circles is that it exemplified an example of identity not commonly associated with people of African descent in the Americas.There are significant numbers of Dominican immigrants living in and coming to the United States. These immigrants are socially located within a parameter of classification unlike anything they encountered in the Dominican Republic. My findings demonstrated that dark-skinned individuals do not self-identify as Black in the Dominican Republic yet when placed in the U.S. Diaspora there is many times no other choice than to be labeled Black along with many of its social implications. My findings also showed that although Dominicans have removed themselves from Blackness, they have not collectively detached themselves from distinct influences of their African heritage.To understand the Dominican Republic from the year 1844 to the present, it is necessary to unfold the intricate conditions present within the parameters of independence and dependence, diversity and sameness, and colonial and neo-colonial ideologies, which simultaneously divide and unite the "Self" and "Other."

Using qualitative methods, this study is about the attitudes and daily practices of parents who genuinely want the best for their children who have been diagnosed with autism. The study examined the everyday realities of living with autism from a parent's perspective. The purpose of this study was to describe the range of specific behaviors, practices, attitudes, and ways of being that families adopt when they engage in the world of autism. Three families were interviewed in these case studies. A content analysis of the interviews identified five thematic clusters that are described and examined in close detail. The five thematic clusters include (1) managing the diagnostic process, (2) child's behavior and educational needs, (3) impact on parent's well-being, (4) impact on the family as a whole, and (5) full integration into mainstream society. These themes were further categorized according to the "challenges" facing the families and the specific "strategies" families used to face these challenges. Parents shared their stories with the researcher with the hopes that their life experiences could be beneficial to other families facing the same challenges as they navigate complex educational, health, and social systems. The research presents a set of recommendations that were embedded in the participants' stories. These recommendations represent advice from the parents in the study to other parents with children diagnosed with autism. Their recommendations are based on what the participants have learned as they raised their own child with autism.

This study investigated digital storytelling as a meaningful and effective assessment instrument and practice for faculty-led study-abroad programs. The research was prompted by critiques from faculty and staff members citing study abroad programs in higher education lack the academic rigor of traditional course work and that study abroad sites are not "all it should or could be" (Bok, 2006; Engle, 1986; Hoffa, 2007; Van Berg, 2003, 2009). Through a qualitative research approach, a digital storytelling project was administered as an assessment tool over four summers in one study abroad program, and then expanded to three additional study abroad programs differing in locations and disciplines. The research questions explored ways in which digital storytelling not only influence the learning outcomes and experiences of students, but also touch on the building of students' personal identity. The study revealed digital storytelling to be a method conducive to demonstrating and assessing personal and academic learning outcomes through a dynamic, introspective, reflective and organic process that concluded with a digital artifact. Digital storytelling as a tool and process allowed students to become more engaged and to take ownership in their own learning while participating in a study abroad program. This study contributes much needed research related to digital storytelling as an assessment practice for measuring not only identity building, but particularly, as a method for assessing academic learning outcomes in summer faculty-led study-abroad programs.

This dissertation examined how identity was negotiated through dance and how African dance pedagogies challenged colonial legacy and decolonized the body from cultural and political oppression. To explore this topic, I examine two distinct dance contexts, one in Kampala, Uganda (East Africa) and the other in Tucson, Arizona (United States). The Kampala Study focused on the dance practices of a young man named Mugisha Johnson. Johnson was a member and dance teacher for Umbanno, a Rwandese cultural organization that formed as a consequence of the 1990s genocide; they taught Rwandese youth their cultural dances, songs, music, and language in Uganda. The Tucson Study took place in Tucson, Arizona and highlighted the work of the Dambe Project, a nonprofit organization that specialized in African performing arts education. More specifically, it examined the dance program at a local high school and focused on the experiences of the dance students.Four common threads ran through each of the research studies. First, both studies dance pedagogies derived from community-based organizations doing dance education. Second, both organizations served youth populations. Third, the organization both promoted dance expressions that had been historically oppressed. Lastly, my research positionality as a dance student in the Kampala Study and as a dance teacher in the Tucson Study provided a holistic ethnographic picture of an overarching autobiographical narrative about African dance of the diaspora.This research adds to the professional literature an examination of a bodily discourse as emphasized by Desmond (1994); it considers the way dance helps people shed the negative cultural and psychological effects of colonialism.The methodology used was dance ethnography, which looks at the body experiences and "treats dance as a kind of cultural knowledge and body movement as a link to the mental and emotional world of human beings" (Thomas, 2003, p.83). Data was collected through participant- observation, interviews, personal dance study and performance, video recordings, and photography. The research found in two separate ethnographies, dance pedagogies stimulating identity work that challenged colonial power by affirming an indigenous body practice and knowledge.