International students’ identity negotiation has become a foremost aspect to be examined in the fields of applied linguistics, psychology, and intercultural communication. However, the scholarly focus has predominantly centered on the experiences of international students from culturally prominent or extensively studied backgrounds other than Indonesia. Although there is existing literature covering Indonesian families living abroad, it has not adequately addressed the dynamic and multifaceted experiences of Indonesian graduate students specifically studying outside Indonesia, nor the factors influencing their identity and language shifts. The present study aims to investigate the complex cross-cultural adaptation of Indonesian students, contributing to an understanding of their identity and language shifts while navigating lives in transnational contexts, including academic, social, and cultural settings. A total of 6 Indonesian graduate students who enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs in the United States participated and shared their narratives in the interview processes. By employing thematic analysis, the findings demonstrate that the participants’ adaptations during their relocation contribute to their identity and language shifts in several ways. First, the adoption of localization as the personality becomes the foremost way to contribute to their identity shift. The participants’ active and passive internalization of languages and cultures enable them to create a hybrid identity and negotiate their transnational belonging. Second, their language shifts can be seen in their language choice and the maintenance of Bahasa Indonesia. The participants tend to maintain the use of Bahasa Indonesia and can practice code-mixing and code-switching between English and Bahasa Indonesia while interacting with other Indonesians at the same time. The study also reveals the changing of directness employed by the participants. They emphasize to use of more direct utterances while communicating due to their adaptations to the new cultural norms. Therefore, these changing performances enable overseas Indonesian graduate students in transnational contexts to (re)construct their identity. This present study suggests further research to use different types of data collection including observation and ethnography to obtain a more inclusive and deeper analysis of the experiences of overseas Indonesian graduate students. In addition, this study also allows us to address a more comprehensive understanding of Asian students as a whole and helps to avoid stereotypical Asian students’ identities in previous research.

This study examines the impact of High-Immersion Virtual Reality (HiVR) as a tool for teaching English L2 pragmatics to international students enrolled in an Intensive English Program at a US university. This research focuses on integrating HiVR into explicit L2 pragmatics instructional treatments. A quasi-experimental design was employed to assess the pragmatic performance of students in both experimental (HiVR) and control groups across four pragmatics tasks during an eight-week intermediate level course. The findings show a significant advantage for the experimental group, suggesting that HiVR practice enhances learning outcomes in L2 pragmatics. Qualitative feedback revealed participants' enjoyment and perceived realism of VR practice, highlighting the potential of HiVR for simulating real-life conversational scenarios. This study contributes to the field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) by demonstrating the efficacy of HiVR in improving L2 pragmatic competence.

Southern United States English (SUSE) is North America’s most stigmatizedregionalized dialect, leading to generational decline and underrepresentation from characters in primetime television. This study explores the representation of SUSE features by 80 local news broadcasters in eight Southern affiliates, all outside major metropolises. This sociophonetic study surveys the PIN-PEN merger and Stages I and II of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) — /aɪ/ glide weakening and /e/-/ɛ/ proximity. The PIN-PEN merger was found to be widespread among broadcasters, with 49/80 (61%) having a PIN-PEN Pillai score less than 0.3, considered “merged”. /aɪ/ glide weakening was subtly present, despite being a marked SUSE feature: /aɪ/ was overwhelmingly diphthongal, but the median and Q3 variants (measured in Euclidean distance from 20% to 80% duration) ended in the lower half of the vowel space, showing a general lack of glide raising. Lastly, /e/-/ɛ/ proximity had marginal representation: Only 11/80 (14%) broadcasters had a non-sonorant /e/-/ɛ/ Pillai score less than 0.45, and the median Pillai score was 0.664, establishing that an advanced SVS is not typical. The best predictors for the PIN-PEN merger were attending a Southern college, being African American, and being male — all factors of socialization. Contrastingly, the (mutually exclusive) best predictors of /aɪ/ glide weakening were more products of stylization — occupational role and the subregion that hired the broadcaster (whether the audience was a ‘Deep South’ market). For /e/-/ɛ/ proximity, the interaction of gender and Southern college attendance was statistically significant, as only men with Southern college backgrounds generally had this apparently stigmatized feature. Age was not found to be significant for any feature, subverting expectations that younger speakers keep SUSE at ‘arm’s length’. TV market size was impactful for each feature but repeatedly (narrowly) missed the p=0.05 threshold for statistical significance. Sports anchors led in SUSE forms for each feature, showing SUSE as an asset; investigative reporters, however, had the least SUSE /aɪ/ and /e/-/ɛ/ variants. Gender had strong explanatory power for each feature, inferring that men tended to ‘lean in’ to SUSE’s positive solidarity traits, but women tended to incorporate SUSE less often due to its negative competency traits.

Becoming a researcher not only involves the acts of contributing to the body of knowledge in a field, but it also involves constructing the image or identity of a researcher. Doctoral students who aim for positions within academia upon graduation see doctoral education as a phase where they develop their research skills and prepare for publication. An existing body of literature in the field of writing has explored the publishing practices of graduate students, with extensive attention given to the role of external factors such as the adviser/advisee relationships, resource access, issues of authority, and so on. However, less attention has been given to exploring the role of internal motivators or intrinsic factors in graduate writing and how it relates to research work and research productivity. Conducting semi-structured interviews with four doctoral students who have published research articles in peer-reviewed journals, this study explores the process through which doctoral students develop a researcher identity, the challenges they face, and the role of the doctorate program in developing a researcher identity. Using a narrative approach and by first-person accounts of experiences told in the story form, the process of identity formation is elicited through individual stories focusing on the narrated experiences, thoughts, and actions. The findings of this study showed that validation and recognition are crucial factors in helping doctoral students see themselves as researchers and persevere through the challenges faced in publishing. All participants in this study recognized collaboration opportunities as experiences that helped them become a researcher. In working with others, they felt like they had a valuable voice and insight, creating a positive attitude toward their work by realizing that their work is meaningful. The most significant challenge discussed by all participants was receiving negative comments or criticisms that inhibited their motivation. Having a better understanding of the experiences, perspectives, and challenges of doctoral students in identity development brings attention to points of conflict and how these conflicts can be resolved or mediated for doctoral students. It offers insights into doctoral students' training and advising by illustrating how research productivity can be enhanced at the doctoral level.

This dissertation examines (1) the nature of the transfer climate in an English foracademic purposes (EAP) education setting specifically from the perspectives of EAP instructors. It also examines (2) what EAP instructors perceive can be done to prepare students for such a transfer climate. The transfer climate refers to the nature of the target context of instruction and the support for learning transfer perceived by a learner in that target context. Therefore, in the case of the EAP education context, the target context of instruction is the discipline courses to which students transition to or take concurrently with EAP courses. These discipline courses may be supportive or unsupportive towards students' transfer of EAP skills. The social constructivist approach was used as the theoretical foundation, which views that overall knowledge as dependent upon human practices, being manifested in and out of interaction between individuals and their world, and developed within a social context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 EAP instructors. The interview transcripts were analyzed using a process that is two- fold: involving de-contextualizing and re-contextualizing. Firstly, with decontextualizing, a chunk of text is identified as a unit of analysis, when it is taken out of context from the transcript, it is still meaningful as a unit. Secondly, all the units can be re-contextualized when transferred from the interview transcript to a single category of units that contribute to a similar pattern towards the research question(s). The findings revealed that EAP instructors perceived both supportive and unsupportive aspects of different components of the EAP transfer climate [opportunities (lack of) in the course structure, support (lack of) for EAP transfer from discipline instructors or peers in the disciplines]. This study’s findings also build on existing conceptualizations of transfer climate. The findings also outline 8 steps that can be taken to prepare students for the transfer climate, 7 within EAP courses, and 1 within discipline courses. Both practical implications and implications for future research are outlined.

In the current globalized world, English is an international language that makes it possible for people from different language backgrounds to communicate with each other. In this situation, English users in EIL (English as an international language) should be able to comprehend various accents spoken by English speakers from all over the world. Therefore, in order to investigate how to help Korean high school EFL (English as a foreign language) learners to develop their listening comprehension of various accents of English, this study conducted an experiment by having them listen to various accents of English. Participants were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group received a treatment of listening to various accents and solving listening comprehension questions. They did reading while listening activity with the same accents when checking their answers. On the other hand, the control group received the same treatment and did the reading while listening activity when checking their answers. The only difference between the groups was that the experimental group listened to various accents of English and the control group listened to American accents. After the treatment, both groups took two pretests. It was found through test score analyses that listening to various accents helped participants to develop their listening comprehension of the accents better than listening to American accents. Furthermore, participants in the experimental group could transfer their listening comprehension developed through the treatment to new contexts such as listening to English accents that they did not practice and listening to real-life listening materials. Along with test score analyses, it was found through a questionnaire that participants who received the treatment of listening to various accents of English perceive that they could transfer their developed listening comprehension. In addition, their responses showed that they recognize the importance of dealing with various accents for international communication and they think English classes in school should deal with various accents of English. With the results, this study insisted that CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test) listening comprehension section should include various accents of English in order to help Korean high school EFL learners to prepare for international communication situations. With washback effects of CSAT, it will lead Korean EFL stakeholders to be able to prepare for English communications in EIL situations.

This dissertation study examined the language ideologies about the different languages used in Sri Lanka to understand how they may reflect and align with ideologies about ethnicity and national belonging and structures of power operating in Sri Lankan society. It was a qualitative study which gathered data by interviewing twelve participants from the four main ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. Through the analysis of data comprising observations about language evaluations and practices, three main themes were generated. First, the study showed that Sri Lanka is a complex multilingual context in which the status of different languages changes according to context, audience as well as the participants of an interaction and that therefore it is difficult to describe languages by static labels such as “first”, “second” or “link” language. Secondly, the study found the situation of English in Sri Lanka is still largely influenced by cultural practices introduced during colonial rule which has caused it to function as a basis for social division. The study also found that the situation of Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka is shaped by ideologies about ethnicity and the social power that the two ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and Tamils, who speak the two languages, hold in society. Taken together these three main findings of the study showed that language ideologies in circulation in Sri Lanka as observed by the study participants were closely linked to and align with and sometimes even reinforce ideologies about ethnicity, national belonging and power in Sri Lankan society.

Much of the literature around coming out narratives is concerned with monosexual coming out experiences. While some recent literature has expanded to include discussions of non-monosexual experiences, there is a lack of research surrounding the coming out narratives of non-monosexual individuals specifically. This thesis aims to investigate such coming out narratives. The coming out narrative genre as a whole has been examined by several researchers across several years, highlighting a variety of monosexual coming out experiences. This project aims to utilize past research of coming out narratives to build a framework of common themes within the genre and employ this framework as a basis of comparison between monosexual and non-monosexual coming out narratives. Since the experiences of non-monosexual members of the queer community are not being looked at within the coming out narrative genre, it is crucial to highlight non-monosexual experiences in narrative research such as this. Data for this study comes from several publicly available online coming out narratives from YouTube, with the final total equaling 12 narratives. This study finds that there are distinct differences between the coming out narratives of monosexual and non-monosexual narratives and, as such, provides evidence of unique lived experiences for non-monosexual individuals when coming out.

Nonlinguists’ attitudes towards language are a major factor in the process of language change. Therefore, linguists are interested in examining how language varieties are perceived. Several studies around the world have demonstrated that ideologies play a major role in shaping how people perceive certain dialects, how social meanings are associated with these varieties, and how linguistic communities are shaped in part by these beliefs. However, little attention has been given to language attitude in the Arab region, and in the Saudi context particularly. Moreover, none of the attitudinal studies in the region have tried to investigate Najdis’ attitudes towards their own dialects. Using a conceptually presented attitudinal approach, this study bridges the literature gap by examining 1041 Najdis’ language attitudes towards two of the main dialects there: The Najdi Urban and Najdi Bedouin varieties. The study answers the following questions: How do Najdis perceive the Najdi Urban and Bedouin dialects, and what are the frequently associated characteristics with these varieties? The results of the quantitative analysis show that Najdis’ language attitudes can be discussed with and reduced to two themes: modernity and traditionality. The Urban Najdi dialect was perceived as modern. Contrarily, the Bedouin Najdi dialect was considered traditional. Each social group tended to rate their dialect higher than the other group did in both factors, indicating in-group loyalty. Also, both groups showed high levels of linguistic security.

Academic recommendation letters are an essential component of institutional gatekeeping practices, yet few scholars have explored their use in the context of nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships. Using a mixed-methods framework, this study uses Hyland’s (2005a) taxonomy to analyze the frequency, form, and function of hedges and boosters across fifty-one recommendation letters submitted for a nationally competitive undergraduate STEM scholarship. Of the eighty-nine terms that occurred in the letters, there were thirty-seven boosting terms and fifty-one hedging terms (41% boosters and 59% hedges). Despite the higher rate of hedges, the majority of these terms were not used to express doubt. Results show that letter writers for prestigious programs use a combination of hedges and boosters alongside their status and expertise within the academy to sponsor promising undergraduate researchers. This study expands our understanding of recommendation letters outside of graduate-level selection processes and answers Hyland’s (2005b) call for more mixed method approaches and use of discourse analysis across academic genres.