Gender as a Sociocultural Construct: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

In recent years, the provision of formal coach education has been regarded as a crucial mechanism for endorsing sports coaching and facilitating sports coaching practitioners’ professional development and competency. As a result, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of sports coaching research scholars investigating formal coach education. Previous research however has recognised that formal coach education has had a limited impact on learning and professional development. In addition, the research surrounding females in sports coaching, and in particular their experiences of formal coach education, is limited. It is considered an under-researched area, and currently it is unclear why females are under-represented in formal coach education courses. This thesis therefore aims to explore gendered issues associated with the complexities of the Football Association’s formal coach education process, and the issues associated with female football coaching practitioners’ attending coach education courses. The sports coaches who participated in this work were recruited via purposeful sampling procedures, and importantly demonstrated characteristics which resonated with the aims of this research study. The research study was separated into a four-phase, sequential, exploratory method design, which included a series of in-depth, one-to-one semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed utilising a thematic analysis approach, and aligned with a Bourdieun and feminist theoretical framework. The findings revealed a range of contexts and challenges for female coaches undertaking formal coach education. Specifically, high levels of gender discrimination, inappropriate cultural practices, and sexual impropriety were recorded. These insights are discussed in line with the Bourdieun notions of social acceptance, symbolic language and violence. In conclusion, it is argued that the attrition levels of the sports coaching practitioners’ have indeed been affected, and could well continue to be, unless change occurs. Hopefully, the recommendations provided could go a long way to enhancing the future provision of formal coach education.

The aim of this project is to investigate the use of gender-fair language from a cross-linguistic perspective. Specifically, we are interested in whether the use of gender-fair language correlates with socio-economic rankings of gender equality and with structural features of a language. We decided to analyze online job advertisements, as they reflect common language use and can easily be compared across languages. Moreover, formulations in job advertisements have been shown to impact personnel selection via the way target groups are addressed and referred to. In the present study we examined to what extent job advertisements are formulated in a gender-fair way and how this correlates with factors such as language, culture as well as status and gender-typicality of the job advertised. The data consisted of job advertisements published online in four European countries which occupy different positions in socio-economic rankings of gender equality (World Economic Forum, 2011): Switzerland (10), Austria (rank 34), Poland (42), and Czech Republic (75). We randomly selected 100 job advertisements from four lines of business characterized by different proportions of female employees – steels/metals, science, restaurants/food services, and health care. The advertisements were analyzed with regard to the linguistic form of the job title and the remaining text; we also noted indicators of job status, reference to gender-typical traits, pictures of women/men and other information which might be relevant to the use of gender-fair language (e.g., equal opportunity policies). A first analysis of the data indicates that the phrasing of job titles is closely related to the gender-typicality of a profession. While mainly gender-fair forms are used in healthcare, masculine forms are used more often in the domain of steels and metals. Feminine forms only, however, are almost never used. Cultural differences as well as correlations with associated variables will be discussed.

Study Background: Nurse–patient cultural communication is of paramount significance in countries with substantial expatriate nursing workforces, such as Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian hospitals are mostly staffed by foreign nurses, who constitute 73.4% of the total population of registered nurses (Ministry of Health, 2014). Aim of the Study: The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural communication barriers between non-Saudi nurses and Saudi patients when performing patient health care. Study Design: The study adopted a quantitative descriptive survey design. A convenience sampling technique was used to recruit a population of surgical nurses (n = 93) working in wards at a tertiary health care centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric analysis (Mann-Whitney U tests) were used to analyse survey data. Results: Unfamiliarity with language or dialect and generational gap scores represented the highest cultural communication barriers, followed by other significant results that included gender difference and nurses’ burnout. Lack of continuous communication skills training and Arabic language also had an impact. Cultural communication competence was influenced by respondents not understanding the Saudi culture. Recommendations: Developing appropriate cultural communication between expatriate nurses and Saudi patients entails grasping Saudi sociocultural parameters. It is paramount that expatriate nurses intending to work in Saudi Arabia are professionally educated about Islamic Arabic cultural beliefs and communication methods. It is further suggested that Saudi patients’ perspectives on cultural obstacles in communicating with foreign nurses be explored.

This thesis provides an assessment of language policy (Spolsky, 2004) in Alicante, one of three provinces in the Valencian Community in the south east of Spain. The Valencian Community was founded in 1982 during Spain’s transition to democracy. Its Statute of Autonomy (Corts Valencianes, 1982), which was created in the same year, declares Castilian (the language of the state) and Valencian (a geographic variety of Catalan) as co-official in the autonomous community. Prior to this, Franco’s regime (1939-1975) had prohibited the public use of regional varieties such as Valencian. Yet, whilst the two languages now share equal official status, there is disparity between official language statements and de facto language policy (Shohamy, 2006). This project contributes to the growing research areas of language policy and language revitalisation. The findings of this study are positioned in the context of Catalan-speaking territories, Spain, and the wider European setting. This thesis provides a localised view of language policy in Alicante and uncovers the complexity of the current sociolinguistic setting. In order to present such a nuanced view of local language policy, this project draws upon qualitative and quantitative data collected during the administration of fieldwork questionnaires in 2014 in the towns of Sant Vicent del Raspeig and La Vila Joiosa. Both towns are in the province of Alicante; Sant Vicent del Raspeig is in the comarca (county) of L’Alacanti whilst La Vila Joiosa is in La Marina Baixa. This thesis examines a number of themes that emerged from the data, including the evolution of the composition of linguistic repertoires and the perception and construction of Valencian identities. This project also discusses the closure of the Valencian public broadcaster Radio Televisio Valenciana (RTVV) and examines how external factors, in addition to internal components, contribute to language policy. Data revealed that there is not one clearly identifiable language policy in Alicante; rather multiple layers of language practices, language management and language beliefs operate and intersect at various levels to contribute to a complex local language policy. This complexity is due in part to the social, linguistic, cultural and historical change experienced since the transition to democracy. Of particular significance is the increased access to Valencian which has resulted from the introduction of language legislation and the inclusion of Valencian in the education system (Blas Arroyo, 2002). As such, more language users are able to acquire standard Valencian, and its surrounding ideologies (Milroy, 2001; 2007), and also literacy. Consequently, language policy continues to evolve to reflect such changes as more language users are exposed to Valencian. However, data suggest that previous conditions and consolidated ideologies inherited from the past also continue to be influential and contribute to current language policy. This range of language practices, management and beliefs informs a complex and dynamic language policy. This project presents the case of language policy in Alicante and contributes to current research in Hispanic Studies and Sociolinguistics. The findings of this study further our understanding of language policy and its development in response to changing sociolinguistic conditions, such as increased access to minority languages in the present European context as a result of language revitalisation efforts. The findings presented here should encourage further research and debate, not only in the context of Spain, but also in other European contexts where a minority language has undergone language revitalisation, which has resulted in a change to traditional sociolinguistic order.

THIS PAPER \\WAS DELIVERED, in somewhat different form, in the spring of 1975 as the initiatory ritual display of professorial vanity at the Albuquerque meeting of the MLA's Commission on Minority Groups and the Study of Language and Literature. The paper was written on the optimistic assumption that significant concerns are shared by scholars dedicated to the languages and literatures of American minorities and by a monolingual Confederate Wasp-concerns with social class, with the relations between provinces or colonies and a dominant central authority, particularly with languages as at once the instruments of power, the vehicles of cultural traditions, and the media of literatures. After emphasizing the ambiguous nature of standard languages as both cultural necessities and tools of domination, the paper drifts into the .fantasy of a linguistic and literary counter-culture which would reject both linguistic relativism and linguistic exploitation in a conscious effort to preserve humane values in an advanced industrial society. The fantasy is made perhaps more plausible by the suggestion that the problems of minority languages and literatures are variations on the problems which have everywhere had to be faced by colonials and the colonized-by the suggestion, in short, that pluralism need not mean separatism. Two imprudent questions then evade the necessity for a conclusion. The MLA's refusal to publish the paper (which it had commissioned and paid for, with accompanying insistence on publication rights) would have been taken seriously but for the epidemic confusion between learned societies and political interest groups and for the politicians' inability (real or pretended) to distinguish between absolute unwillingness to teach a standard dialect and unwillingness to teach one for the wrong purposes of politicians and by the destructive methods of their kept pedagogues.

Under the impact of diverse ideological trends, discussions about gender issues were abundant and tumultuous both prior to and subsequent to the May Fourth Movement. Most studies have focused on the role, status, and emancipation of women, but have neglected the topics of androgyny, gender reversal, and same-sex love/desire, which also drew attention from May Fourth intellectuals and aroused much controversy. This paper attempts to complement previous research with a new object of study, Shanghai popular music. This music was popularized by an intellectual who was also a musician, Jin-hui Li, at the end of 1920s, and carried cultural meaning by the use of accessible language and music. This paper is divided into three parts: the first two concern the female body, and the third probes into female voice, which went beyond ”normal” ”male-female” affection and desire. The author attempts to scrutinize different point of views regarding these debates among the intellectual community, explore the images of androgyny and female same-sex love with a pictorial newspaper, Bei-yang Pictorial News (北洋畫報), and observe how the Shanghai popular music represented female same-sex desire. These songs had various styles, high visibility, and strong emotions both in their lyrics and their music, and their numbers were more than just a few Thus I conclude that these female voices redefined the acceptability of female same-sex love/desire among the Chinese population and re-delineate the landscape during that particular time period.

This study investigates how boys come to be choirboys. It is a sociological examination of the musical lives of a group of 10–13 year old choirboys who are members of a renowned boys’ choir in Australia and who are passionate about singing. The thesis is positioned within debates about young musical masculinities and addresses previously under-researched aspects of boys’ voices which speak to larger questions about the interrelationship between music, structure/agency and the individual/society.A considerable body of literature exists about why singing continues to be a fraught pursuit for the majority of boys in English-speaking cultures. This research supports the view that the ‘missing males’ in singing, particularly in school and in choirs, is a serious challenge for music educators and English-speaking cultures at large. However, previous theorisations of this phenomenon have generated a bifurcated view of male vocality which I redress. The boys’ choir in this study is a particularly potent site to intervene in these debates as the historical musical practices associated with educating choirboys provide a rich context for interrogating how the gendered meanings of this type of boy voice are constructed. Little is known about those boys who contradict gender norms by dedicating themselves to choral singing. What enables such boys to take up singing and to continue down this pathway? What does being a choirboy mean for them and what does it afford? What is special about the pedagogical practices that produce the choirboy? I respond to these questions by analysing the minutiae of choirboys’ musical lives and how gender and class influence why and how certain children take up certain musical ways of being. I use narrative enquiry methods to generate evocative stories of lived experience and I read the personal narratives of the choirboys, their mothers and teachers as relational to dominant cultural narratives of gender and class.To explain this I put Bourdieu’s signature concepts to work drawing together the seldom conversant fields of Bourdieusian sociology and the sociology of music education. Specifically I build on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as it applies to music through the concept of musical habitus. I expand this concept to reveal the practices that have inculcated the particular dispositions that the choirboys share and to consider the self-reflexive capacities of the choirboys as musical agents. Emerging from my analysis is the inseparability of the classed delineations from the symbolic gendered meanings of the choirboys’ voice type. Throughout I develop the argument that the power of the choirboy is the distinction of his form of middle-class masculinity. This contributes new understandings about ‘making up’ the middle-class child through music education. Integral to this process is the significant role of mothers in enabling musical masculinities. I develop the concept of musical mothering to discuss the intensive pedagogical labour and emotional capital that the women invest in their son’s in and through music. The examination of pedagogy extends to the practices of the choirboys’ teachers which, I argue, reproduce the cultural distinction of the choirboy through what I term pedagogies for virtuosity. By providing a critical perspective on music, masculinity and the middle-class in relation to the musical lives of choirboys, this study offers a fresh way of understanding how certain subject positions are made possible and how social structures are reproduced or transformed through music.

Background: The Success of In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is usually linked with the number of pregnancies per IVF cycle, with less concern on the Indications of Infertility, whether a live healthy infant is born, and the maternal and fetal complications. Method: Cumulative Live Birth Rate was estimated at Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The study involved 630 patients who received treatment from the years 2000-2008. These patients were followed from the day patients started their cycles until their discontinued the treatment, or delivered their infants and were deemed complication free. The data were analyzed using EXCEL and JMP. Patients’ ages, types of Infertility, body mass index, indications for IVF, number of cycles, ovarian protocols, pregnancies, delivery methods, number and gender of fetus, and complications. Optimistic and Conservative estimates were used. Optimistic estimates assumed that all patients whether they had 2 or more cycles had equal chances at pregnancy as these patients who had more cycles. Conservative estimate assumed that only those who had 3 or more cycles had a chance at getting pregnant. RESULTS: With the 630 patients studied, the ages who came for IVF treatment were widely distributed with a large number of the patients actually being 40 years and older (33.49%). There were surprisingly a large number of them below 35 years (41.43%) and the rest between 35 and 40 years (25.08%). Study of Indications showed that the Male factor (associated with Female factors) is the main cause (31.75%), with Endometrial Affectations (17.31%) and Tubal Ligation or Occlusion (26.19%) also being huge contributors also. The other causes such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (8.73%), Maternal age (4.76%), Adenomyosis (11%) were found to be less of a causes in the study population, but were equally important. Short Ovarian Protocol showed that it had a larger percentage of successful pregnancies (75%), however its outcome was of minimal difference from that of the patients placed under the Long Ovarian Stimulation Protocols (69.35%). Twenty Five percent (25%) of the study population got pregnant, about 70% of them achieved a successful pregnancy. It was found that the mothers with less than 35 years were found to have better results at successful pregnancy (34.38%) than the other age ranges, however the differences were not statistically significant (p=0.2183). Caesarean Delivery being the most frequent (60.56%) followed by Normal Vaginal delivery (43%). The other types were not frequent. The majority of babies born were Singletons (63.16%) however a large number of Twins (36.84%) were born. The Female sex or gender was more frequent however the difference in occurrence between Male (48.70%) and Female gender (51.30%) were not statistically significant. The Maternal and Fetal Complications were no different from Natural birth and delivery. Kaplan Meier Curve shows with 1 or 2 cycles there is a 25% chance of getting pregnant, whereas with 12 to 13 cycles, there is a 70% chance of getting pregnant. The success of pregnancy with 1 or 2 cycles had a little less than 20 % chance of a successful pregnancy, compared to that of 12 to 13 cycles who has a little less than 60%. CONCLUSION: IVF can be used to overcome Infertility in women of different age groups, and Men, offering them a fair chance at pregnancy with limited and similar complications and outcomes as Natural Fertilization Pregnancies.

Grounding on an anthropological research carried out in Ravenna with migrant parents coming from different European and Extra-European countries and childcare professionals, the paper explores ‒ from a gender perspective ‒ the imaginaries on childhood emerging from the compared analysis of adults’ representations on parenting, care and educational relationships. Conflicting or alternative interpretations of the child-adult relationship, as well as different views on parenting and care allows disclosing those assumptions and ideologies that make “childhood” a plural, situated, socio-cultural construct. Keywords : childhoods, education and care relationships, migrant parenting and childrearing, gender.

OF DISSERTATION NEGOTIATING AN ELECTORATE: GENDER, CLASS, AND THE BRITISH REFORM ACTS Five Reform Acts passed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gradually increased the size of the British electorate. Negotiations over lowering property, rent, and lodging restrictions led to new Acts that slowly increased the number of Britons deemed worthy to vote. This dissertation examines the extent class and gender were relevant to those negotiations of British citizenship over the course of those five Acts. The project scrutinizes the language used in Parliamentary debates, political pamphlets, and political correspondence to reconstruct the constantly-changing conceptualization of the ideal citizen’s gendered identity in Britain and Europe. This project illuminates the rhetorical battles between the political elite and those who desired admittance to the franchise. The language surrounding those battles highlights the contradictory reasons why certain male and female populations were denied admittance. By examining all these Acts together, this project provides new insight into Parliamentary reform as a political event where the unfixed ideas of Victorian femininity and masculinity can be viewed and assessed in the context of political power.

The study explores the practice, meaning and significance of invective and insults in political discourse among Ghanaians. It examines the use of such language forms against people of higher social status in online discourse in Ghana, a country where it is traditionally unacceptable to openly criticize the elderly and authority figures, let alone insult them. Data was sourced from GhanaWeb [www.ghanaweb.com], the most patronized online news website in Ghana that ensures anonymous citizen participation in issues of national interest. The data involved invective and insult-filled online reader comments on news reports about the presidential candidates and the electoral commissioner involved in the 2016 general election in Ghana. Metapragmatic comments (reader reactions) which portray Ghanaian sociocultural perspectives on the use of abusive language against these individuals were also gathered. These two sets of comments were used to build the Corpus of GhanaWeb Comments on Ghana’s 2016 Election (CGCGE16). In addition to CGCGE16, the data for the study included comments from social media platforms, native speakers’ intuitions and the views of Ghanaian anthropological linguists and cultural specialists obtained from interviews, and evidence from scholarly works. The qualitative meaning analysis method is used along with the quantitative discourse analysis method. The study adopts an ethnopragmatic approach, combining corpus-based searches with semantic explications and cultural scripts, following the principles of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach (Wierzbicka, 1992, 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2014). The findings indicate that most of the comments in CGCGE16 are personal attacks that violate the Ghanaian communicative norms towards the elderly and people in authority and, furthermore, do not conform to the expected displays of verbal respect. Instead of expressing their views on on-going socio-political issues, the commenters often draw on past socio-political occurrences, their public and sociocultural knowledge to engage in negative emotional characterizations and evaluations of the presidential candidates and the electoral commissioner, thereby, showing disapproval of them. By means of name-calling expressions, derogatory adjectives, and derogatory interjections, these commenters attack the intellectual abilities, moral behaviour, social competence, and physical characteristics of their targets. This negative communicative behaviour is attributed to the fact that on GhanaWeb, like on many online communities, interactants are not obliged to uphold communicative norms. The anonymity of GhanaWeb shields commenters from the repercussions such speech behaviours would otherwise necessitate. It is also attributed to the right to freedom of speech, the repeal of the criminal libel law, and the fact that traditionally, there are some specific settings that allow the use of insults against authority. The study demonstrates that although the practice of using insults against political leaders in online commentary appears to be “normal” in the online context, it is a transgression when one considers the Ghanaian sociocultural norms of communication. Consistent with this, although the interaction on GhanaWeb is asynchronous, some commenters play the role of regulatory figures and traditional gatekeepers of appropriate communicative behaviour by posting disapproving metapragmatic comments. The study identifies many ways in which interactions on GhanaWeb are culturally shaped. These include first, commenters do not only rely on English slang terms and swearwords, they also employ some local language insulting expressions (e.g. kwasea ‘fool’, yaka gbɔmɔ ‘worthless person’) due to the ‘weight’ such expressions carry for Ghanaians. Secondly, the metapragmatic comments do not employ certain key terms such as “offensiveness” that can be found in the literature on online studies related to the speakers of Inner Circle Englishes. Instead, they highlight the clear position of the Ghanaian culture on respect for elders and people in authority. These metapragmatic comments also stress the fact that the exchange of invective and insults in politics can result in violence which may have adverse effects on the development of the nation. Overall, the study is inclined towards the view that instead of generalizing the results of studies on abusive language use in online interactions, there is a need to draw out what distinguishes Ghanaian online interactants from, let’s say, Western countries, Asian countries, African countries, or from interactants elsewhere. The key claim is that understanding the sociocultural backdrop for the speech practices of online interactants is crucial to understanding their language use, as interactants draw on existing communicative repertoires which influence their language choices. Also, the study draws attention to news websites in Ghana as a platform where the use of unmitigated invective and insults against people of higher social status is increasingly becoming the norm, despite the fact it violates Ghanaian communicative values. Thus, this study serves as a springboard for future research into abusive language use in online interactions among Ghanaians.

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first is to investigate the impact of learning English or Spanish as a foreign language on Taiwanese learners' sociolinguistic perception toward cultural globalization. The second is to explore the effect of proficiency in target language on the learners' globalization attitudes. Questionnaires were taken by a representative sample of 60 foreign language students recruited from Wenzao Ursuline College Language in Taiwan. Preliminary results revealed a greater impact of the proficiency level on foreign language rather than the effect of foreign language studied on the sociolinguistic attitudes toward cultural globalization. In addition, learning a foreign language promote a positive socio linguistic percept ion toward the student's mother language and their own cultural heritage.

As a response to the dramatically ageing population in Taiwan, it is advised that Taiwanese linguists should consider conducting language studies in relation to ageing and older age. However, in existing literature, such studies are rather rare. Hence, the aim of my research is to make a contribution to fill in this research gap. Traditional sociolinguistic studies tend to treat older age as an explanatory factor to predict language variations that reflect a decremental tendency in communication competence as a consequence of ageing. My research, however, takes on a different (but constructionist) research orientation to investigate discourses of ageing and older age. Following the sociolinguistic trajectory established more than 20 years ago by British sociolinguists, Nik Coupland and Justine Coupland, blending social psychological and interpersonal communication analytic perspectives, this current study adopts multiple qualitative as well as quantitative data-collection and analytic methods (e.g. semi-structured interviews, questionnaire survey, natural conversations, statistic analysis, discourse analysis ) to approach questions regarding language and communication with the elderly and age disclosure behaviors in a specific context, that is, senior education or engaging in learning activities at later life. In conclusion, the research purposes can be unfolded into the three different layers: (1) to monitor the appropriateness in the language and communication with elderly learners in senior educational contexts (2) to associate language and communication studies with the wider social and cultural contexts from which the examined narratives and natural conversations are produced with a special interest on whether they reproduce, challenge or reinforce ageism or age stereotypes (3) ultimately to enhance the awareness of the role our daily use of language with the elderly plays so as to create an elder-friendly society as well as to increase the communication gratification elderly learners receive in the learning processes.

Ethnic, gender and cultural differences represent, for western society, not only a challenge for its social unity and identity but also an opportunity to debate and to cultural enrichment. Feminism and multiculturalism picked up this challenge producing new contributions on behalf on cultural differences. But if in the Seventies these two movements were allied in the struggle for recognition of diversity, now they are like enemies for several reasons. Firstly western feminism was accused of ethnocentrism by asian and african women movements: the effect was a weakening of struggle for equal rights as men. Secondly multiculturalism has forgotten the specific topic of gender and defended some culture that are internally patriarchal. Now the relationship between feminism and multiculturalism is more complicated by the strong presence of immigrant women in western societies. The article shows the critical stages of this debate, pointing out the likely and positive opportunity included in the recognition of social and cultural differences.

– In the Italian higher education system, the Portuguese language is generally studied by Italian native speakers without prior knowledge of Portuguese, in courses designed for Foreign Language Learners (FLL). However, we may occasionally find that students enrolled have some kind of heritage connection to the Portuguese language, making it necessary to adapt methodologies, contents and materials in order to address the needs of these Heritage Language Learners (HLL) and value their presence in these mixed classes. From our point of view, course design and teaching should therefore take into account both the motivations for learning Portuguese and the sociolinguistic profile of these HLL. This paper presents and discusses the results of a research conducted in a mixed class at the University of Milan aimed at determining 1) the motivations for learning Portuguese of FLL and HLL groups and 2) the Portuguese HLL sociolinguistic profile. In other words, we aim to understand, from a Language Teaching approach, the motivations and the linguistic and cultural identity of these HLL through their own views. Data for this study was collected through two surveys of Portuguese HLL (n=8) and Portuguese FLL/HLL (n=66) enrolled in the academic year 2017/2018. As we adopt, due to the nature of this research, a more sociolinguistic oriented definition of HLL, we present an opening chapter devoted to the discussion about the definitions of Heritage Language. Lastly, we point some preliminary considerations about our experience in a Portuguese FLL and HLL mixed class.