Graduation Term

2021

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of English: English Studies

Committee Chair

Susan M Burt

Abstract

In this dissertation, native speakers’, and past academics’ views of Fala are explored, along with the sociolinguistic and ideological dimensions of those views. This dissertation also investigates Fala’s orthographic reform, Fala’s recognition as a language at the regional and national level, and the repercussions it has had on research involving Fala. More generally, I present the case of Fala as an example of the effects that language ideologies can have on minority languages that, like Fala, with a small speaker population, may see themselves unrecognized and forgotten by governmental linguistic policy efforts given their size. In order to do this, the main research questions addressed in this dissertation are, (1) What attitudes and ideologies are at play among speakers of Fala? What effects can those attitudes and ideologies have on Fala? (2) Additionally, what are the attitudes and ideologies at play among academics who have researched Fala in the past and those who research it in the present? How could these attitudes and ideologies affect Fala? Because none of this has been done before, I hope this dissertation will help shed some light on the current status of Fala and what the future may hold for the language and its speakers.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2021.20210719070603184318.24

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