Translanguaging research among multilingual students has received considerable attention across different contexts of practice. The most robust contexts in translanguaging research have been the classroom contexts between teacher and students. This study examined the affordances of translanguaging spaces "between class sessions" in…

In this three-paper dissertation project, I explore how 'English' becomes a recognizable object within the context of adult ESOL education. Building on scholarship on named languages (Garcia, 2019; Makoni & Pennycook, 2006), the historical construction of languages (Bonfiglio, 2010; Irvine & Gal, 2000), and raciolinguistic ideologies…

Neoliberalism has become the hegemonic rationality of our time, framing nearly every aspect of our social world in terms of competition. This dissertation sheds light on neoliberal infiltration and naturalization within the field of language education through three distinct but interrelated papers. "In Discourses of Dual Language Bilingual…

The nature of this research study examines the relationship between text-talking and writing skills used by American Sign Language (ASL) and English speakers. When given ample opportunity to text-talk in academic settings, it is likely that students will improve their expressive communication and writing skills. The main research question asks:…

"Service-learning" (SL) is an experiential pedagogy that engages students in working for, with, and in communities in need. While prior research has explored the effects of SL on second language (L2) users' (perceived) language development (e.g., Gaugler & Matheus, 2019), intercultural awareness (e.g., Sa´nchez-Naranjo, 2021), and…

This dissertation provides an in-depth linguistic description and analysis of the discourse in a target domain of digital games, a domain referred to as "single player offline role-playing games." Gaming discourse from this domain is represented by a 4.8-million-word corpus of spoken and written language extracted from the digital files…

The employment of genre-based pedagogy and Task-Based Language Teaching in second language education is representative of a paradigmatic shift towards a focus on meaning-making. Despite this shift, second language acquisition (SLA) research continues to predominantly rely on complexity, accuracy, and fluency metrics to assess learner production…

In the United States, adult education for emergent multilingual language learners (EMLL) is governed by the American Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA). The AEFLA defines literacy as an individual's ability to read, write, and speak in "English." This definition erases the multilingual and multicultural assets that adult EMLLs…

Language is a tool for communication. People use it when they converse with each other. One way to comprehend what is being said is based on understating the intended meanings of the conversation, or what is called the underlined meanings (pragmatics). Pragmatic studies how different meanings are conveyed, depending on the utterances provided. A…

Successful reference relies on being appropriately informative for listeners. What factors influence informativeness? For example, what factors influence the decision to refer to a ball with the less informative phrase "it," as opposed to the more informative phrase "the red ball"? The present dissertation proposes and…

Studies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) indicate that the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the academic writing of second language learners improves the overall quality of these texts by contributing to their cohesion and comprehensibility (Saif Modhish 2012; Jalilifar 2008; Intaraprawat & Steffensen 1995). However, despite the…

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-medium schools where their bilingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. Research suggests this is harmful for students, but little empirical work has examined how teachers in English-dominant schools can support students' biliteracy. To address this problem, this qualitative…

Drawing on theories from Applied Linguistics research, this doctoral dissertation brings together European perspectives on "language," "identity," and "voice" in an examination of English as the international language of science (EILS). Using the theoretical frame of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST), each of the chapters…

With an increase in multilingual learners in U.S. public schools, there is an imperative to understand the language practices, ideologies, and pedagogies within culturally and linguistically sustaining heritage language programs inside schools. Building on principles of translanguaging as a theory of practical language (Garcia, 2009; Li, 2018),…

Previous studies show that linguistic information and talker information interact during processing. Familiarity with a language facilitates talker processing, and familiarity with a talker's voice facilitates linguistic processing. To probe the factors involved in talker processing, researchers examined how individual differences in reading…