Here are a few examples of successful project topics from the
2014 and 2015 editions of LING001.
- Tracking
Taylor Swift's Evolution from Country Starlet to Pop
Superstar: "What are the linguistic differences in
Taylor Swift's new pop song, Blank Space, compared to her first
country single, Tim McGraw?"
- Yoruba Tone Perception in Context: "Native speakers
are not always able to distinguish isolated Yoruba words that
differ only in tone, but they recognize them accurately in
sentence context."
- The role of text and speech in the interpretation of
paraprosdokians: "A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech
in which the second part of a phrase causes the reader or
listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. In this
experiment, reaction time measures suggested that spoken cues
play an important role in the process."
- Rhoticity in the speech of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt: "Although TR and FDR came from similar
regional and socio-economic backgrounds, their life histories
were different: TR was a sickly child who was mostly home
schooled; FDR attended upper-class boarding schools where the
Transatlantic accent was the norm. This may explain why FDR's
recordings show only 'linking r', while TR has 21% rhoticity in
non-linking contexts."
- A comparative linguistic analysis of Broca's aphasia and
Wernicke's aphasia: "How are syntax, semantics, and
phonetics disrupted for people with Broca's and Wenicke's
aphasia, and how does this disruption affect the ways in which
they communicate?"
- The Linguistics of Death Metal -- "Of" in Behemoth and
Bloodbath: "I show that the frequency of the word of
is 10 times higher in Death Metal lyrics than in other genres of
popular music, and argue that this is due to subversive
imitation of Old Testament (King James Version) language."
- A Morphological and Pragmatic Investigation of the Michif
Language: "Analysis of a text written in Michif, an
indigenous Canadian language (of French and Cree origins),
clarifies the nature of Michif as a 'mixed language'."
- Association Between Nationality of Accent and the
Perception of Intelligence: "When given a neutral
statement, almost all listeners believed that the British accent
sounded more intelligent."
- Gender Differences in Disney Songs: "Males in this
sample of Disney songs are represented as having more advanced
vocabulary, and females are represented with more complex
sentence structure".
- 'They Said Xe Said': A Study of Non-binary Pronoun Usage
and its Effect on Conversation: "The goal of the
experiments was to determine whether the use of non-binary
pronouns detracts from casual conversation. The findings were
that they is easier to use but harder to understand,
while xe is the opposite; in either case the
difficulties are small and improve with practice."
- Linguistic Differences Between Dominican and Puerto Rican
Spanish: "I thought it would be interesting to compare
Dominican Spanish, which is often stigmatized, to Puerto Rican
Spanish, which is not criticized to the same extent although it
is similar in many ways to Dominican."
- The
Art of the Promo: CM Punk, a Linguist, and Cicero walk
into a bar...: "A promo is a monologue that attempts to
convince the audience to buy into a professional wrestler's
current persona and interactios. The larger the audience pop
(reaction), the more prestige that the wrestler achieves. Based
on a comparative study of two promos directed at the same
opponent by different wrestlers, I argue that the features of
effective WWE promos are closely paralleled by features of
Cicero's rhetoric."
- Pikey
and Shelta: A Socio-Linguistic, Phonologic, and
Pragmatic Analysis of Irish Traveller Linguistics in Guy
Richie's Snatch: The dominant language of the Irish
Traveller community, Shelta, features prominently in Guy Ritchie's
crime-comedy film Snatch (2000). The film features a Brad Pitt
character, Mickey O'Neil, who is an Irish Traveller (known as a
"pikey" in the film) who utilizes the Shelta language as his
character's dialect.
- Spells
and Stereotypes: The Gender Bias in Harry Potter's
Spells: The question I am asking in this paper is if
subversion of traditional gender roles is represented
linguistically in the films. In the magical world of Harry
Potter, the greatest source of power and action are the spells,
conjured by all experienced wizards and taught at the Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Do these spells and their
linguistic origins reflect this progressive vision of reversed
gender roles or will the female characters be restricted to
traditional definitions of a woman's place in society?
|
|