How Language and Stereotypes Affect the Help-Seeking Behaviors of Victims of Female-on-Female Sexual Assault

While much attention has been paid to the experiences of the female victims of male-perpetrated sexual assault, relatively little attention has been paid to the experiences of female-on-female sexual assault. However, female-on-female sexual assault can and does occur within lesbian and queer communities. What literature there is on the topic demonstrates that gender stereotypes, as well as stereotypes about the lesbian and queer communities, play a role in the decision process to seek help. This paper seeks to analyze the role of language and stereotypes in the help-seeking behaviors of victims of female-on-female sexual assault, using Relational Frame Theory as a framework.

Examining the Complex Relationships of Early Intervention on Language and Psychosocial Development in Families Facing Multiple Risks with a Focus on Children of Hispanic Immigrants

Abundant research has shown that poverty has negative influences on young child academic and psychosocial development, and unfortunately, disparities in school readiness between low and high income children can be seen as early the first year of life. The largest federal early care and education intervention for these vulnerable children is Early Head Start (EHS). To diminish these disparate child outcomes, EHS seeks to provide community based flexible programming for infants and toddlers and their families. Given how relatively recent these programs have been offered, little is known about the nuances of how EHS impacts infant and toddler language and psychosocial development. Using a framework of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) this paper had 5 goals: 1) to characterize the associations between domain specific and cumulative risk and child outcomes 2) to validate and explore these risk-outcome associations separately for Children of Hispanic immigrants (COHIs), 3) to explore relationships among family characteristics, multiple environmental factors, and dosage patterns in different EHS program types, 4) to examine the relationship between EHS dosage and child outcomes, and 5) to examine how EHS compliance impacts child internalizing and externalizing behaviors and emerging language abilities. Results of the current study showed that risks were differentially related to child outcomes. Poor maternal mental health was related to child internalizing and externalizing behaviors, but not related to emerging child language skills. Although child language skills were not related to maternal mental health, they were related to economic hardship. Additionally, parent level Spanish use and heritage orientation were associated with positive child outcomes. Results also showed that these relationships differed when COHIs and children with native-born parents were examined separately. Further, unique patterns emerged for EHS program use, for example families who participated in home-based care were less likely to comply with EHS attendance requirements. These findings provide tangible suggestions for EHS stakeholders: namely, the need to develop effective programming that targets engagement for diverse families enrolled in EHS programs.

Conceptual Decolonization of Space: Worldview and Language in Anishinaabe Akiing

This dissertation examines the role of worldview and language in the cultural framework of American Indian people. In it I develop a theory of worldview which can be defined as an interrelated set of logics that orients a culture to space (land), time, the rest of life, and provides a prescription for understanding that life. Considering the strong links between language and worldview, it is methodologically necessary to focus on a particular language and culture to decolonize concepts of and relationships to land. In particular, this dissertation focuses on an Anishinaabe worldview as consisting of four components, which are; (1) an intimate relationship to a localized space; (2) a cyclical understanding of time; (3) living in a web of relatedness with all life, and (4) understanding the world around us in terms of balance. The methodological approach draws from Anishinaabemowin, the traditional Anishinaabe language, as a starting place for negotiating a linguistic-conceptual analysis of these logics to decolonize the understandings of land, time, relatedness and balance. This dissertation helps to demonstrate that the religious language as codified in the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution as religious freedom is unable to carry the meaning of the fundamental relationships to land that are embedded in Anishinaabemowin and culture. I compare the above Anishinaabe worldview to that of the eurowestern culture in America, which is; (1) the domination of space; (2) a linear progression of time; (3) a hierarchical organization of life; and (4) understanding the world as a Manichean battle of good versus evil. This dissertation seeks to decolonize American Indian translational methodologies and undermine the assumptions of eurowestern cultural universality.

Eits: Combinatorics, Potential and Genre

Eits is a work of fiction, a non-traditional novel whose structure is largely determined by an Oulipian-style constraint. The constraint in Eits is culled from the album names and song titles of the band Explosions in the Sky. Each album corresponds to a chapter in the novel, and the language of each album title must be used in some way as an introduction to each chapter. Within each chapter (album), song titles correspond to numbered sections where each title must appear as is in the first sentence of that section. This not only dictates, to some degree, the direction of the text that will follow, but, looking ahead, the title of the next section will dictate where this section must arrive. From this, a narrative naturally takes shape. Albums/chapters appear chronologically, according to each album's release date, and within each album/chapter, songs/sections appear in the order they do on the album. This is, perhaps, the most straightforward way of ordering the received language of the constraint, the possibilities beyond this exponential. Eits is a novel that shifts in form, providing a texture to the space and reading experience of the novel, all in hopes of creating a space in which content and form inform and push each other to new limits. Eits is never satisfied to settle on one form for too long, and it is in the movement between forms that the narrative develops in interesting ways. Eits demonstrates the combinatoric possibilities inherent in language, and this exploration of potential highlights the reciprocal relationship between writing and reading. As Eits builds upon a limited language set, it explores and exploits the combinatory possibilities that language allows for both writer and reader. It demonstrates that all combinatoric potentialities, visible or not, always co-exist in the same time and space, and in this infinite space, individuals are invited to be writers and readers in simultaneity.