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Cardinal Scholar is the University Libraries Institutional Repository for archival and scholarly research produced at Ball State University.
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Item The only alternative: exploring the black experience at Ball State(2023-07)Within the confines of a Predominantly White Institution,1 many of the issues affecting underrepresented populations on campus are not acknowledged unless they are brought into the light by a major news outlet, protest, or tragedy. In the hopes of progressing with the student body, many universities in the late 1960s opted for Black cultural centers to help alleviate and address the stressors faced by those students and enacted change on campus to accommodate all students' needs better. At Ball State, this became the Multicultural Center. Once created, the platform would allow underrepresented student populations the funding and support to vocalize their needs and enact a cultural shift of positive progress in an academic setting. As time went on, the impact of Ball State’s Multicultural Center grew exponentially leading us to its significant presence on campus today in its newly unveiled building. Each student organization housed in the Center has been supported from meeting spaces to funding events, allowing a safe space for students to connect and grow. Throughout this research, I showcase stories about how the Center has allowed Black students to be their authentic selves. The presence of traditionally underrepresented groups in the heart of campus gives new life to the ongoing celebration of diversity on Ball State’s campus.Item A study of opioid abuse and related behaviors among U.S. teens in 2019(2023-05)Numerous sources report the United States is in an epidemic of substance abuse among all ages, including teenagers. Of particular concern is misuse of prescription pain relievers such as opioids, including but not limited to synthetics like Fentanyl. This report examines the relationship of opioid abuse and selected behaviors among high schoolers, such as alcohol and marijuana use, mental health issues, vaping, watching television, and bullying, and found most were statistically significant for opioid use. The data is from the U.S. CDC’s (Center for Disease Control) 2019 YRBS (Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System). Dichotomous logistic regression and ANOVA were used for statistical analysis.Item Use of degree and epistemic adverbs by low advanced english language learners in a corpus of speech(2023-05)This paper explores the use of degree and epistemic adverbs by 40 low-advanced English language learners. The data was collected at an Intensive English Program in a midwestern university (USA). This research focuses on a corpus of oral data, as opposed to previous studies which mostly focused on written data from L2 learners. The tokens found in the data were counted, then compared and analyzed in context following a list of specific adverbs. The list included two degree adverbs, very and really, and epistemic adverbs such as maybe, actually, probably, hopefully, unfortunately. Results showed a higher number of degree tokens than epistemic tokens by learners, suggesting difficulties to express stance at this level of proficiency. However, an analysis in context highlighted the use of different constructions with degree adverbs hinting at an attempt to take a stance with degree adverbs rather than epistemic adverbs. In parallel, epistemic tokens showed a use in context closer to hedging rather than taking a stance, hinting at the idea of a continuum (Payne 2013) between hedging and stance taking when it comes to the use of adverbs in English.Item The way the portal writes: the effect of the internet on language and genre in lockwood's no one is talking about this(2023-05)This essay argues that Patricia Lockwood’s 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This is a depiction of true events from the author’s life that have become fictionalized through the form and language of the novel, or the way of telling, which mimics that of the internet. I loosely define Lockwood’s depiction of the internet, or the “portal,” as a space containing a consciousness using a language, and it is with this language, which is extremely ironic, fragmentary, and incohesive, that the portal is able to consume the unnamed protagonist’s time, lived experiences, and identity. This both examines the genre of autofiction and attempts to locate a definition which best suits Lockwood’s novel, finally resting on a description of the genre that emphasizes its use of factual events within an otherwise fictional form or method of telling. Some of the poststructuralist concepts from Jacques Derrida, namely his popular claim “il n’y a pas de hors-text” and différance are introduced to further investigate the genre of autofiction and the word “portal,” as well as provide a framework for understanding language itself. The goal of this essay is to reveal how Lockwood’s novel depicts the language of the internet; how that language is perfectly suited to steal time, experience, and attention; how it uses personal information to create cartoons and even ghosts of its users, potentially opening them up to a kind of violence veiled in humor; and, how the language of the internet can successfully fictionalize true events from a person’s life.Item Lexical variation for four American sign language signs, all of which mean all(2023-05)American Sign Language (ASL) is a spatial visual language (Stokoe, 1960) and like all languages, has variation based on geographical regional, age, ethnicity, (Lucas et. al., 2003). In addition, variation patterns can be related to language-internal syntactic variation (MacDonald, 2013) and speaker demographics. This study investigated the lexical variation of the four ASL signs that convey the information by the English ALL and what might be driving this choice. This study includes 20 native ASL users with three types of data collection: language elicitation, opinion about their language choice, and acceptability of substituting one of the other variations: ALLwrap, ALLglide, ALLarea, ALLbounce. The data suggests that the spatial characteristics of the noun explains the overarching pattern for the variant choice, although age and regional variation might be driving some of the variant choice. This study adds to the understanding of language variation within ASL and seems to be the first of its kind to conduct this study which has implications for future study on language change and language development.
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