Character Amnesia: The Sociolinguistic Implications of Writing Fluency With Mandarin Chinese Speakersby Chloe Dillon (Undergraduate) Since the 21st century, numerous Chinese speakers have been struggling with illiteracy in their language, primarily due to forgetting how to write Chinese characters. This phenomenon, otherwise known as “character amnesia” (提笔忘字) has resulted from multiple different factors such as technology, the orthographic system, and pinyin (拼音). Chinese culture views Chinese characters not just as their writing system, but as ancient Chinese art and history. This paper will illustrate how character amnesia has impacted Chinese culture and whether Mandarin speakers view this phenomenon as positive or negative. The research conducted through interviews in this article reveals that (not available yet). This article will also suggest a few of the future outcomes of character amnesia for the Chinese language and Chinese speakers. |
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Lexical Polysemy and Gradability of "Salvation" in Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christian Contextsby Kailyn Spitler (Undergraduate) The present study investigated the lexical polysemy of the lexeme "salvation," specifically within Eastern Orthodox Christian and Protestant Christian communities. This study was conducted in two methodological stages using surveys and interviews. Surveys sought to quantitatively identify and confirm various usages of the term "salvation" and compare the uses between the two groups being investigated. Twelve surveys were collected from each group and usages were tagged manually based upon a developing rubric. Once all usages were tagged, the proportion of each usage between the two groups was collected and quantified. Open ended responses to the survey were analyzed inductively in order to assess and investigate patterns. In the second stage of research, interviews were conducted with members of each group who had completed a survey. The individual participants were asked specifically about the usages being investigated and their perceptions of them as a form of member checking and refining conclusions from the research. There was substantial difference in the broadness of the semantic ranges of each group– in the senses used (exemplified by the verbal contexts in which each group used "salvation"), the relationship to time, and the gradability of "salvation" as an adjective. These findings were discussed further in regard to prototype theory and how the contexts of use create various degrees of gradability for ‘salvation’. Further research should be done with a larger sample size to further investigate the corporate versus individual senses, as well as investigating other terms shared by these two groups. |
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Discovering Clara McMillan's Commonplace Book and Creative Writingby Emma Bapst (Undergraduate), Madison Kennedy (Undergraduate) As a daughter of Cedarville’s life writing author, Martha McMillan, Clara McMillan often assumed the duties of recording the happenings of Cedarville in Martha’s journals while her mother was away. Her handwriting appears in a number of journals, including the 1889 volume that I partially transcribed in 2024. However, due to a significant discovery, Clara’s literary journal has been recovered from a barn on what used to be the McMillan property. This journal contains stories that Clara adapted and recorded from writers such as Edward Everett Hale and Margaret Mantel Merrill. While Clara copied many stories, the research team and I have discovered that a select few of these stories are Clara’s original products. Featuring short stories and poems, this journal contains traces of a historic creative writer in Cedarville, and I propose to examine how these masterful literary pieces reflect Cedarville’s culture in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Because one of the stories involves a local commencement ceremony, students of Cedarville University and members of the Cedarville Village community can relate to Clara’s works. Studying these pieces from Clara’s literary journal gives Cedarville students and villagers an example of a woman who, through pieces of creative writing and literary recordings, captures the essence of not only Cedarville culture, but also American culture at large during this time period of history. |
Creation, Exile, and Divine Authority: a Wendell Berry Critique of Frankensteinby Addie Olson (Undergraduate) This paper examines the character of Frankenstein from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in light of Wendell Berry’s essay titled “The Gift of Good Land.” Examining the interactions between these two works reveals the ways in which Frankenstein fails as a creator. This paper first explores Berry’s definitions of hubris, propriety, charity, and stewardship. Frankenstein demonstrates an excess of hubris which remains unchecked by propriety, in part due to his habit of isolation. As Frankenstein dictates his childhood education, discloses his inward desire for glory and authority over life and death. According to Berry, propriety governs and guides hubris. Frankenstein, however, deliberately chooses hubris as he begins to create life. In this process, he deliberately isolates himself from human community. Frankenstein’s lack of propriety then leads him to exhibit a selective charity, directly antithetical to Berry’s definition. This selective charity is revealed through Frankenstein’s emphasis on outward appearances, as well as his abandonment of his creature. Not only does this highlight Frankenstein’s failure as a creator, but it also furthers the theme of isolation. This is because Berry’s definition of charity relies on stewardship as the practical exercise of that charity. Frankenstein’s selective charity and lack of stewardship causes him to experience exile from both his creation and fellow humans. By leaning into hubris, Frankenstein eliminates his ability to exercise propriety. This in turn prevents him from showing charity to others, without which he cannot steward creation. Ultimately, Frankenstein’s decisions isolate him from humanity as he steps out of his role as creation into that of creator. Shelley’s influential novel explores questions such as how to be a creator and what one’s role is. Berry’s essay then provides the God-centered solution with Shelley lacks. |
Language Choice in Coffeeshops: A Sociolinguistic Case Study in Berlin, Germanyby Angela Lee (Undergraduate) Research shows that culture, politics, and immigration affect languages (Ahmed, 2024; Francis & Ryan, 1998; Stein, 1989; Ben-Said, 2019; Gorter, Marten, & Van Mensel, 2013; Holm, 2013; Özcan, 2016; Papen, 2012). The international urban setting of Berlin, Germany is a hub for business, engineering, and academia, giving it a diverse community. This study examines the potential influence of lingua franca English (LFE) on the Berlin by analyzing public discourse in third wave coffeeshops, contextualized by neighborhood graffiti in the districts of Kreuzberg, Mitte, and Charlottenburg. Field observations recorded data on two different days per location; public discourse was subsequently transferred into digital notes on Microsoft Excel, capturing participant first language, participant second language, participant age, participant gender, significant utterances. Data analysis considered sociolinguistic factors such as code-switching, adjacency pairs, and politeness and ethnolinguistic factors such as demographics and public policy. Preliminary findings suggest that individuals typically respond in the language they are greeted with, regardless of their preferred language with companions. Additionally, the ratio of men to women mirrored the ratio of English to German speakers across all three districts. The results reflected a significant influence of LFE on Berlin as seen in a select public sphere. |
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Belief and Skepticism in a Cross Pressured Cosmos – A Postsecular Analysis of The X-Files Pilotby Shay Spargo (Undergraduate) This paper is a theoretical literary analysis of the pilot episode of the 1990s science fiction series, The X-Files, exploring the dynamics of belief and skepticism through the terms and concepts developed by Charles Taylor, especially in his pivotal work, A Secular Age. Taylor argues that the modern age is characterized by a complex relationship between belief and doubt and the struggle to rediscover the missing transcendent; this paper explores this struggle in a science fiction narrative, as the terms and concepts of science fiction, including extraterrestrial activity and paranormal phenomena can be used as stand-ins for the concept of the transcendent within the framework of observable science and empiricism. |
Into Which Circle of Hell Would Dante Put the Plagiarists? A Study of the Moral Language of Plagiarism Policies at American Universitiesby Dr. Stephen Schuler (Faculty) This paper uses Dante’s moral distinction between theft and other forms of fraud to query the ways in which American universities typically explain to students why plagiarism is wrong. Having done a survey of academic integrity policies at 46 American universities, including 22 avowedly Christian universities, I reveal that secular universities tend to describe plagiarism as a form of theft, though these universities often avoid using moral language to characterize the issue at all. Most Christian universities I surveyed did, however, use moral language to describe plagiarism, and they tended to characterize plagiarism not so much in terms of theft but as a form of deceit. I contend that these Christian schools are right to do so. Plagiarism should be described in explicitly moral terms, but defining it primarily or exclusively as theft—a form of property crime—leaves some obvious loopholes. If plagiarism is merely a form of theft, then it is not obvious why a student should be penalized for submitting a paper that he or she purchased from somebody else, or why self-plagiarism is unacceptable. The better way to define plagiarism is to characterize it as deceit, forgery, and fraud. Doing so not only closes loopholes but also provides a coherent moral framework for discussing plagiarism in a university context. |
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Singable Translations: Prosody as the Missing Link between Natural-Sounding Poetry Translations and the Proper Song Settingsby Darby Schmidt (Undergraduate) As linguistic prosody is the poetic music of everyday speech, it is no surprise that scholars have long assumed that linguistic prosody should influence words as they are sung. This research investigates the relationship between words and their musical settings by asking whether a higher prosaic alignment between linguistic and musical prosody has predictive value for the singability of a song. The researcher investigates the question by comparing contemporary worship songs originally written in both English and Italian with songs that were translated from English to Italian. The lyrics of each song in the corpus were read aloud in a natural speech pattern and recorded for analysis in PRAAT, an open-source speech analysis software. The linguistic prosody data (duration, dB, and Hz) from the speech samples were used as the foundation for interdisciplinary transcriptions of speech pitch on a musical staff and compared to the musical settings for each. The degree of alignment between stressed syllables and stressed musical notes was compared across the three song categories (English original, Italian original, and English-to-Italian translated). The quantitative data from the alignment of syllable stress and pitch to the respective melody in original vs. translated settings is coupled with a qualitative assessment of the translation quality from the Italian research informant. The researcher hopes that an analytical approach to prosaic relationships between texts and their song settings such as this one could be an invaluable tool for translators working to translate or re-set songs for an under-researched language group. A proper understanding of song translation theory and the relationship between linguistic and musical prosody could be key to the ability to consistently set natural, aesthetic, and emotion-filled poetry to music that complements the lyrics rather than fighting them. |
