دکتر بهزاد رهبر

This research, conducted using an analytical-descriptive approach, aimed to address the following questions: Is the conceptual metaphor theory effective in explaining the conceptual structure of the "Surah Mosabbahat" in the Holy Quran? And is the theory of conceptual blending networks effective in explaining the conceptual structure of the "Surah Mosabbahat" in the Holy Quran? In this article, an attempt was made to analyze and examine the selected first six verses of Surah Hadid, which is one of the five Mosabbahat Surahs in the Holy Quran, all of which are related to a theological subject, as cognitive components in the process of conceptualizing the Quranic verses. The results of this research demonstrated that from a cognitive semantics perspective, the application of conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending network theory using Fauconnier and Turner's four-dimensional network pattern could be effective in explaining the conceptual structure of Quranic components and revealing hidden meanings within the structure of Quranic verses. This could influence the perspective and worldview of the audience, providing a comprehensive understanding of the verses at the human level, facilitating their comprehension. The results of this research could be beneficial in literary analysis, Quranic studies, and the field of cognitive linguistics.

Reading is one of the essential skills that non-Persian learners must acquire. This study examines the impact of the "Cause and Effect" strategy on enhancing the reading skills of beginner non-Persian learners at Al-Mustafa International University. This strategy helps learners recognize logical relationships between sentences and concepts, thereby strengthening analytical thinking and text comprehension.This research employed an experimental-interventional design using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology. A total of 50 beginner Persian learners were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. The experimental group received an eight-week structured intervention focusing on the "Cause and Effect" strategy. Pre-test and post-test assessments were conducted using the standard reading comprehension test developed by the International Center for Persian Language Education (ICLPE) at Allameh Tabatabaee University.The results of the covariance analysis (ANCOVA) indicated that applying the "Cause and Effect" strategy significantly improved the overall reading skill scores. Notable progress was observed in general text comprehension, practical text comprehension, specialized texts, and information matching. However, no significant improvement was found in concept analysis, inference, and text completion. These findings suggest that this strategy can be an effective pedagogical approach in teaching Persian reading skills to non-Persian learners.

The purpose of the present article is to provide a new and practical definition for idioms and collocations, based on syntactic criteria, not merely semantic. One of the important criteria for distinguishing these two types of phrases (idioms and collocations) is the flexibility of their constituent elements. Idioms and collocations have not yet been studied within a syntactic approach. According to Construction Grammar, idioms were analyzed based on four syntactic tests: "passivization", "clefting", "dislocation" and "interrogation". Construction Grammar is a set of cognitive grammars that considers construction as a symbolic unit consisting of form and meaning poles. Two hundred idioms were analyzed. These idioms were collected from two main sources, namely The Colloquial Persian Dictionary (Abolhassan Najafi, 2008) and The Two-volume Dictionary of Kenayat-e Sokhan (Hassan Anvari, 2019). The four constructions of each idiom were judged syntactically by 15 people as research participants. The meanings of some of these constructions showed that the syntactic flexibility of all idioms is not the same. Some idioms were flexible to syntactic changes and therefore behaved similarly to collocations. The flexibility of idioms led to the introduction of a new definition of these types of phrases based on syntactic criteria. Thus, such phrases were considered a kind of collocation, not an idiom. In other words, those lexical phrases were called idioms which were inflexible to these syntactic constructions.

The misrepresentation or non-representation of the role of both genders in language teaching materials reflects gender bias and can reproduce gender stereotypes in language learners. The present study investigates how gender is represented in AZFA educational materials, written by authors outside Iran and authors inside Iran.In this study, the book Persian of Iran Today - Introductory Course of Persian Language Teaching, Volume1 written by Shahsavari and Atwood (2015), from AZFA educational materials published outside Iran, was examined. To compare with this book, the First Step - in learning Persian, beginner level (1938) written by Sahraei, Marsous And Malekloo, from the AZFA  educational materials published in Iran, was analyzed. Both books were selected at the same beginner level to ensure a valid comparison.

In cognitive linguistics, conceptualization plays an important role in discovering the meaning. From the point of view of Lakoff and Johnson, conceptual metaphors are not only linguistic matters, but also thought mechanisms whose representation can be studied not only in language but also in social behavior and culture. The purpose of this research, which was carried out by analytical-descriptive method, was to answer this question: To what extent is the theory of conceptual metaphor effective in religious texts? In this article, with the help of metaphor theory, we have tried to understand the concept of Surah al- Juma, which is one of the five surahs of the Holy Qur'an, called Mosabbahat, because this surah is based on two main and fundamental axes, first, monotheism and divine attributes, and the purpose of the mission of the Prophet of Islam, Ma'ad and also emphasize the importance of the issue of Friday prayer, The results show that from the perspective of cognitive semantics, the application of conceptual metaphor theory using the two-domain model of destination and origin of Lakoff and Johnson can be effective in explaining the conceptual structure of Quranic components and the meanings hidden in the structure of Quranic verses. to reveal and in this way influence the attitude and worldview of the audience and provide a general insight into a human scale to facilitate the understanding of the verses. The results of this research can be useful in literary analysis and Quranic research and in the field of cognitive linguistics.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate non-manual features (NMF) that convey politeness in Iranian sign language. The data was collected through interviews with 18 deaf people (including nine men, and nine women), and six hard-of-hearing women from Tehran, Zanjan, and Anzali. All the participants used the Iranian sign language and were of different ages and educational levels. The questions of this research are in the field of three speech acts requesting, rejecting, and apologizing. Non-manual features are a complex aspect of all sign languages and perform a range of grammatical and paralinguistic functions, and the second is highlighted in this study. For linguistic analysis, sign orders and the type of words were used first, and then the use of non-manual features with each sign was checked. According to the findings of this research, to convey politeness / impoliteness through Iranian sign language, it is not enough to use signs, and NMF complements the meaning. Non-manual features include movement of the body, head, eyes and eyebrows, lips, chin and nose. The data from this study shows that the movements of the body, head, eyebrow, eyes, and mouth gestures are crucial in every three speech acts. Results show that Squint is the most used NMF across requests, Side tilt is the most used NMF across rejections and polite pucker has the highest frequency of NMFs in apologies in the Iranian Sign Language. The type and extent of use of these NMFs are context-dependent. Distribution of these NMFs depends on context: formal or informal and the variety of functions. This research proved that non-manual features act as the equivalent of prosodic in the Iranian Sign language. The results of this research can help sociologists understand the culture of the deaf community, sign language researchers understand linguistic factors, and translators provide fluent translation

Based on Lakoff and Johnson’s cognitive framework, metaphor is considered is a key way humans perceive concepts in the universe. The aim of the present research was to study the effects of animal names on native Turkish speakers and the implicational meanings of the words. Turkish speakers derive metaphoric meanings by comparing humans and surrounding events to these entities. Based on interviews with 30 native speakers, 93 words were collected, 22 of which were common and reflected Turkish cultural views. First, the implicational meanings of these 22 words were extracted and listed in a table alongside each animal’s name. Then for each word, the explanation was given according to some examples and poems from Turkish reference books. In addition, the study examined the subjects of gender, frequency, and percentage in these metaphors. The results indicated that animal names influence the speech of native Turkish speakers, who use these metaphoric words daily in appropriate contexts.

The emergence and spread of the new coronavirus known as COVID-19, which has affected various aspects of life in human societies since early 2020, has also been widely reflected in various media around the world and has led to the emergence of discourses, a significant portion of which is based on metaphor. Our aim in this research is to examine the role of conceptual metaphors in creating a culture of fear in the discourse surrounding the coronavirus with a cognitive and critical approach. The research, based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) and within the framework of critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004), seeks to answer two fundamental questions: 1. How do metaphors contribute to the formation of a culture of fear regarding the coronavirus? 2. What function do metaphors play in shaping COVID-19 discourse and the culture of fear?Since the appearance of COVID-19 and its global spread, studies have been conducted on various dimensions of the disease. Linguistic researchers have also studied the conceptualization of the disease and its reflection in media. Mozaheb and Shahiditabar (2020) have found that the most common source domains used in Iranian online media for conceptualizing the coronavirus are: enemy, barrier, path, movement, crisis, fortress, physical experiences, and body parts. Yalsharzeh and Monsefi (2020) have found that the Ministry of Health in Iran has used Concepts based on the religious-revolutionary ideology and the Iran-Iraq war to confront the coronavirus. Javid and Rahimian (2021) have examined the differences in the metaphorical conceptualization of the coronavirus in the headlines of two Iranian newspapers, Etemad and Iran, and found that metaphorical domains such as vehicle, human, animal, disaster, obstacle, sword, object, commodity, competition, living being, force, place, war, event, game, and opportunity were common in both newspapers. At the global level, numerous studies have been conducted on the linguistic dimensions of the coronavirus discourse. Wicke and Bolognesi (2020) have examined the conceptualization of the coronavirus and the discussion of its pandemic on Twitter and found that the words and terms related to the "war" conceptual domain play a significant role in shaping the discourse of the coronavirus. Chaiuk and Dunaievska (2020) have shown that British newspapers, using metaphorical interpretations, have depicted the coronavirus as a deadly creature which is approaching Britain and will engulf the country like a tsunami.

The research data consists of excerpts from the titles or texts of news published on the Hamshahri newspaper's website during a four-month period from the beginning of February 2020 to the end of June 2020, in which the coronavirus has been conceptualized by war metaphors. These metaphorical expressions, obtained through keyword search (such as corona, COVID, COVID-19, virus, pandemic), amount to 350 cases and have been analyzed based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and within the framework of critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004).

The research findings indicate that the conceptual domain of war is one of the most commonly used metaphorical domains to describe the coronavirus. In the discourse of the Hamshahri newspaper, the conceptual metaphor ‘corona is the enemy’ has played a central and fundamental role in conceptualizing the coronavirus and related issues and events. This conceptual metaphor entails multiple metaphorical implications, including the following:- Medical centers are the front line of the war against the enemy; Medical staff (doctors, nurses, etc.) are the soldiers (fighters, warriors); The highest responsible authority is the commander of the war;Medical interventions and activities are military operations;  Recovery from the coronavirus is defeating the enemy.

In response to the first question, it must be said that metaphors always highlight some aspects of reality while hide others. What is highlighted in the metaphors of war is the critical nature of the conditions and the intensity of the existential damage that is inflicted on society. Additionally, the necessity of unity and earnest effort to combat the disease is another aspect that is highlighted in this metaphor. Therefore, war metaphors make the audience feel so fearful and anxious that they perceive their ordinary and daily life as a dangerous battle with a deadly enemy, which they may encounter at any time and place.In response to the second question, it should be noted that war metaphors have both cognitive and persuasive functions and, in addition to rationality, they influence the emotions of the audience. The metaphor 'Coronavirus is the enemy' uses various concepts from the war domain, which is a familiar and experienced concept for Iranians, and by employing religious elements that are also prevalent in the discourse of imposed war (such as martyrdom, sacrifice, jihad), it serves the dual functions of argumentation and emotion, accompanying the rationality and emotions of the audience.

Considering the role and importance of tense recognition in language learning the aim of the current study is to investigate the types of cues used to recognize the grammatical tense by Arabic-speaking Persian learners at the beginner and advanced levels. The relationship between the understanding of the time of Persian sentences and gender, as well as the relationship between the understanding of tense and the first language of Persian learners, has also been investigated. This research was conducted based on the lexical precedence principle of the input processing theory of VanPatten (2015). The participants of the research, who were selected as available random sampling, were 53 Arabic-speaking Persian learners who were divided into two groups, beginners and advanced based on their level. The instruments used in this research were two tests in two stages; in the first stage, using the sentence recognition test, the subjects marked the tense of the sentences they heard in the answer sheet, and in the second stage, the same test was performed; with the difference that in this test, the sentences did not have time adverbs. The findings of this research show that beginner learners use both lexical cues and verbal inflections in recognizing the tense of a sentence; but in most cases, their choice is only one of the cues. This is while advanced level subjects simultaneously use two lexical cues and verbal inflection. Regarding gender, the results showed that there is no significant relationship between gender and the ability to understand sentence time.

The present article deals with the study of polysemy of the verb /bǝrin/ 'Cutting', /sǝzyân/ 'Burning', as action verbs in kalhori Kurdish dialect based on cognitive semantic approach. Data collection was done in a library-field manner. The linguistic corpus used in this research includes common sentences, proverbs and works of Kalhori Kurdish poets. By examining the data based on the concepts of cognitive semantics, 35 meanings were identified for the verb /bǝrin/, 11 meanings for the verb / sǝzyân / were identified. Semantic relationships between these verbs were examined, the collocation of action verbs with organs was seen in two Kalhori kurdish verbs. The collocation of these verb with the essential components, including the organs of the body, with special words in the Kurdish dialect of kalhori, has a great effect on conveying the meaning of the verbs. The action verbs in question did not have a common meaning with the "head" member, have had an impact. Among these two verbs /bǝrin/ has the highest number of meanings and the most idiomatic usage.

In semantics cognitive of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphor is one of the abstract conceptions of thought and language. Metaphor is an active process in cognitive system and is one of the main ways of human perceptions from surrounding environment. This research is to explaine the available concepts of Turkish speakers in using flowers in daily conversatios and specify their views to these concepts and phenomenons of flowers names, also their sourse and destination domain. The data of this research was collected by interviewing from 30 Turkish speakers which finally 13 useful flowers names were considered and their sourse and destination domains were presented; also, the cultural attitude of the speakers towards the names of the flowers was shown through conceptualization and categorization by drawing diagrams. The research findings indicate that the names of the flowers have entered the Turkish language and speakers use them to describe someone or something metaphorically; so that the use of these words has a relatively higher frequency of occurrence compared to other natural phenomena. This research can be useful for linguists, translators of Turkish to Persian languages and vice versa, poets and writers.

Autism, first introduced by Bleuler (1940) and later developed by Kanner (1940), is a neurodevelopmental disorder that poses challenges in communication for autistic individuals, hindering their social interactions and activities. Autism encompasses cognitive and linguistic difficulties, with genetics believed to be a contributing factor. Symptoms often become evident between 18 to 36 months of age. Autistic individuals commonly struggle with verbal and non-verbal communication, social interaction, and other activities. Communication difficulties are a core characteristic of autism, with approximately 50% of autistic individuals being unable to use language for communication. A notable trait is the avoidance of the pronoun "I," and the repetition of words and phrases, known as 'echolalia.' There is a wide spectrum of language development among autistic individuals, ranging from those who never speak to those who exhibit slow comprehension despite fluent speech. This spectrum includes both mild and severe forms of autism, with some severely affected individuals being non-verbal or having echolalia. Milder cases learn language but tend to use words and expressions based on their own perspectives, making simple conversations challenging. The speech performance of autistic individuals has been a subject of controversy in psychology, as their appearance is often similar to non-autistic individuals, making it difficult for families to recognize and accept their children's challenges. This lack of recognition can lead to frustration for parents, who may not receive the verbal and practical affection they need.

Evaluating political speeches and analyzing their content is very important. The aim of this research is the linguistic analysis of the text of Trump's speech from the point of view of the types of process (verb) based on the experiential metafunction framework of the systematic functional grammar instruction of Halliday and Matthiessen(2004). The present is of descriptive-analytical type. In this way, the text of Trump's speech is presented in the form of six material, mental, relational, verbal,and existential processes, classification and model of the processes. The obtained results show that out of a total of 212 observation processes material process has the highest frequency with (62.7%) of the incidents, which is completely in line with the content of Trump's speech and his harsh words. It highlights Iran's efforts to develop ballistic missiles. It also refers to the sanctions and actions it will take against Iran by using the material process. , relational (13/3%), verbal (10.3%), mental (7%), existential (7.5%) and behavioral (1%).

Persian is a Pro-Drop language and allows omission of subjective pronouns. In the present research the use of such pronouns in spoken and written varieties of standard Persian is compared to each other. The data of spoken Persian is gathered from HamBam Corpus of Contemporary Spoken Persian, interviews of oral history projects (Harvard and Artebox), and the talks of Iranian parliament (Majlis). The data for the written variety is gathered from the Persian Syntactic Dependency Treebank. Using corpus-based methods, the study showed that there is no prominent difference in using pronouns in the two varieties. It also indicated that more than half of the pronouns in the spoken Persian emerged as subject; whereas it is no more than one third in the written variety. This means that while talking, the speaker uses subjective pronouns mostly to underscore the subject. The results of this research might be useful for Persian word order studies, those of teaching Persian to non-Persians, and exploring discourse elements of spoken Persian.

This study examins the effect of social status on politness in apologetic discourse based on politeness model of (Brown & Levinson 1987-1978). The research method was quantitative and qualitative and data collection was done by sending a questionnaire electronically to students. The Questionnaire (DCT) assessed apology strategies for 12 common mistakes in the community. Research participants included a limited number of students from Al-Zahra Campus, Elmi Karbordi University of Jihad and Khaneh kargar in Zanjan. Analyzing the collected responses of 44 female and 62 male students, the results showed that, people use more negative politeness strategy in expressing apology. Analyzing the effect of social status on using politeness strategies showed in all three positions of social status; Equally, higher position and lower position, people use more negative politeness strategy. The results also showed that the use of politeness strategies in compensating for mistakes depends on the type of mistake made and people use the best apology strategy that can compensate the mistake made. The results of the study did not show a significant difference between gender and the use of politeness strategy.

Research in Persian grammar books and representing their ways of expression and teaching following new educational theories can open the way for grammar writing and scientific education. The purpose of this research is evaluation the educational prose in Persian grammar books based on its communicative Competence. In this research, the data was collected in the form of a library, which was done by examining 9 Persian grammar books. Data analysis was carried out in a descriptive-analytical way and by designing reviews based on the approach of applied linguistics and teaching instruction. Based on this, the characteristics of each of the basic theories were extracted and numbered as an index so that the findings can be inserted in front of them. According to the findings of the present research: Persian grammar books are written according to the structuralist or formalist descriptive order and in an analogical way. In none of them teaching grammar indicators such as context-oriented, considering form and meaning and function, concept-oriented, task-oriented, production-oriented, and paying attention to speech types, have not been the teaching criteria. In this text, the emphasis is on linguistic knowledge; No communication skills. According to this study, Persian grammar is not written based on the corpus of linguistic data.

The present study analyzed and described the process of coining new words and terms related to the Corona disease, which has recently been faced by the international community. Official news agencies and websites in both Persian and English languages, such as IRNA, ISNA, Khabar Online, BBC and CNN, were the most important sources of data collection. In addition, some online dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Longman, Cambridge and Urban were used. The factors of age, gender and level of education were not considered in the present study, and the research method was descriptive-analytical as well. Word-formation processes for the research data, which consisted of 152 words and terms, included derivation, compounding, compounding and derivation, coinage, abbreviation, shortening, acronym, blending, and borrowing. Then the coined phrases (syntactic groups) were classified into two types of noun and adjective. The findings showed that the formation of syntactic groups with 72% and the process of blending with 33% had the highest percentage of occurrence in Persian and English, respectively. The results of the present study can help linguists in measuring the generativity of word-formation processes in the face of natural events and, subsequently, social changes.

IntroductionAccording to Lakoff (2004), in order to evaluate the degree of politeness, some principles must be observed based on which some kinds of behavior can be called polite and some impolite. These behaviors differ from culture to culture. In each society polite and impolite behaviors are due to the culture and the thinking of the people of that society. By comparing these behaviors with one another it could be understood that it might be possible that some behaviors which are considered polite in one culture could be regarded as impolite in another. The social stance of the interlocutor and the scope of conversation affect the truth of speech and observation of customs and linguistic coding. The current research studies the degree of politeness used by both male and female students with respects to their social stance based on Lakoff’s (1975, 2004) approach. Do students respond to the demands of different people in the university setting equally? or the social stance of people affect the diversity of words and the degree of politeness among students.

This study is to investigate forensic discourse analysis of the facility contracts like Murabaha, Jaaleh, civil participation and installment sale.The aim of this research is to probe the forensic discourse analysis of the aforementioned texts in the field of forensic linguistics by considering the Van Leeuwen ’s 1996. To do that, the quantity, quality and the mystification of each contract ’s text was probed to discover the factors which ruin the clarity of those texts. The qualitative method of discourse analysis was used to explore the hypothesis of this research. The discoursal elements in the Van Leeuwen ’s (1996) were extracted and the mystification of each contract and different manipulations in each article of contracts were analyzed by using version 21 of SPSS software. The frequency and the percentage of their occurrence was found. The result shows that significant explicit, implicit elements and mystifications in all contracts were seen. The least frequency of explicit elements in the text of Jaaleh by the frequency of 20and the most number of mystification can be observed in the mentioned text by 81.3 percent. The manipulation based on threat was seen 11 times in Murrabeh, Jaaleh. It can be concluded that based on the occurrence of the implicit elements and mystification of all texts of the facility contracts, using implicit elements should be avoided.Consequently, the ambiguity and the mystification will be reduced. The result of the present study helps the banks’ legal experts to write the contracts more apprehensible with less ambiguity.

One of the most well-known ideas in semantic studies is polysemy, which is defined as the situation in which a single language element has several interpretations. The constructivist method is well-known for giving specific emphasis to conceptual links at the vocabulary level. Homonymy is compared to polysemy for analysis. According to the constructivist perspective, polysemy is an unintended result of the presence of words. A word's potential meanings are thought to be limitless and unexpected. In the current article, a cognitive semantics method is used to examine the several meanings of the verb "to eat" (/xwârdn/ as an action verb in the Kurdish dialect of Kolhori). Field libraries have been used to collect the data. Common phrases, proverbs, and Kurdish poets' works all made up the language corpus employed in this study. Forty-two meanings of the verb "to eat" were identified by analyzing the data using cognitive semantics concepts; one of these meanings was the main meaning of "swallowing something through the mouth," and 41 of its marginal meanings were categorized into seven main groups, showing a close semantic relationship between the meaning of the head of each group and the marginal members: First, there are those who "desire," second, there are those who "take place," third, there are those who "are efficient," fourth, there are those who "predict fate," fifth, there are those who "do injustice," and sixth, there are those who "do something right." The sixth group is "giving," followed by "entertaining." The semantic network of Kolhori Kurdish may be examined to see how the similarity of a verb's fundamental components affects how it is understood. In certain cases, the existence of a word that is similar to many verbs might signify the same thing. As a result, the semantic network relationships between the verbs in Kolhori Kurdish and their context-related associate words lead to the transmission of meaning.

Polysemy is one of the most familiar concepts that has been addressed in semantic studies, and it is identified as a linguistic unit that has several meanings. The present paper deals with the study of polysemy in /xwârdǝn/ 'eating', /šurdǝn/ 'washing', /ništǝn/ 'sitting', as action verbs in Kalhori Kurdish dialect based on cognitive semantic approach. Data collection was done in a library-field manner. The linguistic corpus used in this research includes common sentences, proverbs, and works of Kalhori Kurdish poets. By examining the data based on the concepts of cognitive semantics, 34 meanings were identified for the verb /xwârdǝn/, 8 meanings for the verb /šurdǝn/, and 13meanings for the verb /ništǝn/ were identified. Semantic relationships in the structure of these verbs were examined, the collocation of action verbs with body parts was seen in all three Kalhori Kurdish verbs. The collocation of these verbs with the essential components, including the organs of the body, with special words in the Kurdish dialect of kalhori, has a great effect on conveying the meaning of the verbs. The collocation of action verbs of interest did not have a common meaning with the "head" member; in other words, the collocation of the word "head" has different meanings in /šurdǝn/ and /ništǝn/. Accordingly, the collocation of an action verb also has an effect on the meaning of the organ of the body with which it is used. The conjugation of the member "hand" in /ništǝn/ and /šurdǝn/ also have different meanings. Among these three verbs   /xwârdǝn/   has the highest number of meanings and the most idiomatic usage. In terms of the collocation of verbs with body parts, the verb /ništǝn/ has the highest number, followed by /šurdǝn/, /xwârdǝn/.

The present study was conducted with the aim of critically analyzing the first discourse of Trump and Rouhani on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Program from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1985).  To this end, the first speech of the two presidents on the subject of the JCPOA were selected and transcribed for analyses. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses including frequency and Mann-Whitney statistical tests were used for data analyses. Findings revealed the hidden ideologies of the two previous presidents of the United States and Iran, which were Iranophobia and Anti-Americanism respectively. Both were found to emphasize his positive self-presentation and other’s negative presentation. Both intended to put each other into blame for the chaos in the region. Rohani highlighted the national unity, the role of the Revolutionary Guard in the assistance of the oppressed people of the region, and Iran’s role in the provision of peace and calm in the region, whereas Trump referred to Iran’s Nuclear ambitions and the Revolutionary Guard’s role in the ignition of fire of unrest and chaos in the region. Moreover, results showed that Functional Grammar could be used alone to critically analyze political discourses, and also with the help of three experiential, interpersonal and textual metafunctions, this language model can analyze the speeches of both presidents.  Moreover, the ideologies behind each text could be identified and their purposes be disclosed based on the elements in each metafunction such as the use of pronouns, tenses, adverbs, processes and themes used in both texts.

Despite differences in social factors such as age, education, ethnicity, and social status, a kind of linguistic convergence is formed among football spectators. The linguistic manifestation of this convergence is the production and repetition of slogans. Many of these slogans are considered taboo in Iranian culture. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the verbal convergence between spectators and the formation of taboos in the stadium and also the effect of age and education on the convergence and use of taboos. The research data were collected through questionnaires and interviews with 52 spectators in 4 matches in Azadi Stadium. The participants were of different ages and had different levels of education. The results show that there is a significant relationship between age and linguistic convergence and taboo production. Education has a significant relationship with linguistic convergence, but it does not show a significant relationship with the use of taboos. Finally, the research classifies the 76 slogans expressed in the stadium, based on their structure and function in 7 different groups. The results of this study can help linguists, sociologists, senior managers, and researchers to better identify culture and language in Iran and in weak social networks.