مجله جستار های زبانی
سال هفتم شماره 7 (پیاپی 35، بهمن و اسفند 1395)

The present study intended to investigate the impact of using the two reflective practices of Personal Experience Narrative (PEN) versus Reflective Journal (RJ) writing in English on enhancing the in-service EFL teachers’ Critical Thinking Ability (CTA) in Iran. Sixty (36 female and 24 male) EFL teachers selected based on the convenience sampling were randomly divided into equal numbers making up two independent experimental PEN and RJ groups. The participants were initially pre-tested on the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal-Form A (WGCTA-FA) by Watson and Glaser (1980). The comparison of the pre-test scores via the independent samples t-test indicated no statistically significant difference between the CTA of the two groups at the onset of the study. Then the participants were given five short stories including Chopin’s The story of an hour (1894), O. Henry’s The last leaf (1907), Colby’s Confessions of a gallomaniac (1941), Achebe’s Dead men’s path (1953), and Grace’s Butterflies (1987). The PEN participants wrote PENs in response to themes of stories, whereas the RJ participants inscribed their reflections on the same stories in RJs. Subsequently, the participants in both groups were post-tested on the WGCTA-FA. The comparison of the post-test scores via the independent samples t-test showed that the PEN participants significantly improved in their inference and deduction ability. It should be mentioned that no statistically significant difference was observed between the post-test scores on recognition of assumptions, interpretation, and evaluation of arguments sub-components.

The Leader's Letters have always some special features to be analyzed in the frame work of critical discourse analysis. One of the valuable letters is the 28th letter of the Imam Ali's Nahj Al-balāghe having special place among the letters of Imam Ali. In principle, this letter manifests legitimate discourse of the Imam. The main question of this article is that how is it possible to investigate the relationship among the different linguistic layers within this discourse? Furthermore, how this legitimate discourse of Imam can be shaped by these linguistic and discursive selections? And finally how it can fight with the opponent discourse (Muāwiyah)? Our assumption is that in this letter, Imam to by perpetuating and promoting his legitimacy and combating with the opposite discourse, Imam makes specific choices of linguistic possibilities and tries to gain the attention of the audience to his policy. To explore this, this article uses the Halliday's functional grammar theoretical framework to study the Imam's letter based on three metafunctions of this approach. These metafunctions are ideational, interpersonal and textual .The results indicated that the legitimate discourse of the Imam, in order to stabilize and promote itself against opposite discourse, spreads the concept of "Us and Them" in the letter by making appropriate and specific choices from linguistic devices particularly in the application of relational and material processes and modality. Also, the textual function enhances previous metafunctions in the way to guaranty the coherence of the discourse in terms of legitimacy.

Academic lecturing has tuned into the major teaching method in higher education. Due to the excess of verbal and visual information presented in a lecture and the importance of some of these information in the final assessment of a course, an understanding of how unimportant information is marked in lectures is useful. The present investigation was an attempt to investigate how lecturers mark unimportant information in Persian academic lectures. More specifically, this study was aimed to investigate the discourse functions of markers of lesser importance. Based on a mixed-methods approach, markers of lesser importance were extracted from the transcripts of the 60 academic lectures of the Persian corpus of SOKHAN. The derived markers of lesser importance were then analyzed in terms of their discourse functions. Five discourse functions, including discourse organization, audience engagement, subject status, topic treatment, and relating to exam were found. In addition, topic treatment, followed by subject status, accounted for most of the discourse functions of the markers of lesser importance. Moreover, audience engagement, discourse organization, and relating to exam were found to be the least frequent discourse functions. On the whole, the findings suggested that marking lesser importance does not necessarily involves orientation to the audience or organizing the discourse into points and asides. Instead, marking lesser importance most often necessitates using expressions that explicitly or implicitly demarcate boundaries between what the lecturer wishes to talk about, does not intend to go through, or tends to cover briefly.

The present descriptive-analytic paper aims to investigate the distribution of the sentential negative marker in yes-no questions in Dashtestani dialect. As well as adhering to the beginning of the tensed main verbs and tensed auxiliary verbs in this dialect, the sentential negative marker is used immediately before the phrasal complements as well as the beginning of the negative yes-no questions. Relying on some theoretical and cross-linguistic pieces of evidence, the study examines the mechanisms beyond the optional behavior of this marker, together with its distribution in the hierarchy of the yes-no questions within the framework of the Minimalist Program. The findings of the study showed that the sentential negative marker is considered a ‘negative prefix’ in the position immediately preceding the tensed main verb as well as auxiliary verbs, and a ‘negative particle’ before the phrasal complements, each of them being generated in a different position. Consequently, in yes-no questions, the negative marker as a negative particle moves to the head of CP, satisfying, in this way, the Negative Criterion and yielding an interrogative interpretation. Lack of such a movement, on the contrary, renders the sentence ungrammatical.

This paper examines English loan words adaptation in Persian within the framework of Silverman (1992)́s phonological-perceptual approach. This article explores whether vowel epenthesis as a repair strategy in loan word adaptation is phonological or a perceptual illusion and based on what kind of loan word adaptation approaches, English loanword adaptation in Persian can be examined. In an answer to the first question, two experiments were conducted with twelve participants who had very little knowledge of English language. The results indicated that vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters of English loanwords is a perceptual illusion and happens at the perceptual level. In an answer to the second question, the results indicated that loan words adaptation is better to be examined based on phonological-perceptual approaches in that Silverman (1992)́s two level model of loanword adaptation can be an appropriate choice.

In this article, considering syntactic and semantic behavior of central modal verbs (Bayestæn, Šodæn) in Persian, we try to make a suitable decision about these verbs by demonstrating whether they are control or raising verbs. Based on previous point of views, we proposed three hypotheses: a) epistemic modals are raising and root modals including deontic and dynamic modals are control verbs b) epistemic and indirect deontic root modals having external participant are raising but dynamic and direct deontic root modals having internal participant are control verbs c) all kinds of models are raising verbs. In this article, using semantic and syntactic accounts, we concluded central modals which all of them are propositional in Persian, whether epistemic or root and whether internal or external participant are raising.

New approaches to semiotics with a phenomenological landscape further studies signification creation processes in a form beyond causal systems and emphasizes the role of cognitive-emotional competence of body. In this study, we used a descriptive - analytical method and interdisciplinary research methodology by referring to the components of the "complexity theory". We have shown that how the creation patterns of signification through interaction and "Co-Presence" of body subjects in semiotic system, have similar behavior and interactions of complex development systems where they are a function of the characteristics of chaotic behavior based on the "chaos theory". The result of this research is not only a query for the existence of adjustment pattern between the two theoretical fields, but also it provides scientific mapping based on interdisciplinary approach for the existence of patterns in the creative process that some of its characteristics are already studied in the semiotic adjustment and also in language systems as theoretical or empirical forms. Generally, systems of signification including "language" are not independent of the human subject, in the sense that they are the product of biochemical and neurological interactions of organism (a complex system) called "humans". It is expected that the semiotic systems as well as complex system be based on behavior patterns of "Chaos Theory". Also the other function of the compliance, apart from providing scientific backing for the theoretical or empirical observations, is that it can explain the concepts such as "insecurity", "risk", "emotional contagion" and "perceptual sensitivity" in the process of signification creation in the compliance system based on chaos theory, yet some of the key features of the meaning production are explained both in language and verbal adaptation of the systems.

Nowadays, language is not only considered as the most important communication tool, but also it is known as the central core of culture and what forms it. The relationship between language and culture and their mutual effects on making contact between language users and different cultures are of great importance and have attracted the attention of many researchers. Regarding the significant, fundamental role of culture in having intercultural communication and focusing on the mutual relationship between language and culture in the communication of the Iranian and the French, the current research tries to find the answer to this basic question whether perceiving the cultural differences guaranty making successful intercultural contacts or not. The research overall hypothesis states that lack of awareness or insufficient awareness of these differences in communications may result in misunderstanding and even miscommunication. To answer the research question, first, the relationship between language and culture and then the transmission of culture through language will be expressed and explained. Accordingly, various theoretical frameworks, including Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, will be taken into consideration. The basic theoretical framework of this research is Austin’s speech act theory; thus, the introduction to this theory would be a part of this research. To illustrate the fundamental role of knowing and realizing the cultural components in making effective contacts, we will investigate and analyze one of the most influential cultural variables in intercultural communication that is the verbal interaction in both Persian and French cultures, with focus on Austin’s speech act theory. Based on this theoretical framework, we consider speech act as the verbal communication unit and will explore some samples of common and prevalent speech acts in the verbal interaction between Iranian and French. Mostly, these linguistic forms have the oral and verbal aspects and arise from individuals’ cultural and social communication. Exploring each of these speech acts, we will try to show the incentives and methods to use them as well as their differences in both the verbal environments of Persian and French and; therefore, we will study the semantic, practical, and cultural aspects of the selected samples.
The results of this research showed the necessity of paying attention to the cultural differences in making effective contacts and preventing «miscommunication». Familiarity with the differences and similarities between speech acts in Persian and French languages will help the language users make successful contacts and prevent many misunderstandings and misinterpretations, while having contact with different cultures.

The verb ʃodan (to become) is one of the most important and frequent grammatical elements in Persian language since it participates as a light verb in the construction of a main part of compound verbs expressing different aspectual values. One of these values is the telicity, the case in which its properties and recognition criteria have not been widely studied in Persian. The present research will firstly study some of the occurrences of compound verbs in which the verb in question is being used either in present perfect or in past perfect form. The study then will examine the properties which allow to recognize the telic aspect by focusing on verbal compounds of this verb that can take part in the expression of this aspect. In the end, this paper intends to verify the place and the function of the enunciation in expressing the telic aspect.

This article attempts to analyze the English and Persian (Keyhan and Washinton Post) press applying Van Leeuwen’s (2008) approach. The author attempts to show that ideologies of the press leaders are conveyed to the writers of the newspapers’ articles and then displayed in the texts. The objective of the study is to find an answer to these question that how the political issues of Syria is represented in the Iranian and American newspapers and if there is a difference, in what way it can reveal their owners’ ideologies. The paper represents “social acts” in the form of five oppositions in ten texts extracted from 11 Jul. to 20 Aug, 2011 and investigates the effect of these oppositions in each discourse. The results showed that the press represents the political issues in accordance with its government and the writers have utilized the discoursal tools to convey their ideologies to the readers. Also, the oppositions of material-semiotic, activation-deactivation, agentialization- deagentialization, and concretization-abstraction have been differently represented in the English and Persian press discourse rooted in the difference in the owners’ perspective.

«Passive Letters» refer to the elements that do not have Erab influences and for this reason they are often ignored ignored in syntax education. Studies show that these letters play a key role in identification of syntactic structure and understanding the meaning of context being called the semiotic function of passive letters. Although sometimes in syntax they are called Maani –Al- horouf (the meanings of letters) however, an organized review of their semiotic functions in order to understand their syntactic structure and accurate meaning of their context has not been studied yet. In the view of RaziAstarabadi‚ semiotic and structural aspects of afore mentioned letters, are considered as a part of their syntactic function. According to the importance and extension of the presence of these letters in Arabic language‚ and by applying RaziAstarabadi’s views‚ this study tried to indicate their semiotic function in understanding the syntactic structure and answer the question of research based on a semiotic perspective, what is the most obvious sign of semiotic function of these letters in understanding the syntactic structure and context perception? To answer the questions with descriptive-analytic method, we investigated the different contexts and applied this view in analysis. The results showed that: passive letters play a key role in identification of the syntactic structure and showed a certain relationship between cause and effect in two parts of form and content and accordingly its major semiotic function can be found in distinguishing and diagnosis of grammatical arrangement of words and sentences.

One of the prevalent questions in the realm of Persian sonnet is related to its cohesion. In this respect, using a functional linguistics approach, as well as the model of structural cohesion, the present article is to analyze the thematic structure of a sonnet by Hafiz. The aim of the present article is therefore to discuss the textual structure of a Persian sonnet through analyzing the thematic structure of the clause and the organization of its internal elements. Accordingly, a brief explanation about meta-functions is firstly provided, and afterwards the organization of the thematic structure in Persian language, along with the analysis of marked and unmarked types of Theme-Rheme is discussed. Next, using a descriptive-analytic approach in analyzing the structural cohesion, a poem by Hafiz is accordingly described. This analysis not only reveals some important points about the structural cohesion of the sonnet and its thematic structure, but also explains some of the poet's latent beliefs. In the end, it is claimed that on the basis of such an approach, one can analyze the cohesion of Hafiz's other sonnets according to the organization of Theme-Rheme.