فصلنامه زبان شناسی اجتماعی
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 5، زمستان 1397)

This research is a linguistics analysis of "Nafthat al-Masdoor" by Shahabuddin Mohammad Zaidari with a critical discourse approach based on the analytical model of Yarmohammadi (1391) and Van Leeuwen (1996). Discourse analysis reveals the relationship between the text and the author's ideology, and attempts to pay attention to the general analysis of the text and its deep and complex structure with a particular focus on the nature of the use of language. Given that the purpose of the critical analysis of discourse is to decode the underlying layers of the text, the findings of this research show that the author has used the deletion component in addition to the use of verbal and emotional expressions as the dominant aspect of the work. At first glance, this silence or gap in the discourse of concern refers to a constantly delayed referent inducing the reader to think of the author as an introverted person. However, what is pushed to the margins is the fact that despite his severe objection to Kharazmashah’s court and its unfriendly atmosphere, Zaidari in fact attempted to develop a corpus featuring his contemporary events by arranging the pieces of his works, consciously or unconsciously, in such a way as to rely on a discourse consonant with his thought. The corpus generally reflects a theme of fate and determinism. The macrostructure of this work prompts the readership to assume that in shaping the unfavorable bitter end of this account Zaidari's beloved king, Jalaladin Kharazmshah, and his oppressed people could do nothing but succumb to this doomed destiny.

Different speakers of Persian varieties have sociolects developed due to various social variables. The present descriptive-analytic study aims at descrbing vowel variations of Nebandani dialect of Persian and investigating the effect of social variables including gender, age and education on the use of the given variations. Having interviewed the informants, the relevant vowel variations were extracted from the recorded speech of 24 qualified adolescents, young and old speakers. Due to the high rate of immigration to this area, the samples were selected purposefully. After transcibing their speech, the frequency of the recurrent vowel variations was determined and the remaining variations were just described. The results showed that education played an important role in distinguishing the speech of different speakers. Females’ speech in both literate and non-literate groups, with the exception of non-literate old women, was closer to the standard Persian. In young and old speaker groups, aging had different results with regard to different vowel variations. The results also revealed that adolescents rarely used some variations having historical roots. However, concerning variations with no historical origin, they used more non-standard forms. It was also found that gender played an important role in differentiating the speech of male and female speakers. The speech of adolescent girls having literate and non-literate parents was closer to standard Persian than the boys of the same group. Therefore, it can be concluded that sociolects occur even in small language communities speaking their own speech variety and having high language solidarity.

With regard to the advent of intermediality theory in the recent years, the objective of this study is to bring to the attention the breakdown of the theater discourse space into several forms of media spaces in order to understand their forms of participation in theater through the study of its intermedia functions. The communication space will form in relation to the intermedia and collision of host and guest media. In such a communicative context, the primary features of communication may be maintained or make a transition to a new discourse. Accordingly, the paper provides a definition as well as a comparison/contrast of concepts such as media relations and media references, mixmediality, multimediality, transmediality and intermediality. There has always been confusion between concepts of intermedia and intertextuality to the extent that, at times, they have been mistakenly used interchangeably. This study discusses the emergence of intermedia theory and its status in art and media discourse analysis in the era of technology expansion, relying on some plays performed between 2011 and 2016.

Over the last decade, the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have witnessed a growing interest in research on linguistic landscape. In this connection, numerous studies have investigated language and linguistic signs as used in the living environment. This study was an attempt to explore shop owners' attitudes towards naming their businesses in two areas of high and low social class in Esfahan. To this end, the data were collected from 100 shop owners by means of a questionnaire in the form of likert and a structured interview. The questionnaire was adopted and modified from Hussein, Nofal and Mansour’s (2015) study. It was employed to elicit factors governing the choice of names for businesses in the two areas of high and low socioeconomic status in Esfahan. Owners' attitude towards naming their shops as influenced by language, religion, location and social status has been investigated.The findings showed that there are statistically significant differences between the low and high socioeconomic status groups with regard to the criteria for naming businesses.

The speech delivered by Iran Islamic Consultative Assembly Members is one of the most effective means they employ to get the MP’s to approve or reject the proposals made in the parliament. One way to convince the audience in a discursive process is to resort to argumentation. If argumentation, as a key point in the rhetoric to achieve the highest degree of persuasion, deviates from the path of reasoning, recourse will be made to fallacy. This study examined persuasive topoi in the for and against speeches delivered during parliamentary proposal review and vote of confidence sessions for the proposed cabinet of Iran twelfth government. To this end, instances of robust arguments replaced by fallacies were identified by means of rhetorical sophistications. The findings show that although the use of such devices as magnifying, minimizing, highlighting, and marginalizing may lead to the initial and immediate persuasion of the audience, this would not guarantee the eligibility of the ministers who win parliament's approval during the vote of confidence process.

Honorifics are social deixis which serve as signs of respect and politeness for references to certain noun phrases in order to show dignity of addressee(s). The purpose of this study is to compare the use of honorific terms and phrases in the two religions of Islam and Zoroastrianism. The data were collected from written and oral religious texts which were then examined and compared to each other in terms of structures, meanings and pragmatic use. The findings are as follows: In the two religions, honorifics appear both before and after the nominal; however, Islamic honorifics are longer in structures and more various in types, while in Zoroastrian they appear before the head. In both corpora in addition to religious figures, honorific terms were used for the places, objects and phenomena related to religion. In addition to unmarked honorifics, the corpus of the two religions contained marked honorifics which appear with some certain names. Both religions contain prohibited verbal and non-verbal behaviors (taboo) such as silence which can be referred to as a common feature in the two ceremonies. Finally, both religions contain items opposite to the honorifics with the meaning of hatred and disgust. Along with the similarities mentioned above, the significant difference between the two corpora is that the use of honorifics in Islam is motivated by a kind of religious duty known as ‘amity’ and ‘animosity’.

This article is aimed at a cognitive analysis of meaning construction in the movie discourse based on Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002) conceptual blending theory. The present research used a qualitative content analysis methodology with a descriptive-elaborative approach to survey the mapping procedures and the constitutive elements of the conceptual framework of the movie Salesman, an Iranian film directed by Asghar Farhadi. The conceptual blending theory illustrates a system of background cognition including the categorizations, mapping, structural projections and dynamic mind stimulants. Accordingly, the presence of multiple inner layers and various vital relations such as identity, cause and effects, changes, time and representations made Salesman a blended mirror structure where a blended concept of loss is projected. The findings of this study emphasize the necessity of the focus on mind in discourse studies showing that the extension of the conceptual blending theory to analyze the discourse of movies can enrich the meaning construction affairs in the film and cinema industry. key words: conceptual blending theory, vital relation, discourse, movie, seller