فصلنامه زبان شناسی اجتماعی
سال سوم شماره 4 (پیاپی 12، پاییز 1399)

The way people exchange information or address one another has attracted the attention of researchers all around the world. This study endeavored to compare the address terms used in Iranian and American social and political talk shows in English. To reach the goals of this study, a corpus which included Iranian and American English address forms was selected. The address forms used in this study included recorded digital files of authentic TV talk shows, both Iranian and American through the use of digital receivers to observe them deliberately for address forms. The data of this study derived from observation of spoken discourse. Based on the classification of address forms by Manjulakshi (2004), a new classification developed by the researchers to identify different address forms in this corpus. As the results showed, the overall examination of the address terms provided in this study makes it clear that Iranian address terms are relatively formal and culturally, socially and politically loaded. In American address terms used in political and social talk shows, terms such as personal names are widely used. This may be indicative of the fact that Americans in media, as in society, prefer to be less formal. The findings of this study can be used by curriculum and material developers to consider aspects of cultural differences in different contexts of situation.

The present study explores the metaphorical source domains in football media discourse. To this end, the news headlines for eight Iranian sport newspapers including Hadaf, Khabar Varzeshi, Iran Varzeshi, Abrar Varzeshi, Gol, Pirouzi, Shoot and Esteghlal were selected in a three-month period from September 2009 to the end of November 2010. The data were analyzed by conceptual metaphor framework (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff  &  Johnson, 1980, 1999), and examined based on Kövecses’s view on metaphorical origin (Kuchsh, 2010). The results show that the most important sources of metaphorical domains are war, path, metaphysics, natural phenomena, animals, machines, games and sports, buildings, health and disease, art, light and darkness, school, power and politics, cooking and food, sea and marine activities, and plants. In general, metaphors in football news headlines have three major functions: a) getting the attention of the audience and encouraging them to read and follow it; b) facilitating the expression of complex and abstract concepts of football in an artistic and engaging manner by the media; c) helping the audience understand these concepts. These functions ultimately facilitate and reinforce the relationship between the media and the audience, and confirm Kövecses’s (2014) view that in addition to its cognitive function, metaphor has an important communicative role in discourse.

The research aims to study international students' attitudes toward online courses and social media uses in Persian language learning and strengthening language skills during the pre- and post-corona virus spread. First, students' attitude toward e-learning, online courses, and use of social media in learning Persian language as a second language was measured to understand their willingness toward virtual courses in Tarbiat Modares and Allameh Ttabataba'I universities. We distributed the questionnaire once more after closing the universities and students' return to their countries and starting e-learning. Results show that after the closure of the universities due to the pandemic Corona virus and holding virtual Persian language courses, Persian students' attitudes at elementary, intermediate and advance levels toward learning Persian language and strengthening their language skills, as well as their overall attitude toward Persian language virtual learning have been improved. The highest rate of positive attitude is related to students at intermediate level and the lowest positive attitude rate belongs to advance level students..

Non-verbal Communication is one of the branches of Semiotics that includes all types of motor behaviors such as facial expressions, body movements, and gestures in people. The present study seeks to examine the novel entitled Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi from the perspective of Non-Verbal Communication signs such as facial expressions, eye states, parasites, objects, distance, and so on and so forth. The aim of this study is to introduce, classify, decode, and analyze all kinds of Non-Verbal Communication in the novel to show how body language can convey, amongst other things, such functions as love, fear, anxiety, and lying, and also to show what tools the author uses to narrate non-verbal behaviors of characters. The results show that Saadawi has benefited the most from the different positions of the hands and face and from different types of gaze, along with their related functions. He has used these modes to express, amongst other things, such concepts as fear of strange things, fear, anxiety and sadness, and gaining information. In addition to these, other modes and organs are also involved in conveying the author's messages. Also, most of the functions of these messages are substitution functions.

In the linguistic-cultural order of modern Iran, language has a significant role. Persian language as one of the unifying signifier of Iranians acquired a prominent place due to language policies which determine the position of minority languages, and this situation has provided opportunities for minority languages. The purpose of this study is to investigate the mentioned linguistic-cultural order based on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis theory and also to determine the position of minority languages in this discursive formation. Therefore, this discourse order was analyzed based on the governmental documents, laws and statutes since the establishment of National Consultative Assembly (1906). The results show that in all three periods (Constitutional, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic of Iran) Persian language has been represented as one of the main signifiers of the cultural policy discourse and in addition, minority languages have been represented as challenges to the construction of national identity. In the laws and state documents, the minority languages have been subjected to “silence based on denial” in the constitutional state, “silence based on exclusion” in the Pahlavi state and “inclusive exclusion” after the Islamic Revolution.

Environmental issues are mainly the result of human behavior, so paying attention to the knowledge, attitude and real intentions of people about environmental issues and how to deal with them is very important in the study of environmental behaviors. The purpose of this study is to investigate Iranian students' ecological identity in light of critical discouse analysis. Inspired by the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough (2015) and the theory of Botkin and Keller (2011) as a theoretical framework, this study uses Charmaz' (2008) Contructivist Grounded Theory. The participants were 20 BA, MA and PhD EFL language learners from Hakim Sabzevari University. Using semi-structured interviews, the data were collected and participants' voices were recorded. Then, the data were coded based on the three levels of grounded methodology. The codification process resulted in 187 initial codes, 18 sub-codes, 6 important themes, and the final selective code of ecological identity. Based on the extracted constructs, namely the importance of environment, nature tourism, memories of nature, responsible behavior, environmental literacy and environment concerns, a model was proposed which corresponded with the principles of Botkin and Keller' theory.

This research aims at studying the attitudes of Persian speakers of Karaj to non - standard varieties of Persian by measuring both their success in identifying five regional varieties of Persian including Abadani, Afghani, Shirazi, Kermani and Yazdi and analyzing their positive or negative attitudes towards them. Learning about the attitudes of members of a language community towards linguistic diversity is a key factor in the success of language planning. The independent variables are age, sex and bilinguality. The research tool is a researcher-made questionnaire which comprises personal information, accent identification and language attitudes. The informants are 218 students in the age- rang of 18 to 50 whose main language of communication was Persian. In the selection of universities, the convenience sampling and in the selection of the informants random sampling has been used. The results showed that the informants were more successful in identifying Yazdi variety. The informants used positive and negative traits to describe the varieties and the percentage of negative traits was higher for Afghani variety. The lowest percentage of attitude components is related to Afghani and Kermani varieties. Age and sex variables had a significant effect on Persian speakers’ attitude towards the varieties under study.