نشریه پژوهش های زبانشناختی در زبان های خارجی
سال سیزدهم شماره 2 (تابستان 1402)

This study with a descriptive-analytical method and based on library resources and also by drawing on structural semantics view, conducted to investigate the particular collocations and lexical ambiguities (polysemies) existing in documentary credit section of international banking (customs and practices) and their related problems in equivalent selection in Persian language through comprehensive study of five translated books. The results of the study indicate that the collocations in specific section of the selected banking texts have the peculiarities of being contextual (lexical and structural), simple, usual, nearby, highly frequent, pivot word, situational, semantic and syntagmatic and the translators had two approaches of selecting different or fix equivalent (s) while rendering them in to Persian language. It is also worthy to note that selection of fix equivalent could lead to the development of specific type of language dealing with documentary credit in Persian language. Another finding of investigation reveals the pivotal peculiarity of polysemies in the specific section of selected banking texts by indicating that the vast majority of them are as the result of proficient and novel use of a word (by allocation of new meaning and multi-signification) in banking industry. But these multi-significations do not result in lexical ambiguities as their implementations in special co-texts and collocations make them a unit with a clear, distinct and proficient meaning in selected banking texts.

This article examines intercultural competence and gender representation in the latest locally developed English language coursebooks which are taught in Iranian primary and secondary schools. The study uses content analysis to investigate the extent to which gender is portrayed in coursebooks and also how much these coursebooks reflect equality between men and women. In addition to quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis was conducted to a certain extent. For the first phase of the research, images, names, roles, and topics oriented towards women and men in the reading passages and conversations were analysed. Moreover, since the present study examined intercultural competence within the English language coursebooks, the coursebooks were scrutinized in order to capture every instance in which the eleven aspects of intercultural competence are shown or indicated. The findings revealed that in the newly developed coursebooks, gender imbalances could be observed to a great extent, with males being the dominant gender in names, characters, images, and texts. Intercultural competence was also found to be a major difference between genders, where the books showed higher intercultural competence for men in Emotion, Empathy, and Perspective-taking (EEP) and Intercultural Relations (IR) aspects. Women were shown to be higher in Knowledge of Diversity (KD), but there was no difference in Intercultural relations (IR). Since in these coursebooks, male authors outnumber their female counterparts, it might be beneficial to add more females to an authority's board of authors. Authors are also encouraged to develop coursebooks that promote gender equality by following guidelines provided by Iran's authorities.

One of the areas of dominance of the colonial powers over other countries is the linguistic dominance. In the field of postcolonial studies, translation is sometimes interpreted as an act of invasion in addition to its traditional definition. Conceived as an attack tool against the colonized, translation attacks the language, culture and identity of the colony in order to maintain the colonizers interests in those countries, and uses direct propaganda, news and media to inject the colonizer’s culture and language into these nations. The way this discourse is formed is reflected in Sussan Bassnett’s (2014) theory of cultural translation. In this regard, the current research, with a descriptive-analytical method and a cultural approach, has investigated the examples of aggressive translation in the news texts of the last few years on pages, virtual channels and domestic news agencies. The selection of the statistical population of this research was in line with the objectives and research problem and in a purposeful manner. The results of the research showed that the important cultural, intellectual and discursive areas of the target text have been attacked in terms of lexical translation due to the performance of the media. In fact, the evaluation of the data, in addition to understanding how the discursive space of the media affects translation, has explained some parts of this post-colonial discourse in terms of translation.

Sign - Narrative semantics examines the narrative features of the story to show the conditions of production and reception of meaning in discourse. Discourse is the basis of semantic research. This research is done by analytical-descriptive method, in the form of sign-semantics and by using the numerical model and mixing it with the diamond-shaped pattern of William Liao to analyze the narrative discourse, smell and interactive dimension of speech in the narration of "Hassan Shad and King Ibrahim, from the collection The stories of "The Land of Everlasting Spring" are dedicated. In Golestani's analysis of this narrative, an attempt is made, in addition to the chain of narrative figures of this story, to express the theological dimensions that shape it. Findings show that in this narrative discourse, "King Ibrahim", the main character of the story seeks to know the environment and change his life situation, and this change is unconscious and by a beautiful girl, in a special time and place, along with follow-up events. Occurs and the dynamic process of meaning production in it, on the one hand, due to the interaction of intra-textual factors (exciters and actors) and on the other hand, due to the interaction of extra-textual factors (narrator and narrator of the object). In this story, Dari has been able to pass through interactive functions in creating the first meanings and reaching the semantic functions of language, to form special systems of narrative discourse and to create a dynamic and purposeful narrative pursuit in the realm

Epenthetic [-n] is one of the four types of singular nūn in Qur'anic Arabic. The present study aims to provide a phonological explanation based on Markedness Theory for the motivation of insertion, the reason of choosing as well as the role that this consonant plays in the existing structures. For this purpose, all the cases in which epenthetic [-n] is used were extracted computationally. Next, the lexical and syntactic categories of linguistic elements and the phonological context in which epenthesis occurs were determined. Then, an explanation for this process was presented based on various concepts such as sonority, syllable structure, perceptual clues etc. The findings show epenthesis has been primarily motivated by the desire to eliminate onsetless syllables and to resolve vowel hiatus. Due to this insertion the phenomenon of opacity occurs which prevents the vowel from undergoing vowel harmony. Furthermore, understanding the nasals’ exact place of articulation is difficult. By inserting this consonant, due to the auditory salience and acoustic clues, the perceived clarity of the place of articulation increases. Moreover, because there is an inverse relationship between the degree of nasal consonant salience and the degree of perception of the vowel nasality; the amount of prominence of the vowel that follows the nasal consonant is reduced. As a result, a less marked structure is created. Therefore, the insertion of this consonant is done with the aim of reducing markedness and is in line with the universal tendency of languages in relation to using less marked structures.

Speaking and writing skills, as the components of communicative competence, are the core of learning the language for specific purposes. The intimate connection of students' acceptable academic and professional performance with their productive skills highlights new methods of teaching and learning. To investigate the potential of virtual reality in learning English for Medical Purposes productive skills, this interventional study with control and experimental groups was conducted using a mixed design with a sequential explanatory approach in 16 sessions in flipped classrooms. During the study, in addition to soliciting the participants' attitudes, their progress and performance were assessed. In addition, the participants' perceptions were identified by conducting semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data analysis was performed in a descriptive and inferential manner using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and analysis of variance with repeated measures. Qualitative data analysis was done in a theme-oriented manner. The results showed that the participants considered the concerted practice as an effective way of learning English for Medical Purposes productive skills. Although virtual reality enhanced English for Medical purposes productive skills learning and communicative competence, the multiplayer framework of these games for concerted practice of skills significantly facilitated learning speaking and writing. The participants' favorable attitude towards practicing English for medical purposes through cooperative multiplayer virtual reality can be an example of the successful application of socio-cultural theory in university language learning.

Fear and anxiety, along with motivation and attitude, are part of affective factors that are effective in the process of learning a foreign / second language. Language anxiety is a type of situation specific anxiety the effect of which on the foreign language learning process has been investigated by many researchers (Hammer 2019 / Zachariasz - Janik, 2020). The present study sought to introduce the types of anxieties related to foreign and second language learning and investigate whether the level of fear and anxiety among German language learners is different at different CEFR levels. It was hypothesized that as language learners move to a higher language level, their anxiety decreases. To test the hypothesis, the model presented by Horwitz et al. (1986), which is used to measure Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), was administered to a total of 45 participants in three groups of A1 (beginner), B1 (intermediate), and B2 (upper intermediate) CEFR levels, each comprising 15 learners studying German at a language institute in Iran. The results did not support the proposed hypothesis, which means that improvement in the language level does not necessarily lead to a decrease in the level of fear and anxiety experienced by language learners.

As a discourse construction procedure, implicitation is one of the basic issues in pragmatic studies of translation and one of the problem-solving strategies in translation discourse. Since discourse markers are the central elements in monitoring discourse, the implicitation of their forms and functions is a critical phenomenon requiring further investigations. The present researcher’s objective in this study was the analysis and exploration of different manifestations and indexes of implicitation in monitoring discourse by the simultaneous interpreter to provide and design an analysis model in this pragmatic area. Translation potting in translatology and coherence in discourse analysis founded the theoretical bases of this investigation. Moreover, the analysis of parallel corpora was done by utilizing two models: an inventory of discourse markers in discourse analysis and an implicitation framework in translation studies. The results revealed that this Iranian simultaneous interpreter applied implicitation in 29% of the cases to solve his problems in his pragmatic efforts in the creation of discourse in translation. In addition, the analysis of his pragmatic strategies resulted in the exploration of a rectangular model in the implicitation of discourse markers: structural generalization, lexical reduction, lexical omission, and cultural-pragmatic awareness of audience discourse. Consequently, applying the strategies of this model substantiated this Iranian simultaneous interpreter’s creative discourse monitoring through implicitation. Finally, different implications in the areas of translation studies and education were analyzed and suggested.

This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of English language teachers regarding the representation of gender in the Vision series in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades of senior high schools in Iran. To gather data, a questionnaire was adapted from Yaqoubi Notash and Nouri (2016) and some items were added to meet the purpose of the study. It should be noted that this questionnaire was translated to Farsi to enhance the participants’ understanding with a reliability of .88 whose validity was confirmed by experts. Then, the questionnaire was distributed among 330 male and female teachers who had experienced teaching the mentioned textbooks. To obtain more accurate data, a semi-structured interview was also designed and implemented with 15 teachers. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results of the analyses of the questionnaire and teachers' interviews showed that the majority of the teachers believed the representation of males is significantly more than females’ in the textbooks which might be due to the traditional patriarchal and cultural views in this country. In addition, the teachers assumed that gender disparitycreates gender stereotypes in the minds of the students affecting their future academic and career choices and leads to biased modeling of the genders’ social roles. The results of the present study can raise the awareness of the materials developers, curriculum designers, and those who are involved in devising textbooks considering gender inequality and representation.

Conceptual metaphors are among the distinctive features of the Sci-Fi genre. However, understanding conceptual metaphors and translating them correctly is a big challenge, which can be overcome using appropriate translation procedures and methods. The current study investigated the procedures and methods for translating conceptual metaphors in the Sci-Fi novel Deathstalker 1 from English into Persian. To this end, first, a parallel corpus of 150 English sentences containing conceptual metaphors and their Persian translations was built using stratified random sampling. Then the type of each conceptual metaphor and their cross-domain mappings were determined following Lakoff and Johnson (2003). Finally, the translation procedures and methods applied for translating each conceptual metaphor were identified based on Schmidt’s (2012) translation procedures and Newmark’s (1988) translation methods, respectively. It was found that ‘translating a conceptual metaphor to conceptual metaphor,’ which preserves the type of conceptual metaphor, cross-domain mapping, and meaning, was the most frequent translation procedure (60%). Similarly, literal translation, adding up to 61%, was the most frequently used translation method. The findings suggest that the relative similarity between Persian and English conceptual systems and the conceptual metaphors' universality result in understanding conceptual metaphors and cross-domain mapping between the two languages despite their linguistic differences.