Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances
Volume:12 Issue: 1, Winter-Spring 2024

In the last two decades, citation behaviour in academic research writing has been highlighted in English for academic purposes. This concordance-informed, corpus-based study has focused on cross-disciplinary analysis of citations by English and Iranian academic writers in English Economics and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering research articles  published in international and Iranian national English-medium journals. To that end, research articles in Economics and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering were developed and divided into four sub-corpora: English corpus and Iranian corpus. Thompson and Tribble’s (2001) classification and Thompson and Ye’s (1991) framework were used to analyse citations. The computer program AntConc (version 3.5.7) was used to identify 1,032 citations. The results of data analysis showed more frequent uses of citations by Economics than Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering writers. In terms of citation structures, more integral citations were utilised by Economics writers, and more non-integral citations were used by Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering writers. In addition, the citation analyses of native and non-native writers revealed that English writers employed more citations than Iranian writers. The findings imply that the cultural context of publication, in addition to the linguistic background and knowledge structures of their disciplines, seems to shape the writers’ citation choices when writing their research articles.

In the present climate, Critical Literacy has become an area gathering momentum more than ever before, tantamount to an ‘invisible gem’ as almost many education systems have attempted, but failed, to incorporate it into their curricula. To address this elusive notion, this study aimed to investigate the obstacles in the way of possible dilemmas, challenges, constraints, and limitations Iranian EFL teachers face in the process of implementing critical literacy in their online classes. This qualitative research study was conducted in two phases. First, an open-ended set of questions was developed after reviewing the literature, scrutinizing the existing questionnaires, and collecting data from experts in the field. To do so, after reviewing the literature, a list of questions was composed. Subsequently, qualitative data were collected (and analyzed) from 29 EFL teachers through an open-ended questionnaire and interview. The framework and elicited data led to the development of 23 items for the interview part. Accordingly, the online classes of all the teachers were observed by the researchers for an entire term. From what has been discussed, the following conclusion may be drawn that critical literacy needs to be part of the language teaching curricula in Iran. The finding can potentially aid the key educational stakeholders, including second/foreign language (L2) policymakers, teacher educators, authorities in charge of recruiting teachers, and materials developers, to take appropriate measures to increase pre- and in-service L2 teachers’ critical literacy and, as a result, encourage the implementation of this key concept in the instructional contexts.

Syntactic priming has been suggested to be an efficient paradigm in studying mental language representations. However, further research is needed to explore the underlying mechanisms. Recently it is suggested that argument-based constructions are present at both the syntactic and discourse levels of representation predicting that priming effect does not occur in the absence of shared semantic content. The study used a pre-test and post-test approach within a quasi-experimental design to investigate whether sentences with no shared semantic content, but similar syntactic structure, could prime one another in L2 written production tasks. Ninety students at the University of Tabriz participated in the study and were divided into intermediate or upper-intermediate groups based on their proficiency test performance. Both groups narrated a silent movie in the pre-treatment phase. In the treatment phase, the participants were primed with motion phrasal verbs by reading and rating a booklet including pictures followed by phrasal motion verbs describing them. Immediately afterward, they were required to narrate a silent movie. It was hypothesized that if semantically unrelated structures could prime one another as is supported by some reported findings, priming participants with motion phrasal verbs would boost non-motion phrasal verb usage in the treatment phase. However, the authors failed to find a significant difference between the performance of participants in the pre-treatment vs. post-treatment phase. The findings support the claim that syntactic similarity is not sufficient to trigger structural priming, and shared semantics seems to be required, and are justified with regard to semantic roles and compositional vs. non-compositional meaning.

Collaborative content learning (CCL), as a process of learning that contributes to effective learning of the content of the courses in EFL contexts, has recently gained prominence in the research literature; however, the male and female students’ perceptions regarding CCL’s efficacy and their challenges in experiencing it are open questions. Thus, this mixed methods research investigated the contribution of CCL to Iranian TEFL students’ learning of the content. It focused on their perceptions and challenges across gender. Sixty male and female participants in the master’s program participated in the study. To collect the data, a questionnaire and interviews were used. The findings of the study, using quantitative data analysis, showed that more than half of the learners believed that CCL is effective in EFL teaching and learning context, especially, in terms of negotiation and problem-solving. Moreover, the results showed no statistically significant difference between male and female students’ perceptions of the efficacy of CCL. Finally, the analysis of the interviews’ data qualitatively revealed that male learners had methodological challenges in CCL, while female learners had communication challenges. The findings of the study suggest the beneficial role of CCL in raising students’ awareness of skillful collaboration for maximum learning of the content.

Critical thinking (CT) is extensively considered to be a prevalent notion in teaching and learning processes. Thus, this paper set out to pinpoint the association between EFL pupils’ CT capabilities as well as their vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) across gender. To do this, 140 Iranian male and female intermediate students studying at Iran Language Institute (ILI) in Urmia, Iran were chosen randomly. The study was conducted in the form of a survey with data being gathered via using Preliminary English Test (PET) to homogenize the students, Schmitt’s VLSs questionnaire to recognize the kinds of the strategies employed by students, as well as Ennis' Cornell Critical Thinking Test (CCTT) to ascertain the students’ CT capabilities. The data was subjected to analysis using the Pearson correlation. The findings indicated a significant association between CT abilities and VLSs. Furthermore, male learners showed more CT skills and VLSs compared to female students.  Thus, identifying the students' preferred VLSs would help them overcome the difficulties in learning words. Also, instructors should design classroom activities that encourage learners’ reflective thinking.

This study investigated how English semantic and syntactic awareness contribute to the sentence comprehension of beginner, intermediate, and advanced EFL learners. Consequently, 188 Iranian EFL learners were recruited for the study and, pertinent to their English proficiency levels, were divided into three groups. To elucidate the possible contribution of semantic and syntactic awareness for comprehending English sentences, five sets of sentences were constructed controlling the frequency, length and difficulty of their comprising words: 20 syntactically correct / semantically incorrect, 20 syntactically incorrect / semantically correct, 20 syntactically / semantically incorrect, 20 syntactically / semantically correct, and finally 20 Garden-Path sentences (which are both semantically and syntactically correct but difficult to comprehend by the first attempt). With the aid of a software application (Com-Chron) designed specifically for this study on the UX platform, the participants’ comprehension was checked both in terms of their success-rate and their reaction-time. Through a multiple-choice online task, the participants were asked to select the option which showed the correct understanding of the constructed sentence in 30 seconds. Statistical analyses revealed that semantically-incorrect sentences were the most challenging and syntactically-incorrect sentences were the least demanding for the participants of three proficiency levels. The findings affirmed the dominance of semantics over syntax when it came to the comprehension abilities of EFL learners across different English proficiency levels.

It is commonly agreed that grammar is so important that it should not be ignored. The English passive voice can be a challenging aspect of grammar learning for Iranian EFL learners. The aim of this study was to comparatively and empirically investigate the effect of the Input Enhancement Technique (IET), Guided Discovery Approach (GDA), and Explicit Instruction Method (EIM) on Iranian EFL learners’ passive voice production. It sought to determine the individual effectiveness of these methods and identify the most efficient one. To this end, 70 Iranian EFL learners from the Payam Nour University of Tabriz were chosen and divided into three groups, including GDA (N = 22), IET (N = 25), and EIM (N = 23). The research data were obtained based on three validated, researcher-designed computerized activities. Pretest and posttest were used to elicit information on the learners’ production of passive voice. The results of the data analysis revealed that both IET and GDA had significant effects on the production of passive voice. However, EIM did not significantly influence the production of passive voice. Meanwhile, GDA was found to be the most efficient teaching technique compared with the other methods. This study has some important implications for teachers, students, and syllabus designers.

Politicization, in general, and biopoliticization, in particular, of human beings’ lives, especially those the state deems expendable, is what informs the heart of the present study. Exploring the subtle ways in which the state renders its subjects docile and at the same time divested of any subjectivity, agency, identity and human rights remarkably helps in better understanding the covert mechanisms of the biopolitical regimes operating within the ideologically-informed, discursive nexus of the sociopolitical fabric of the society. Studying Giorgio Agamben’s (1995) seminal text Homo Sacer (1995), and his theoretical reworking of Michel Foucault’s concept of “biopower” alongside Carl Schmitt’s notion of “the state of exception” casts an illuminating light on how such biopolitical regimes and exclusionary states of exception operate within the narrative of V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961). Attempts at biopoliticizing and governmentalizing Mohun Biswas, the fiction’s central character, play out in different contexts and manifest themselves within the fabric of both the microcosmic family and macrocosmic society wherein Biswas inhabits, not as a decent member, but as a subjugated inhabitant of a biopolitical camp. Having been biopolitically interpellated and reduced to an Agambenian homo sacer, Biswas is deemed outside of and beneath the law, life and citizenship, and therefore, within a sacrificial order, his life means nothing to the biopolitical state. However, some counter-discursive, counter-biopolitical spaces that Biswas uses to rally against the prevailing sovereignty of the biopolitical regimes of the state should be explored to further buttress or undermine the discursive and ontological potentiality of resistance against biopolitical oppressions of any sort.

This article analyzes Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-Haired Woman (2017) (hereafter RHW) from Alicia Helda Puleo’s ecofeminist perspective. It discusses Gülcihan’s character in RHW as a cultural figure who, standing beyond the essentialist division of culture / nature, develops a constructive interaction with the masculine world of the novel, prefiguring the reestablishment of life. The novel reviews the process of modernization in Türkiye through detailing the confrontation of the old and new via references to the mythological stories of Oedipus Rex, and Rostam and Sohrab. The references highlight the notions of patricide and filicide, pointing to rising tension between Eastern and Western aspects of Turkish cultural identity. This investigation challenges the dominant reviews of the references as pessimistic illustrations of the disappearance of historical Türkiye along with her environment and argues that RHW offers an alternative vision of modernization via Gülcihan’s narration as an optimistic stand toward industrial formation through enhancing self-awareness and intercultural understanding.

In this essay, I analyze the complex role capitalism plays in the formation and transformation of bodies within its system, using the novel Under the Skin by Michel Faber as a case study. As multidisciplinary research, this essay will use disability studies as a theoretical foundation with which the main arguments will be underscored. In order to do so, I focus on four dimensions: first, the distinction between normality and deviance as manifested in the bodies of the alien protagonist and the Vess corporation heir Amlis; second, the impact of different hierarchies in the novel; elites, workers, and human prey (vodsel); on the bodies of the group according to their position in each level of the pyramid; third, the role of disability and how it affects individuals under capitalism; fourth, how (de)prostheticization changes the way readers perceive and interpret the novel by shifting the perspective from the normative one to an alternative one that challenges the dominant assumptions of normalcy. This essay will argue that: capitalism use, misuse, and abuse society’s view of normalcy to take full advantage for its own hegemonic purposes.

Bessie Head's A Question of Power intricately weaves existential philosophy into the tapestry of its narrative, so that the novel becomes a suitable venue to apply Emmanuel Lévinas’ philosophy of Self-Other relationship. The novel unfolds against the tumultuous backdrop of apartheid-era South Africa, with Elizabeth's journey serving as a poignant exploration of Lévinasian concepts. Lévinas, a philosopher of profound influence, posited that true ethical growth arises from direct encounters with the Other. This exploration dissects crucial aspects of Lévinasian philosophy mirrored in Elizabeth's trajectory across interconnected parts. One part contrasts Lévinasian ethics with Kantian and Hegelian philosophies, emphasizing the transformative power of encounters with the Other, evoking a "traumatism of astonishment" and calling for the embrace of otherness. The other section delves into Elizabeth's ethical journey, scrutinizing her struggles and moments of growth through the lens of Lévinas' concept of transcendence. Finally, the last part explores Elizabeth's transformative journey to Botswana, examining her encounters with the face of the Other and the symbolic dismantling of oppressive binaries within the Lévinasian framework. This analysis unravels how Head's narrative can mirror Lévinasian philosophy, unveiling the philosophical intricacies interwoven with the novel's literary fabric. As we embark on this journey through philosophy and literature, we peel back the layers of Elizabeth's narrative to reveal how it is possible to apply Lévinasian ethics on identity, connection, and the pursuit of transcendent wisdom to her painful interpersonal maturity in a world marked by division and inequality.

The aim of this paper, in Morrison’s fictional novel, God Help the Child (2015), is to examine the detrimental impact of the hostile and violent mistreatment of a light-skinned mother who restrains from nurturing her Black daughter. Nancy Chodorow’s (1978) Object Relations Theory helps us determine how patterns of gendered-parenting and early-childhood development contribute to the reproduction of traditional sex roles. Her theory includes three basic “affects”, namely attachment, frustration, and rejection, in which the female identity is chiefly based on the inextricable attachment to the mother, and the status of women in culture is defined by the tie between the mother and daughter. These “affects” are universal emotions that are vital for infantile identity formation. Drawing upon her Psychoanalytic theory, the overarching argument of this paper is that the mother is the initial object for the infant to gratify its desires; however, from Freud’s (1926) standpoint, her breast, as the source of nurturance, is the first object. For our purposes, traditional theory of Freudian Oedipus Complex is not the primary concern of this paper and Chodorow’s (1978) contemporary Object Relations Theory is applied, for Psychoanalytic Feminism contributes to examining the ambivalent nature of motherhood. Our findings indicate that Chodorow elucidates the essence of motherhood in terms of the social constructions in lieu of biological ones. Given both Chodorow’s and Freud’s (1926) viewpoints, the inextricable maternal bond between Sweetness and Bride, the mother and daughter of the novel, is traumatically distorted once the mother deprives her infant of the maternal milk.