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Applied Language Studies - Volume:1 Issue: 1, Summer and Autumn 2009

Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Summer and Autumn 2009

  • تاریخ انتشار: 1378/10/11
  • تعداد عناوین: 7
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  • Mohammad Ghazanfari Page 1
    Generally speaking, lexical items that enter our minds through reading a textcommonly leave us with pictures, sounds, echoes, and feelings in the mind.While the ability to produce images in the mind in the process of readingappears to be vital for greater comprehension and recall of texts, research hasindicated that many poor readers seemingly do not visualize as they read. Onthe contrary, those readers who do typically visualize achieve greatercomprehension and recall (see Tomlinson, 1997). In this study, in line withWittrock’s ‘generative learning theory’ (e.g., 1992), two fairly homogeneousgroups of EFL undergraduates (N=50), after taking a reading comprehensiontest to ensure that their reading comprehension differences are not significant,were randomly assigned to attend a short-story course in two differentsections—one serving as the experimental and the other as the control group,both studying the same short stories, and both being taught by the researcher astheir instructor of the course. The experimental group was instructed how toform pictures in the mind—i.e., how to visualize—before reading, whilereading, and after reading a short story, for example, by being requested todraw pictures of the characters, scenes, or settings in the story as they perceivedthem. The control group, however, did not receive any training with respect toimagery production and was not told to practice visualization before, while, orafter reading the same texts as the experimental group did. The results of areading comprehension test on the short stories that had been discussed in bothindicated that the “visualizers” significantly outperformed the “non-visualizers”, i.e., the control group, on both tests.
  • Zahra Khajeh, Hajar Khanmohammad Page 24
    Among factors that might manipulate translators’ mind while producing a textis the notion of ideology transmission through text or talk. Adopting CriticalDiscourse Analysis (CDA) with particular emphasis on the framework of VanDijk (1999), the present investigation is an attempt to shed light on therelationship between language and ideology involved in translation in general,and more specifically, to uncover the underlying ideological assumptionsinvisible in the texts, both source text (ST) and target text (TT), andconsequently ascertain whether or not translators’ ideologies are imposed intheir translations.The corpus consists of the full text of two different Persian translations ofthe book Media Control by Noam Chomsky, written in English. In a qualitativephase, a detailed contrastive/comparative study at the micro-level in terms offore/back-grounding mechanisms including explanation of lexical items anddominant grammatical metaphors (passive vs. active, nominalization vs. denominalization,addition vs. omission, and modalization) was conducted toexamine, describe and subsequently interpret the patterns in the English sourcetext and its Persian translated versions. In order to make the research datainterpretations as objective as possible, having computed frequencies ofideologically significant instances, and percentages, Chi-square formula wasapplied to find out any difference between proportions of informationextracted from the target text concerning their fore/back-grounding and theirpositions against the source text as well as to test the research null hypothesis,which was consequently rejected.The findings reveal that there are significant changes made by the twotranslators, either intentionally or unintentionally, in their selection of lexicalitems and syntactic structures in comparison to those in the source text. Thefindings of the study also show that many distortions or transformationsbetween the original and the two translated versions were not only arbitrary,but also ideologically encoded in the texts, with specific purposes and functions.
  • Agnes Korn Page 43
    For the Western Iranian languages the transition from the Old Iranian to theMiddle-Iranian period is characterised by – among other things – the loss ofword-final syllables. This loss had a far-reaching impact on the nominal andverbal systems since it caused the loss of categories which had been expressedby suffixes. The consequences include the emergence of the so-called ergativesystem.Although descriptions of the ergative construction in Balochi do exist, thereis no treatment yet which takes into account the material of the differentdialects. Furthermore, the ergative construction in Balochi has been comparedwith data from Old Iranian, but not with data from Middle Iranian languages,and the development from the Middle Iranian stage to the different types foundin present-day Balochi has also not yet been studied. The aim of this paper istherefore to present the data from the Balochi dialects as far as they are knowntoday and to update, complete (and in some points, correct) previousdescriptions of the matter.
  • Farideh Okati, Abbas Ali Ahangar, Carina Jahani Page 80
    The purpose of this article is to determine the phonemic status of [h] and [ʔ] inthe Sistani dialect of Miyankangi. Auditory tests applied to the relevant datashow that [ʔ] occurs mainly in word-initial position, where it stands in freevariation with Ø. The only place where [h] is heard is in Arabic and Persianloanwords, and only in the pronunciation of some speakers who are educatedand/or live in urban centres, where inhabitants are in closer touch with Persianthan in rural areas. The sound [h] also occurs in the pronunuciation of someArabic loanwords where it replaces the glottal plosive, particularly in wordmedial, intervocalic position. The investigation shows that neither [ʔ] nor [h]have phonemic status in the Sistani dialect of Miyankangi at present, but thatmore intense contact with Persian may change this state in the future,particularly for [h].
  • Ali Rabi Page 100
    This article attempts to see, through the structural significances of poeticlanguage, the nature of the split between linguistic description and literaryinterpretation. Rhythm is the most prominent means of relating form tocontent in poetic language. The first account of this prominence is seen throughidentifying its position in the two prosodic forms of metrical and non-metricalpoetry. Foregrounding has been seen as a significant feature in literarycreation. Following Bradford (1997) the analysis undertakes three stages ofanalysis as ‘discovery procedures’, ‘naturalization’, and ‘judgment’ (renamed inour work as ‘remarks’). The first level examines the degree of the tensionbetween the two patterns. In the second level, i.e. naturalization, the analysisgoes on turning the peculiar language of the poem into that of the ordinary,which means making sense of a text. This translation of the poetic language hasbeen shown to be considerably rooted in elements of form in the classical verse,and of content in modern free verse. The intervening type has thus been judgedto exist somewhere between the two. The third level, namely ‘remarks’evaluates the degree of the poet’s success in managing the tension between thetwo patterns.
  • Code-Copying in the Balochi language of Sistan
    Lutz Rzehak Page 115
    The main West Iranian languages, i.e. Old Persian, Parthian, Middle Persian,New Persian and – in some respects – Avestan, may be studied in a uniquelycontinuous development stretching over close to 3 000 years. These languagesare not only the result of their genetic inter-relations but also of their cultural,religious and political history. They may be labelled ‘high languages’(‘Hochsprachen’), in the sense that they are cultured and standardized andused for a great number of purposes by people of various linguisticbackgrounds. This article presents an over-view of their development seen froma specific perspective. The traditional Iranian walled-in garden, the pairi-daēzaofthe Avesta, is used as a metaphor for a high language in contrast to the freevegetation of spontaneous human speech in social interaction. The latter ishere called ‘dialect’, a concept that includes both ‘geolect’ and ‘sociolect’. Thesehigh language ‘gardens’ are thus viewed as a kind of cultural artefacts. Amongother things, this has implications for views on the dichotomy literacy/orality,showing that writing is not language and that ‘orality’ belongs both to ‘highlanguage’ and ‘dialect’. It is furthermore argued that literacy and orality werepresent in complementary distribution throughout the whole known history ofthe Iranian cultural sphere.
  • Bo Utas Page 142