This paper will investigate a number of issues related to the contact situations between Mazandarani and the standard Persian in Iran. It aims to explore the ways in which Mazandarani, a variety spoken in northern Iran, has been, over the last few decades, converging towards modern standard Persian. The changes induced in the recipient dialect as a result of this convergence involve the phonological, lexical, and grammatical levels. Nonetheless, the current paper will mainly describe and analyze the lexical borrowings, noun phrase, and ablative post-position of Mazandarani. © 2013 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
International Journal of Cultural Studies (13678779)7(2)pp. 147-174
This article focuses primarily on pictorial metaphors used by advertising firms in pre-and post-revolutionary Iran. By comparing the two sets of data, it argues that one of the main functions of pictorial metaphor in the post-revolutionary period is to reconcile two types of competing and conflicting ideologies: one based on advertising and the other inspired by Islamic values. Advertisers are not allowed, in post-revolutionary times, to manipulate the picture of women for their intended publicity of commercial products. However, they do employ some pictorial metaphors to redress the balance. The article also addresses other issues related to cultural and social aspects of contemporary Iran as reflected in Persian commercial advertisements. © 2004, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.
Spenser Studies (01959468)20pp. 145-167
As part of a larger project investigating the figurations of Persia in Renaissance English Literature, this essay traces the matter of Persia in The Faerie Queene and attempts to address some of the issues that compound any reading of the matter of the East in the light of Edward Said's notion of orientalist discourse. I suggest that whereas Persia figures as an imperial realm of pompand glory in The Faerie Queene, the representation of Islam is adversarial in character. The paper addresses how and why it is so. © 2005 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
Studia Linguistica (14679582)60(1)pp. 97-120
The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the Persian past tense form is projected into the future to designate events, states, and processes. While it must be admitted that the phenomenon under consideration is by no means confined to Persian, its examination in this language will reveal certain characteristics which are likely to contribute to a better understanding of how temporal deixis, together with aspectual and modal meanings, interact with contextual factors to yield socio-culturally relevant utterances. Of special theoretical interest in this respect are the semantic-pragmatic constraints levied, in varying degrees, on the projected tense in terms of negation, pronominal choice, speech act assignment, aspectual character, modal status, and pitch contour. Fundamental to the present study are three assumptions. First, the deictic projection at issue has pragmatic motivations, and, in addition, stems largely from the ontological asymmetry between pastness and futurity. Second, it has an indisputable edge over the other future-indicating devices available to Persian speakers in that it denotes factivity with respect to the occurrence of a situation. And third, it is stylistically marked as it digresses from the normal function of the past tense. © The Editorial Board of Studia Linguistica 2006.
Language Learning Journal (09571736)(1)
This article reports on a study which investigated the effects of correction of learners' grammatical errors on acquisition. Specifically, it compared the effects of timing of correction (immediate versus delayed correction) and manner of correction (explicit versus implicit correction). It also investigated the relative effects of correction of morphological versus syntactic features and correction of developmental early versus developmental late features. Data for the study were collected from 56 intermediate level students of English as a Foreign Language in Iranian university and private language school settings. Each participant was required to read and then retell a written text in their own words during an oral interview with the researcher. During or following the interview, the researcher corrected the participants' grammatical errors implicitly (using recasts) or explicitly (providing metalinguistic information). Individualised tests focusing on the errors that had been corrected were constructed for each participant and administered. Statistical analyses were conducted on the scores participants received on their individualised tests. Results showed no significant differences for the timing of correction. However, significant differences were found for the manner of correction. Participants who received explicit correction gained significantly higher scores than those who received implicit correction. This finding lends support to the argument of Schmidt (1994) conceming the role of metalinguistic awareness in language acquisition. Correction of morphological features was found to be more effective than that of syntactic features. It is argued that morphological features are generally learnt as items whereas syntactic features involve system learning. Correction of developmental early features was found to be more effective than correction of developmental late features. This finding lends support to suggestions that corrective feedback (like other types of form-focused instruction) needs to take into account learners' cognitive readiness to acquire features (Pienemann 1984; Mackey 1999). © 2006 Association for Language Learning.
Explicator (1939926X)64(3)pp. 132-133
Journal of Applied Sciences (18125654)(1)
The study investigated the effects of correction of learners' grammatical. errors on acquisition. Specifically, it compared the effects of manner of correction (explicit versus implicit correction). It also investigated the relative effects of explicit and implicit correction of morphological versus syntactic features and correction of developmental early versus developmental late features. Data were collected from 56 intermediate level Iranian students of English Each participant was required to read and then retell a written text in their own words during an oral interview. During or following the interview the researcher corrected the participants on their grammatical errors implicitly (using recasts) or explicitly. Individualised tests focusing on the corrected errors were constructed and administered. Statistical analyses were conducted on the scores the participants received on their individualised tests. Results showed that the participants who received explicit correction gained significantly higher scores than those who received implicit correction. Analyses of the interactions between independent variables showed that explicit correction was more effective for the acquisition of developmental early features and implicit correction was more effective for the acquisition of developmental late features. © 2008 Asian Network for Scientific Information.
Journal of Language and Politics (15692159)7(1)pp. 53-70
This paper aims to investigate the language used by newspapers in post-revolutionary Iran. More precisely, the paper sets out to analyze how such a language is deployed to represent relevant hegemonic ideologies. The approach adopted for this purpose draws inspiration mainly from critical linguistics, where it is hypothesized that, as far as the pertinent metadiscourse goes, media genres serve to activate and perpetuate social power relations. In keeping with this theoretical stance, the paper argues that socially constructed texts can be said to perform two complementary functions; on the one hand, they shed light on the realities experienced in social life; on the other, they reveal such aspects of those realities as are constructed through the use of language. It is thus in this context that the media language used in the post-revolutionary Iran lends itself to analytical investigation, where the available data reveal the co-existence of three competing discourse processes of 'Islamization', 'Iranian Nationalism' and 'Western liberalism', relating to the third stage development of post-revolutionary Iran. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.
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