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.
Explicator (144940)66(2)pp. 68-71
Parvaresh, V.,
Kassaian, Z.,
Ketabi, S.,
Saeedi, M. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (20103778)39pp. 1060-1068
This case study investigates the effects of reactive focus on form through negotiation on the linguistic development of an adult EFL learner in an exclusive private EFL classroom. The findings revealed that in this classroom negotiated feedback occurred significantly more often than non-negotiated feedback. However, it was also found that in the long run the learner was significantly more successful in correcting his own errors when he had received nonnegotiated feedback than negotiated feedback. This study, therefore, argues that although negotiated feedback seems to be effective for some learners in the short run, it is non-negotiated feedback which seems to be more effective in the long run. This long lasting effect might be attributed to the impact of schooling system which is itself indicative of the dominant culture, or to the absence of other interlocutors in the course of interaction.
Explicator (1939926X)67(3)pp. 183-186
Language Sciences (03880001)31(6)pp. 853-873
The present paper sets out to focus on an aspect of the modal system of Persian which, despite its crucial role in interactive discourse, has not received the treatment it deserves. More precisely, the paper seeks to investigate how the simple past is deployed to express subjective epistemic and deontic modality within a future-oriented framework. This apparent clash between tense and time can be explained in terms of a set of recognition criteria: tense-distinction, interrogation, conditionality and modal harmony. The clash is also explicable pragmatically in that it is heavily context-dependent. In both cases, the underlying assumption is that the modality under consideration is invariably construed as indicating certainty, disbelief, challenge, nonchalance or obligation with respect to a particular state of affairs. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Research in Contemporary World Literature/ Pazhuhesh-e Zabanha-ye Khareji (25884131)(56)pp. 181-196
Paradise Lost incorporates many references to the East. The Orient figures prominently in the vast scope - the "imaginative geography" - of the poem. This paper attempts a survey of what, following Edward Said, has been termed orientalist discourse in Milton's epic poem. It is argued that this discourse has to be considered in the context of Milton's essentially religious and anti-monarchical stance. Associating the Orient with evil and the Satanic regime Paradise Lost cannot be wrested from latent orientalism but it is shown that issues such as aesthetic considerations, a cosmic setting, drawing on the authority of history, classicism, an encyclopedic scope, an essential antimonarchism and above all a profound process of displacement whereby comments on contemporary issues are displaced onto the Orient all help compound the representations of the East in this text. The result is an ambiguous and multi-faceted orientalist discourse.
This paper describes the development process of FarsNet; a lexical ontology for the Persian language. FarsNet is designed to contain a Persian WordNet with about 10000 synsets in its first phase and grow to cover verbs' argument structures and their selectional restrictions in its second phase. In this paper we discuss the semi-automatic approach to create the first phase: the Persian WordNet. © Global Wordnet Conference, GWC 2010. All rights reserved.
Language Sciences (03880001)32(4)pp. 488-504
The goal of this paper is to investigate the syntax and semantics of obligatory control predicates in Persian. After reviewing present syntactic approaches to control, the facts of Persian are shown to lead to the conclusion that it is not possible to identify the controller in Persian on purely syntactic grounds. Rather, the properties of obligatory control constructions in this language provide evidence for the necessity of considering semantic factors in the proper analysis of this construction. These properties are shown to follow a semantic treatment along the lines of Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005). We propose that in Persian obligatory control constructions, the control predicate licenses an event complement with the controller being the argument to which the control predicate assigns the role of actor for the action stated in the complement clause. Classes of exceptions, not to be discussed in this paper, may be treated as coercion in the sense of Sag and Pollard (1991), Pollard and Sag (1994); followed by Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), in which internal conventionalized semantic materials, not present in syntax, are added. © 2009.
Languages in Contrast (15699897)10(1)pp. 54-75
This paper investigates how English influences the Persian scientific language. By analyzing parallel corpora of English and Persian texts from the areas of education and psychology, the paper seeks to reveal that translation as a language contact phenomenon influences not only the grammatical and semantic categories of the target language, it also leaves some traces of the impact of the source language on the discourse-pragmatics of the target language. This in turn leads to a kind of stylistic variation triggered by the source language. One of the main arguments adduced is that such a replication is based on the cultural filters operating in the replica language. In other words, the borrowed elements show a kind of innovative adaptation to the new environment to resolve their clashes with the target language. Thus the paper primarily focuses on the influence on Persian, through translation, of the English passive construction, as well as its deictic terms of first personal pronouns. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Research in Contemporary World Literature/ Pazhuhesh-e Zabanha-ye Khareji (25887092)(61)
This paper is an attempt to shed light on how Michael Ondaatje has tried to rewrite Western history in his Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient (1992). In the light of Colonial and Postcolonial theories and Hayden White's theory of narrativity of history, which regards historical accounts as metaphorical statements, the researchers try to show how Ondaatje challenges the authenticity of history written by Westerners about the Orientals. Ondaatje, as a migrant postcolonial writer, breaks the long-imposed silence of the marginal people by giving them access to speech whereby to express their own perceptions of reality. He also gives them access to the medium of writing to break the monolithic status of Western historiography (also reflected in Western literary works). Moreover, Ondaatje blurs the borderline between history and fiction in The English Patient to challenge the pseudo-scientific status of history, and presents fiction as a medium through which history is rewritten from the perspective of the 'Other'.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences (18770428)15pp. 215-220
ELT materials (textbooks) are believed to play a pivotal role in English classes. In recent years, however, there has been a lot of debate throughout ELT profession on their actual roles (e.g. Harwood, 2003; Hyland 2000, 2002). This paper is an attempt to first summarize some of the arguments put forward by the pro and anti-textbook camps and then discuss the results of a complex evaluation process of the EAP textbooks used at the four leading universities of Iran (IUT, UI, PNU and IAU) to assess whether these anti-textbook ideas have any validity in the field of EAP specially in an Iranian setting. The evaluation was done via three questionnaires (namely Students Needs Analysis Questionnaire, Students Textbook Evaluation Questionnaire and Teacher Textbook Evaluation Questionnaire) answered by more than 300 EAP students and teachers. In combining the results of the three questionnaires used, it was found that although a lack of fit between the needs of the students and the textbook contents and organizations was rather apparent, EAP textbooks deemed necessary and useful for EAP classes. Teachers should, therefore, be given more autonomy to accommodate students' needs and interests when essential. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (20530692)1(12)pp. 1861-1864
Translating for children requires special considerations particularly in terms of style. This study addresses use of idioms as a stylistic device and the way they are translated in a children's fiction. Choosing Hooshang Moradi-Kermani's Khomre and its English translation by Teimoor Ruhi, the following research questions were formulated: 1. What procedures are used to translate idioms in children's literature? 2. What is the most frequent procedure used in translating idioms in Khomre as a children's book? 3. What is the translator's preferred strategy in translating Khomre as a piece of children's literature? In order to answer the first and second questions and find out the procedures opted for in translating children's literature, Baker's (1992) proposed procedures were taken as the framework of the study. And to answer the third question venuti's (2004) model of domestication and foreignization strategies was adopted as the framework. To collect and analyze the data, first, the Persian idioms occurring in the book Khomreh as a piece of children's literature and their English translations given by Teimoor Ruhi were identified and paired. Next, the procedures used by the translator were identified and their frequency and percentage were calculated, the results were presented in a table and a chart for subsequent analysis and discussion. Then the general translation strategy related to each example and procedure was identified. The analysis revealed that in the English rendering all the procedures proposed by Baker (1992) as well as a combination of some of the procedures were used. The most frequent procedure was paraphrasing and the general translation strategy applied was that of domestication. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences (18770428)15pp. 376-381
The present study aimed at investigating the extent to which using two types of instructional materials - websites vs. textbooks - may affect learners' knowledge and ability to use certain grammatical rules. Ninety homogenous adult Iranian intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to three groups - Textbook Group (TG), Website Group (WG) and Control Group (CG). A pretest was given to the three groups to measure their command of the grammar rules in focus prior to any treatment. In the treatment phase, the instructor used two grammar teaching textbooks to teach the learners in the TG whereas for those in the WG the same grammatical rules were taught on line in a language lab using a number of English language teaching websites. The CG learners received a placebo task. After the treatment phase, a post-test was administered to measure the gains. The results indicated that websites were as effective as textbooks in teaching grammar. Accordingly, it can be concluded that integration of web-based materials in the EFL classrooms (at least as supplement to print-based materials) can help motivate and enhance learners' mastery of English grammar. The study has implications for EFL practitioners and materials developers. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Asian Social Science (19112025)(10)
In the scope of Literary Translation, the present article focuses on the benefits of translation which is technically referred to as translation gain. Defined as "translator's technique used to compensate for translation loss" (Note 1), translation gain has scarcely been a subject of heated debates among the authorities in the field of Literary Translation. The data for the present study was collected from the Armenian translation of 5 short stories written by a famous Armenian-American writer W. Saroyan (1908-1981). One of the main objectives of the study is that it covers translations into a language of limited diffusion-Armenian. The results of the study will come to show that in the course of recreating the original, the translator may add values to it either because s/he grasped the author's thought rather better or by taking advantage of the target language's neater and/or richer linguistic resources.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (20530692)1(10)pp. 1328-1337
This study aimed at investigating the relationship between self-esteem, age and gender on the one hand and speaking skills on the other hand. For this purpose, based on an OPT test twenty intermediate Persian learners of English were selected from among undergraduate EFL students studying towards a B.A. in teaching English as a foreign language at Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch. Using a modified version of Farhady, et. al.'s scale (1995), measuring the five subskills of vocabulary, structure, pronunciation, fluency and comprehensibility, two raters evaluated the speaking ability of the participants at the end of the required course (Oral Production of Short Stories). The Sorensen's (2005) questionnaire for measuring self-esteem containing 50 items was also administered to the participants. The result showed a significant relationship between self-esteem and speaking skill with fluency exerting the most influence. There was also a reverse relationship between age and speaking skills. Concerning the relationship between gender and speaking skills, no statistically significant association was found. The study could have implications for English language teachers, learners and text book writers. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.
Asian EFL Journal (17381460)13(3)pp. 153-183
The current study sets out 1) to investigate the strategic needs of participants in reading literary and non-literary texts; and 2) to shed light on the differences of reading literary and non-literary texts. To achieve this aim, thirty participants read three literary and two non-literary texts and wrote down the questions for which they could not find any answer.Next, these questions were categorized in five groups: Scripturally implicit, textually implicit, textually explicit, linguistic and miscomprehension. The findings suggest that the dominant problem of participants lies in textually implicit aspects of the text. Finally, a Kruskal-Wallis test was applied in order to compare the frequency of question types across literary and non-literary texts. The difference of all question types proved to be statistically significant across both literary and non-literary texts.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (20530692)1(7)pp. 851-860
One of the elements present in almost all literary texts causing intercultural gaps is allusion. This study addresses allusion, as a form of intertextuality, in translation. An attempt has been made to look into the strategies the translators have used in translating into Persian four types of allusive PNs(proper names) and KPs (key-phrases) (religious, political, historical and mythological) in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This comparative study is done on the basis of the strategies of translating allusions suggested by Leppihalme (1997) to find whether the Persian translations follow these strategies or not and to find the frequency and efficiency of each strategy. The three Persian translations are by Manouchehr Badi'ei (1380), Parviz Dariush (1370) and Asghar Jooya (1382). The strategy of 'retention of the given name' was of the highest and 'omission' of the lowest frequency in the translations studied. Badi'ei's translation proved to be the most attentive to allusions and the most successful in rendering them. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.
English Language Teaching (19164750)5(7)pp. 81-89
This research is an attempt to find out if grouping learners, through using a placement test will significantly help students become more successful in learning English. 320 non-English major undergraduates studying at the University of Isfahan participated in this research. The final scores of 121 freshmen who attended their general English courses in homogenised classes were compared with those of 199 freshmen who did not undergo any placement procedure. The analysis of data suggested that grouping the learners and dividing them into different ability groups had a significant impact on the participants' academic success, in their course of general English. In addition, the results suggested that ability grouping provides sufficient ground for methodological decisions and hence sequencing of teaching materials and procedures.
Research in Contemporary World Literature/ Pazhuhesh-e Zabanha-ye Khareji (25887092)(62)pp. 7-7
In the present paper, syntactic omission convections in English are investigated on the basis of Dixon (2005) in translations from Persian for their being rendered explicit through translation. The data of the study entails Persian literary texts from different literary genres, namely fiction, poetry, and drama. The study is in line with that carried out by Olahan (2001) which explored syntactic omission conventions in the translated English corpora of BNC and TEC. The present research is an attempt to investigate the findings presented by Olahan yet across three literary genres and to inspect the behavior of optional syntactic explicitation pertaining to fiction, poetry, and drama translations. The results of the study revealed that explicitation of syntactic optional structures is a prevalent norm in modern Persian-English translations of literary texts and that among the proposed conventions, explicitation of the complementiser THAT followed by that of relative pronouns proves the most frequent in all literary genres; yet, in other sub-categories, our findings do not confirm Olahan's. The findings reveal that explicitation is applied as a literary device in literary translation.
English Language Teaching (19164750)5(1)pp. 76-85
The present study aimed to explore how tolerant of ambiguity Iranian EFL learners at university level are and if gender plays a role in this regard. To this end, upon filling in the revised SLTAS scale of ambiguity tolerance 194 male and female Iranian teacher trainees were assigned to three ambiguity tolerance groups; namely, high, moderate and low. Cluster analysis of the SLTAS scores indicated that Iranian EFL learners were mostly moderate as far as tolerance of ambiguity was concerned. Examining the gender differences through an independent sample t-test manifested that female participants were less tolerant of ambiguity than their male peers. Also, the differences between the expected and observed number of participants categorized in the three AT groups were non-significant undermining the role of gender as a moderator variable in assigning participants to AT groups and further approving of SLTAS validity. Implications for classroom practice are presented in the light of findings. The results are helpful in syllabus design and teaching methodology.
Sadeghi, S.,
Ketabi, S.,
Tavakoli, M.,
Sadeghi, M. Social Sciences (discontinued) (18185800)7(1)pp. 24-29
Classroom interaction analysis requires a variety of systematic approaches to interpret the classroom discourse in its unique socio-educational context. Investigating classroom interaction based on sole reliance on quantitative techniques could be problematic, since they conceal more than they reveal of the intricacies of classroom interaction. This qualitative study aimed at analyzing classroom discourse from two perspectives. First Grice's Cooperative Principles in 1975 was used to examine maxim observance in different genders by 22 EFL learners. Learners were required to listen to some audio materials and to discuss the topics through presenting their own perspectives. They were asked to make their arguments clear, brief, relevant and sincere. Transcriptions of classroom interactions were put into a qualitatively, critical interpretation of males and females' adherence to or flouting of four maxims. Results indicated limitations in applying these descriptions in revealing the hidden motivations in interactions between genders. Thus, researchers utilized Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis framework (CCDA) proposed by Kumaravadivelu in 1999 which draws on Posts tructuralism and postcolonialism concepts of discourse to examine classroom interaction in terms of power/knowledge and dominance/resistance. © Medwell Journals, 2012.
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