Publication Date: 2013
Explicator (1939926X)71(3)pp. 153-156
Publication Date: 2023
Critical Survey (17522293)35(1)pp. 94-105
This article aims at a comparative reading of a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets and Mawlana’s ghazals from a Levinasian perspective. We will argue how Shakespeare and Mawlana (Rumi) both represent an ethical relationship with the Other in their poems, where the needs and demands of the Other are prioritised. We will also contend that although Shakespeare’s sonnets are not exclusively concerned with secular love or eroticism, they are closer to the Levinasian notion of desire or a-satiable desire in which transcendence becomes possible through need. On the other hand, Mawlana’s ghazals in which need and erotic feelings are disparaged also warn about satiable desire and need. This is not to suggest that the results of this comparison can be extended to Shakespeare’s sonnets and Mawlana’s ghazals in general, but that a similar Levinasian reading is occasionally possible and might shed new light on connections between English and Persian lyric poetry. © The Author(s)
Publication Date: 2025
Miscelanea (11376368)72pp. 149-168
This article focuses on Ifemelu’s blog posts in Chimamanda Adichie’s third novel, Americanah (2013), as seen through bell hooks’s (1989) concept of ‘talking back’ in conjunction with Pierre Macherey’s (1966) notion of ‘disparate text’ or ‘symptomatic’ reading to shed some light on the construction of the racialised condition of Black female immigrant subjectivity in America. It is argued that Ifemelu’s writing blog posts as a way of talking back to white supremacy leads to the (re)definition of Black female consciousness and autonomy. Drawing on the notion of the ‘not-said’ explicated by Macherey, the article then addresses the articulate silences in blog posts, trying to make the lacunae of the narrative speak, to picture a reverse racial narrative, and to reveal ideological gaps between racial minorities. Through a symptomatic reading, this article attempts to explain how the aesthetic silences, absences and the not-said in Ifemelu’s blog posts reflect the conflict between hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses in the context of the struggle for social justice and racial equality in the United States. The study concludes that Ifemelu’s blog posts present a revealing picture of the Black female experience in America and illustrate the workings of racial injustice with their saids and not-saids. © 2025 Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2023
Explicator (1939926X)81(1)pp. 24-27
This article offers a reading of Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man” in terms of its affective affordances. It is argued that the poem rhetorically imagines the possibility of having “a mind of winter” as being incapable of affect, that is, being inhuman. Thus, the central theme of the relation between mind and world is cast as a double encounter between the human and non-human as well as the inhuman and the non-human. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Publication Date: 2021
Humanities Diliman (16551532)18(2)pp. 137-159
Time and again Tom Wolfe has been criticized for holding conservative attitudes. Wolfe’s third novel, IAm Charlotte Simmons, published in 2004, has been considered by many critics as obvious evidence of his antipathy to political correctness, sexual liberty, and the American liberal education system in general. The few sympathetic critics who share Wolfe’s anxiety over the life of young Americans at colleges assume that neuroscience—with its emphasis on the materiality of the mind and, consequently, the rejection of free will—has been partly responsible for the creation of conformist young people. In this article, however, we suggest that Wolfe’s anxiety is not so much about neuroscience than the way it is taught at colleges and received by the public. We also show that Wolfe’s criticism of liberal education rests mainly on the claim that it fails to cultivate autonomous, self-conscious students capable of critical thinking and instead fosters an egoistic, self-centered freedom which negates the Other. Here, it seems that Emmanuel Levinas’s “Pedagogy of Becoming,” based on his ethics of alterity, is most relevant to the idea of the desire for improving the education system. © 2021 University of the Philippines. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2022
Journal of Intercultural Communication Research (17475759)51(3)pp. 309-325
Recent developments regarding mindsets have led to interesting findings in respect to language learning. Despite this interest, no one to the best of our knowledge has investigated individuals’ mindsets regarding the learnability of second language (L2) pragmatic norms. This study was set out to explore the structural relation between L2 learners’ belief systems -fixed and growth mindsets- and their L2 pragmatic norms including recognition, evaluation, perception, and conformity. Questionnaire data were collected from 213 learners of English as a foreign language in the context of Iran. The participants were asked to respond to questionnaire items on pragmatic norms, competence, motivation, and mindsets. Results of path analysis revealed that fixed and growth mindsets and L2 pragmatic competence positively predicted evaluation, perception and conformity to L2 pragmatic norms via the mediation of motivation. Our findings indicate that language mindsets play an important role in learners’ motivation to learn and use the pragmatic norms of the language they are learning. Results also imply that growth mindset should be encouraged among both language teachers and learners in order to achieve better outcomes in teaching pragmatics. © 2021 World Communication Association.
Publication Date: 2024
Learning Environments Research (15731855)27(3)pp. 913-937
The college classroom is the main setting of higher education institutions, wherein students get unique opportunities to learn and form new relationships and experiences. This study aimed to provide a qualitative description of female students’ experiences of college classrooms. The participants were 28 undergraduate female students who were purposively selected from a public university in Iran. Content analysis was utilized to analyze the semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the student’s experiences revealed four main themes: “relational disruption,” “non-effective professors,” “challenging courses and learning,” and “classrooms as non-place.” The results also indicated a need to re-define and re-structure the college classrooms to meet the changing expectations, values, motivations, and preferences of the students. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of the study for policy, practice, and future research. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024.
Publication Date: 2022
Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche (19342039)16(1)pp. 116-133
Associated with renewed begetting, the phallus is a highly relevant concept with regard to the dying and resurgent god Dionysus. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s writings are filled with Dionysian images that may suggest the archetypal concept of death-rebirth. Shelley’s Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1815) presents a young visionary poet who becomes a Dionysian phallic symbol at the end of the poem only to rise himself anew in a posthumous transcendent garden sometime in a far future. Fleeing from the cold and cruel human society that denies him truth, Shelley’s hero undergoes a quest for finding truth, which appears to him in the form of female bodies of the veiled maiden and the earth mother. Whereas the former, dissolving his male subjectivity, catches him sexually and delusively, the latter devours him in order to provide him with the charmed circle of the mother. This article attempts to explore the modality of this quest and the hero’s transformation into a worm-like phallus in the light of the Jungian archetypes of anima and phallus. © 2022 C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.
Publication Date: 2021
International Journal of Psychology (1464066X)56(6)pp. 934-940
Goals are a core aspect of motivation. Elliot et al. (2015) introduced potential-based goals as a type of self-based goals that are conceptualised as seeking to do as well as one possibly could (potential approach goals) or seeking to avoid doing worse than one possibly could (potential avoidance goals). We follow up on this construct by examining its factorial structure and investigating its associations with intrinsic motivation and performance. We assessed 436 Iranian university students' potential-based goals at the beginning of an English course, intrinsic motivation during the semester and end-of-course performance. Results attested factional separability similar to the original work, supporting generalisability concerning more collectivistic contexts. Potential approach goals were positively associated with intrinsic motivation and performance, while potential avoidance goals were negatively associated with performance, also after controlling for demographics. Overall, this affirms the relevance of potential-based goals for a comprehensive understanding of how goals motivate individuals. © 2021 The Authors. International Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Union of Psychological Science.
Parvaresh, V.,
Kassaian, Z.,
Ketabi, S.,
Saeedi, M. Publication Date: 2009
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.
Publication Date: 2019
3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature (01285157)25(4)pp. 121-137
This is a report on a qualitative research in relation to the development of translation competence (TC) in academia. The study aimed to map out the cognitive processes involved in problem-solving and provide a picture of the development of strategic TC and translation-notion in translation learners. A group of 20 Iranian students volunteered to take part in a think-aloud study. The participants were divided into four groups of G1 (pretranslational), G3 (early translational), G5 and G7 (translational), based on the number of semesters of language and translation training they had received. The ecological validity was established by availing the participants of any sources of documentation they preferred to use. The verbalisations of the participants were recorded and then transcribed into think-aloud protocols (TAPs). The analysis of TAPs revealed that students activated various configurations of decision-making processes and resourcing methods, and exhibit different conceptions of the notion-of-translation at different stages of TC development. The study also showed that the portrait of TC development featured strong reliance on automatised cognitive processes at pre-translational stage and increased evaluative processes, coupled with higher chances of success, at translational stage. The findings proved that the development of TC did not follow an incremental trajectory. They further indicated that the translation programmes as offered in universities tend to boost evaluative reflections on and conscious awareness of the translation process at the cost of decreasing the unconscious automatised processes. This suggests that from a process-oriented perspective, translation programmes do not seem to prepare the learners for translation-market requirements. © 2019 Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2016
Language Related Research (23223081)7(4)pp. 149-173
This study is an attempt to compare the intralingual semantic relations among nouns in three WordNets: FarsNet, EuroNet and Princeton WordNet. For this purpose, first the structure of WordNet was introduced and then the relations among the noun syn sets in each WordNet were discussed. This study is a descriptive comparative one and tries to answer these questions: is there any difference between these WordNets with regard to the type and number of relations? If there is any difference, what is the reason? The result of the comparison indicated that some specific relations create the skeleton of these WordNets and these relations were common between them but there were other relations that increase the information about the synsets and as a result could add to the natural language processing capability of these tools. Although adding relations can increase the capabilities, too many relations have a negative effect on their computational ability and this is the reason of choosing a restricted number of relations in FarsNet. This finding can be used in building other WordNets including special WordNets. © 2016, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2008
Journal of Applied Sciences (18125654)8(1)pp. 1-13
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.
Publication Date: 2014
Language Related Research (23223081)5(1)pp. 45-62
Philosophical and linguistic reflections of Gadamer and Ricoeur on how understanding occurs are of considerable significance. Gadamer’s concept of “Fusion of horizons” and Ricoeur’s idea of “Understanding oneself through the other” are among the most important issues in this regard. These two philosophical issues attempt to gain intercultural understanding. The fact is that the dichotomous strategies and approaches of translation as manifested in Venuti’s foreignization-domestication dichotomy, and other similar theories have been unable to pave the way for mutual understanding between cultures. Employing Gadamer’s and Ricoeur’s ideas, this study attempts to tackle the dichotomous issue of translation theories. Considering the Gadamer’s view that all understanding occurs through language and the Ricoeur’s idea that man enjoys a specific unity despite his great variation, translation is rethought as a linguistic and cultural phenomenon instrumental in creating cultural and linguistic affinity among people and causing a sort of intercultural unity. Therefore, unlike the dichotomous approach of foreignization and domestication, the present study aims to view translation from the view point of philosophical hermeneutics and offer a new approach, which simultaneously considers attention to the two cultures involved in translation and respect for the other culture. © 2014, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2015
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences (discontinued) (20392117)6(3)pp. 220-231
This study was set to investigate the problems Persian EFL learners encounter in reading advertisements. Additionally, this study explored the hidden strategies behind each advertisement. In this regard, 30 Persian EFL university students majoring in English were selected. The model of this study was based on mixed models of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (1994), Fairclough (2010), Huhmann adopted McQuarrie and Philips (2008) and Kress and Van Leeuven (2006) adopted Halliday’s Semiotic Approach (1994). The findings of the study indicated that Persian EFL learners had problems not only with semantic, syntactic and phonological aspects of language of advertisements, but also with non-linguistic elements such as colors in advertisements. As a result, the findings of the present study could be helpful for EFL teachers to see possible problems their students encounter in reading advertisements. © 2015 Mediterranean Center of Social and Educational Research. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2022
American, British and Canadian Studies (18411487)38(1)pp. 201-223
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, first appearing as the opening poem to Lyrical Ballads, has proved to be highly enigmatic since its publication. The blending of supernatural and reality along with the intricacy of the underlying structure seem to have added to the complication. The present article is an attempt to read the poem through the lens of Algirdas Julien Greimas's actantial model and semiotic square to shed some light on the semantic richness of the poem. The results seem in line with Coleridge's idea of imagination as the Mariner's imagination in co-presence with his will, along with the Moon as the source of Nature's benignity and his muse, assist him with his object-value: the unity between man, Nature, and the Creator. Moreover, the Mariner's suffering and atonement could be attributed to his moments of reasoning and free-will, devoid of imagination or spirituality and associated with the presence of the sun or diurnal elements. Greimas's model offers the possibility to elucidate the moments of confusion as 'void' or 'all' phoric states of passion in which the absence of diurnal and nocturnal elements or their co-presence could justify the Mariner's wanton murder of the Albatross or his survival. © 2022 Fateme Rahmani et al., published by Sciendo.
Kavoshian, S.,
Ketabi, S.,
Tavakoli, M.,
Mashhadi, F. Publication Date: 2025
Iranian Journal Of Language Teaching Research (23221291)13(2)pp. 139-166
The purpose of this study was to construct a local preliminary model of online Teacher Professional Development (OTPD) by implementing a netnographic (virtual ethnographic) approach. Over a period of two years in a Telegram group in Iran, the researchers, working collaboratively with 10 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and 6 teacher educators, assumed the role of netnographers. Data were triangulated from different sources of online ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, and online artifacts. The interpretive analysis of data shed light on different components and dimensions of a local netnographic model of OTPD that is informed by Iranian EFL context. This model consists of online training, EFL teachers, OTPD materials, peer support, logistics, and reflections. The accessibility, flexibility, and effectiveness of OTPD model will compensate for many problems that EFL teachers may have in traditional TPD courses. The implications of the findings are likely to be of interest to teacher educators, syllabus designers, and EFL teachers. The presented model could aid teacher educators and syllabus designers in preparing and holding mobile-enhanced online TPD materials and courses. Moreover, the model will help EFL teachers in enhancing their professional knowledge and competencies. More studies are required to fully investigate different facets of the OTPD model and add other variables to the model to examine their effects. © Urmia University Press
Publication Date: 2011
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'.
Publication Date: 2023
PERSPECTIVES-STUDIES IN TRANSLATION THEORY AND PRACTICE (0907676X)33pp. 1178-1198
This paper challenges the conventional histories concerning early translations of dramas in Iran through a sociohistorical reading of Jamalzadeh's Persianized representation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in 1961. Focusing on Bourdieu's theory of practice toned with Pym's translation historiography, the authors explore the 'whys' of Jamalzadeh's motives when he opted to translate Ibsen's drama. The article, therefore, examines Jamalzadeh's rewriting against the backdrop of the field of theatre in 1950s Iran to unveil the sociopolitical dynamics that conditioned and shaped his translation. Also, embedding in Bourdieu's concept of habitus the Derridean notion of the ideal translator, the authors explore Jamalzadeh's (bi)cultural habitus(es) as a translator in self-exile. It is proposed that (a) utilizing his Iranian cultural memories, Jamalzadeh depicted parallels between incidents in the drama and the political events of the decade leading to the 1953 coup and the fall of Mosaddegh; (b) exploiting his European cultural/intellectual memories, he deploys Ibsen's text to taunt Iranian political elites' short-sightedness and/or hypocrisy and lament the herd behaviour of the masses consequent on the former group's debilitating conflicts.
Publication Date: 2014
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (17992591)4(2)pp. 313-319
It is widely accepted by both linguists and psycholinguists that our implicit linguistic knowledge consists of both abstract rules that enable speakers to construct sentences productively and exemplars that are represented in the form of unanalyzable chunks that are memorized, stored and accessed as wholes. There are two major perspectives towards the rules of language: generativist and emergentist. In this study rule-based linguistic knowledge is looked at concisely from these two perspectives and some studies concerning some related issues are introduced briefly. At the end, a possible new perspective towards our rule-based linguistic knowledge, suggested by O'Grady (2008), is introduced. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.
Publication Date: 2014
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (17992591)4(2)pp. 411-422
This study was an attempt to evaluate Iranian high school English textbooks in terms of vocabulary, grammatical structures and compatibility between reading comprehension texts and grammar exercises. Readability formula and experts' judgment were used to ensure that high school textbooks, English American headway and English American file books were at the same level of difficulty.The findings revealed that, there were a significant lack of compatibility between the grammatical structures and reading comprehension passages in each lesson and also between high school textbooks and English American headway and English American file books in terms of the order of presentation and content. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.
Publication Date: 2012
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.
Publication Date: 2015
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature (22003592)4(6)pp. 1-7
This descriptive study attempts to see to what extent interpreter training courses offered in bachelor’s degree of English translation in Iranian universities are able to prepare students by teaching them the necessary skills of interpreting. Semi-structured interviews with experts and review of literature were used to find the skills required in interpreter training. A researcher made questionnaire, containing 69 items with a four point Likert scale was made to find out how much the students felt they had learned each necessary skill during their courses. A total of 103 students from six different universities completed the questionnaire. SPSS 17 was used to the analysis the data. The data gathered revealed that 67% of the students received a mean score of less than half the highest possible score. There was a significant difference between the six universities (P<0.001). The results of this study can be used by curriculum planners in the reformation and improvement of interpreter training courses. © 2015, Australian International Academic Centre PTY LTD. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2025
Onomazein (07171285)2025(68)pp. 65-103
Replicable/reliable translation evaluation methods are the most rudimentary thrusts in translation testing. The present research paper was an attempt to contribute to the omnipresence of product quality evaluation. In doing so, this sketch compared two translation evaluation methods, namely the PIE (Preselected items evaluation) and the OPIE (Optimized version of preselected items evaluation). The PIE method as a perturbative testing technique is used to evaluate the product quality. Despite its ubiquity, it could not accurately measure product quality through its parameters: p-value and d-index. To address this critical issue, this paper introduced an optimized version of this method (OPIE) to precisely evaluate the product quality through the application of Feldt's pG-value and the corrected item-total correlation (rit-value). One-hundred translation participants and seven evaluators partook in this research. The evaluators were asked to score translation drafts through the PIE and OPIE methods. To measure up the degree of reliability, Pearson product-moment correlation and regression variable plots were applied. The results demonstrated that the OPIE method was more consistent/reliable based on docimologically acceptable items. Research limitations and implications were discussed. © 2025, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2017
ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Belgium) (17831490)168(1)pp. 70-90
This study examined Persian intermediate and advanced EFL learners’ perceptions regarding (a) their own and their teachers’ responsibility in learning language autonomously; (b) their decision making ability in learning language autonomously; and (c) their autonomous learning activities inside and outside the classroom. To this end, a questionnaire designed by Chan, Spratt, and Humphrey (2002) was distributed among 67 intermediate and 65 advanced EFL learners. Statistical analysis of students’ answers showed that overall, advanced learners tended to assume more responsibility for their own learning, to perceive themselves to be highly capable of autonomous learning, and to practice more autonomous learning activities compared to the intermediate learners. In addition, data collected through the interviews with some of the participants suggested that learners’ perceptions were greatly affected by their previous educational experiences. Since intermediate learners were not largely engaged in making decisions related to educational materials and activities used in their classrooms, they considered themselves as less responsible for and consequently less capable of choosing learning materials and activities. The findings of the study, along with the pedagogical implications, are discussed. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Publication Date: 2016
3l: Language, Linguistics, Literature (01285157)22(3)pp. 49-63
Mandelblit's cognitive translation hypothesis investigates the translatability of metaphors at the conceptual level by considering two possible alternatives of same mapping condition (SMC) and different mapping condition (DMC) facing translators. His model incorporating other ideas about cultural models presumes conceptual metaphors as intertwined with cultural models. Additionally, in philosophy aesthetics has been defined as a way to access truth (constructed, situated and embodied rather than absolute). Therefore, the aim of the present study is to aesthetically evaluate Khayyam's Rubayyat and its English translation by Whinfield as a case study in order to gauge the issue of aesthetic equivalence with regard to the integrated model based on ideas of Mandelblit, Tabakowska, and Al-Zoubi et al. Thus, firstly, SMCs and DMCs are investigated in Whinfield's translation and secondly, aesthetic experiences of the two cultures involved are evaluated in terms of conceptual metaphors; finally, an attempt is made to modify the integrated model in terms of aesthetics. The research findings reveal that the translator has been mostly successful in maintaining conceptual equivalence by changing generic schemas and cultural models compatible to his Western community in cases of DMCs. This indicates the interrelation of conceptual metaphors and cultural models and demonstrates the overall applicability of the integrated model. Also confirmed is the necessity of supplementing the said model by factoring in aesthetics, defined by Heidegger and Nietzsche as the very understanding of a community about realities.
