ZABANPAZHUHI (Iranian Journal of Language Research)
Year:2017 | Volume:9 | Issue:22 |Papers Count:8

This research focuses mainly on how foregrounding and backgrounding function in the foreign policy discourse of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi between the years 1320-1356. In this way, "otherization" as well as "self" and "other" identities have been specified. In this research, "self" and "other" identities as well as their general criteria are determined according to systemic-functional linguistic theory via lexical analysis. The corpus examined includes all the texts of Shah regarding the foreign policy between the years 1320-1356. These texts are incorporated in an eleven-volume book titled A collection of compilations, speeches, messages, interviews and remarks of his imperial majesty Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, shahanshah and aryamehra of Iran. This research shows that polarity of identities in Mohammad Reza's discourse is not binary; rather it is a continuum including middle poles as well. "Self" and "other" poles are formed into the general discourse framework according to the shared ideological features. United Nation, United States of America and world nations are stable poles of "self" while Mohammad Mossaddeq, Jamal Abdul Nasser, communism, Tudeh Party and colonialism (without referring to any specific country) are stable poles of "other". The Soviet Union and Israel are also middle poles of this continuum. The results reveal that selection and activation of the words are in such a way that positive points of the "self" and negative points of the "other" are emphasized, whereas negative points of the "self" and positive points of the "other" are de-emphasized.

This research, based on Politeness Theory, describes and analyzes five common words and expressions of politeness used in Persian. The data has been collected out of observations and note taking of real conversations in different natural situations as on streets, shopping centers, universities, parties, etc. Words and expressions of politeness have different meanings in different contexts. The results show that Persian speakers not only use politeness speech for mitigating face threatening acts (FTA), but also use it for the maintenance and enhancement of addressees’ face and honor. This can lead us to one of the limitations of Brown and Levinson’ s (1987) Politeness Theory which describes politeness by mitigating FTA. The results also show that the major underlying strategy of words and expressions of politeness is “ negative politeness” strategy. It might be worth mentioning that these words and expressions are used by speakers mostly in formal or close to formal contexts.

Dysprosody is a disorder of speech production in which aphasic patients are not able to apply the prosodic cues correctly. Prosody is also an essential cue for the perception of spoken language. The present study, an experimental research, aimed at exploring the perception of intonation contours in Persian-speaking Broca Aphasics. The participants of this study included three Persian-speaking males who were selected by simple and purposeful sampling method from patients directed to the speech therapy unit in Ghaem Educational, Research and Treatment Centre of Mashhad. The ability of Broca Aphasics to comprehend intonation contours was assessed via Persian adapted Comprehension Test of Intonation Contours in Aphasia. The findings of the research showed that the Broca Aphasic individuals were able to distinguish the three intonation contours (neutral declaratives, yes-no questions, and narrow focus) tested; however, they demonstrated a poorer performance than the control group. Thus, generally speaking, the present study confirms that the perception of intonation contours and consequently the phonological abilities remain virtually intact. The present study confirms that the perception of intonation contours and consequently the phonological abilities remain virtually intact.

Sociolinguists consider language variation as one of the inherent characteristics of languages. They believe that social factors including gender, social class, education, age and ethnicity are playing a fundamental role in creating and distributing language variation. In this research, the effects of social class, education and gender on frequency and distribution of syntactic variation in every day and scientific colloquial discourse of Persian are explored. Men used scrambling, cleft construction and focus adverbs more than women in every day colloquial discourse and contrarily, women used scrambling and cleft construction more than men in scientific colloquial discourse. Upper social class people used scrambling more than middle and low classes and low class social societies used cleft construction and focus adverbs more than other social classes in every day colloquial discourse. In scientific discourse, high social class used scrambling more than other social classes. MA and BA graduates used scrambling more than high school graduates in every day colloquial discourse and high school graduates used cleft construction more than other educated people. Also, MA graduates used scrambling more than other graduates in scientific colloquial discourse. Findings of the present research indicate that we must include sociolinguistic considerations in linguistic studies in addition to using generative grammar. The existence of syntactic variations in Persian speech in different social contexts and styles represents the status and value of variation theory in linguistic explorations. In this research, the existence of three different syntactic structures representing the sameness of core meaning and also discoursal meaning indicates that generative grammar is not able to analyze them. These syntactic structure variations and distribution of them in every day and scientific discourses may be analyzed only through Variation Theory. Findings of the present research are convergent with studies of King(2005) in the field of morpho-syntactic variation in Acadian French; and also studies of Barbiers(2005) in the field of word order variation in Dutch dialect.

This paper is concerned with the study of locative predicates in Persian within the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework and two different analyses presented by Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) and also Boutin (2004). Providing a semantically based classification of mentioned predicates in Persian is one of the objectives of this study. The other objective is testing the efficiency of the two analyses especially Boutin’ s suggestion about locative predicates in Persian. Boutin (2004) argues that there is discrepancy between semantic and syntactic valency of locative predicates within the RRG framework, since, they have a semantic valency of two and a syntactic valency of one in a large number of languages. Hence, these predicates have been treated as exceptions in terms of valency correlation. He believes that if the location (one of the arguments of locative predicates) is treated as a separate predicate, rather than referring expression, then these verbs are intransitive and not exceptions in terms of valency correlation. The findings of the present study reveal that Boutin’ s suggestion (2004) holds true in Persian locative states, achievements, accomplishments and active accomplishments, but not for activities.

Researchers have dealt with statistic-stylistic research largely so that it may be used to recognize different styles and distinguish it from others in any text. In this study, samples of the theses Attawabe’ a wa Azzawabe’ a by Ebne Shoheid and the Alghofraan by Maa’ rrei have been examined according to the Busemann Equation. The stylistics based on this equation is quantitative. The analysis of the two theses, based on the principles of this equation, revealed the presence of a literary style. In addition, the literary superiority of Ebn Shoheid’ s work versus the other was also present. The factors in Busemann Equation which have led to the rise of the proportion of verb to adjective (abbreviated by VAP), and consequently the two theses being literary include: first the attributes referring to structure such as interrelation of poetry and prose, verbal devices, application of verbs, and the narrative, descriptive, and colloquial style of the paper; and second the attribute referring to content such as the age factor relating to the two authors’ theses. This paper intends to examine the style of Attawabe’ a wa Azzawabe’ a and Alghofraan theses according to the Busemann equation.

In psycholinguistic studies, with regard to cognitive models, conceptual preparation, lexical concepts, lemmas, morphemes, phonological words and phonetic patterns have been proposed as different levels of lexical processing. In previous studies, some theories have suggested the sequencing and the simultaneity of the processing modules; however, the contribution of each specific processing level has not been determined. In this study, with the participation of eighty-six undergraduate students of English Literature, picture naming task was used to determine the differences in contribution of lexical processing levels in second language (L2) noun and verb processing. According to this research, in L2, noun processing is mostly under the influence of the conceptualization stage and verb processing is mostly under the influence of the formulation stage. Therefore, it may be concluded that in language teaching, emphasizing the visual codes of concrete nouns and the morphological features of verbs, specifically facilitate learning. Moreover, with respect to the findings of this research, it may be proposed that nouns have longer retention in comparison with verbs; however, verbs are more subject to incidental learning.