ZABANPAZHUHI (Iranian Journal of Language Research)
Year:2023 | Volume:15 | Issue:47|Papers Count:11

Writing scientific and academic books, articles, and delivering lectures on various scientific topics are among the effective ways of communicating knowledge and information to audiences and learners. Therefore, it is worth noting that researchers, scholars, and teachers in various fields of research should adopt a writing or lecturing style that effectively and successfully communicates information to the audience, enabling them to easily benefit from learning new content and information. Priority should be given to using scientific language, which is plain, direct in interpretation, and has logical structures and order that utilize words in their true meaning, guiding the audience directly to the intended meaning. However, some authors, researchers, and speakers opt for a sublime and glorious style of presentation, aiming to deliver eloquent speech or writing. Despite this, they should consider that the primary and crucial goal of presenting scientific content is to convey it properly and explicitly to the audience. Therefore, teachers should pay attention to differences such as gender, education, and field of study among their audience when choosing their presentation style. Each variable affects people's preferences for learning. For example, studies in applied linguistics have shown that gender differences play a role in the use of language tools, with men and women differing in their use of lexical items. Additionally, individuals' level of education and their expertise and specialization shape the way they use lexical items or grammatical structures. If the audience is trained according to their preferences in receiving and processing information, they will achieve better academic results. Due to these differences among learners, the education system needs to consider learners' learning styles and emotions, as they are essential factors in the field of education. Emotions not only affect students' preparation and motivation to deal with problems but also their efforts and the strategies they use to understand the course content. In this regard, utilizing the emo-sensory style (involving the senses and evoking emotions) and engaging different senses of students in the process of grasping information can be beneficial. Given the importance of considering audience differences and their needs when selecting the writing and speaking style of authors and speakers, the present study aims to examine the language preferences of students of different genders, various levels of education, and fields of study. This analysis is conducted using a new measure that examines sublime, emo-sensory, and simple styles. The paper seeks to answer the question of whether gender, level of education, and field of study significantly influence learners' preferences regarding these styles.

Relative clause as a complex sentence has always been focused in cognitive linguistics. A relative clause construction (RCC) consists of four main parts: nominal head, main clause (MC), relative clause (RC) and a clause connector "keh". In exemplar theory all tokens of a RCC can be classified in a variety of examples. Exemplar is an individual trace from previous experience in memory. An exemplar-based representation indicates a list of words happening in a certain slot. (Bybee, 2013, p. 58). That is to say, an actual utterance of a RCC always simultaneously instantiates a number of lower-level constitutive constructions and their properties. (Wiechmann, 2015, p. 3). Following the study of English RCCs in Wiechmann (2015), the present paper aims to introduce exemplar clusters (closely related to schemas in cognitive grammar) of Persian RCCs. However, this study has focused more on explaining schema occurrence. Furthermore, variables have been chosen based on RCC features in Persian.

Comparison is a fundamental aspect of human cognition that is expressed in various ways across languages. However, it cannot be solely described by individual words or morphemes, rather, its existence depends on underlying schematic structures. Heine (1997) notes that the domain of comparison encompasses different conceptual and linguistic forms, with the "superior comparative" serving as a prototypical example in languages worldwide. It is worth noting that both "superior comparative" and "superlative" constructions share common underlying structures. This study hypothesizes that Persian exhibits a greater variety of language-specific superlative constructions compared to English, attributed to typological features such as the "Ezafe construction, " "free word order, " as well as other morpho-syntactic elements including constructional idioms, specific lexical items, and phrasal/complex predicates unique to Persian. This study aims to address the following questions: 1) What schemas and morpho-syntactic mechanisms do Persian and English employ to express the superlative comparison notion? 2) Do all constructive components of superlative comparison in Persian and English require obligatory or optional formal expression? 3) To what extent can Stassen's typological classification (1985) and Heine's cognitive approach (1997) explain the superlative comparative constructions in these two languages? 4) How similar or different are the dedicated grammaticalized constructions employed by Persian and English to express the superlative comparison notion?

According to the cognitive linguistics approach, language acts as a window to the mind. In other words, it is believed that the patterns of conceptualization in the mind can be discovered through the study of language. One of the most important theories in this approach is the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which asserts that the conceptual system in the human mind has a metaphorical nature, and metaphors are the most important means of conveying abstract concepts. Metaphorical concepts can extend beyond ordinary literal ways of thinking and talking into the realm of figurative, poetic, or fanciful thought and language. Persian literature, as one of the oldest in the world, consists of numerous works in prose and poetry. Studying these works through the Conceptual Metaphor Theory may provide insights into the dominant thinking of their writers and poets. Sharifi Moghadam and others (2021) conducted research entitled "A Cognitive Analysis of the Concepts of 'Divine Anger and Worldly Punishment' in the Holy Quran. " This study investigated the conceptualization of divine anger in the Holy Quran. According to this study, the target domains used in the Quran demonstrate that although divine anger is distinct from human anger, the conceptualization is designed in a way that is easy to understand for human beings. Another study, "A Comparative Study of Metaphor in Massoud Sa'ad and Naser Khosrow's Odes, " was conducted by Mobarak and Parsa (2019). This research aims to compare these two poets within intellectual and literary circles by examining the metaphors used by Masood Sa'ad and Nasser Khosrow in their works and exploring their similarities and differences. Through analyzing the meaning, content, application, type, and structure of the metaphors, this study reviews and evaluates one of the important aspects of figurative language in these two works. One of the abstract concepts that can be observed in the works of great writers and poets is the concept of "world, " which is closely related to life and existence. As mentioned, the abstract concept of "world" can be understood through tangible concepts, and investigating its metaphors may provide insights into the attitudes of writers and poets toward life. Therefore, the main focus of this research is to study the ontological and structural metaphors of the "world" concept in Saadi's and Parvin's poems. The main objective of this study is to determine their dominant thinking regarding the world. The study aims to answer the following questions: What is the frequency of ontological and structural metaphors of the "world" concept in Saadi's and Parvin's poems? And what are Saadi's and Parvin's dominant perspectives on the world?

Human voices are unique, and for this reason, speakers can be identified by their voices. This shows that speech sounds contain speaker-specific information that can be reflected in the acoustic properties of speech signals. There are many individuals around the world who speak two or more languages, adding a fascinating dimension of variability to language perception and production. However, it remains unclear whether bilinguals alter their voice when switching between languages. A holistic view of bilingualism suggests that bilinguals are an integrated whole that cannot be separated into distinct parts, instead, they possess their own specific linguistic configuration (Grosjean, 1989). Moreover, languages differ in their segment inventories, rules of segmental combinations, as well as spectral and rhythmic characteristics of speech. Speaking styles can also contribute to within-speaker variability in acoustic parameters. Despite these factors, little is known about the influence of language and speaking style on within-and between-speaker vocal variability. This study aims to investigate how acoustic features, specifically long-term F0 and long-term formant frequencies (F1-F4), contribute to speaker individuality in Persian-English bilingual speakers and to what extent these features can discriminate between bilingual speakers.

In novels, fictional life is intertwined with social realities, power dynamics, and ideologies, which authors represent through language. Understanding the intellectual and ideological tendencies of these writers has led to a growing interest among researchers and literary critics, necessitating the use of text analysis methods. Critical discourse analysis, as an efficient method, has addressed this necessity. This study employs Fairclough's approach to examine the discursive functions in Abbas Maroufi's novel "The Year of Turmoil, " which explores aspects of Iran's contemporary history. There is a wealth of literature on critical discourse analysis of novels using Norman Fairclough's approach. For example, Bahrami & Arian (2020) conducted a critical discourse analysis of "The Fish Sleep at Night" by Sudabah Ashrafi, highlighting the novel's critique of patriarchy and the suppression of women. Another study by Zaree et al. (2020) applied Fairclough's theory to analyze the Arabic novel "Al-Harb Fi Barr-I Misr" by Yusuf al-Qaid, emphasizing the author's use of contrasts and oppositions in meaning. These studies demonstrate the widespread recognition of critical discourse analysis as an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing texts from a social and political perspective.

One of the topics that many linguists have considered in recent years is discourse analysis. Different researchers have presented and developed various points of view about critical discourse analysis such as Hodge and Kress (1976), Foucault (1980), Fairclough (1996 and 2002), Penny Cook (2001), Wodak and Meyer (2001), Mouffe (2001), Van Dijk (2004) and Van Leeuwen (1996, 2008) among others. In this regard, Van Leeuwen's (2008) critical discourse analysis model is a socio-semantic model, which rests on interactions, actions, and reactions between individuals. In fact, the present study has exclusively been carried out based on this model in order to understand how social actors are represented and also to see whether the application frequency of various discourse components related to inclusion in the story of "Bijan and Manijeh" from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is significant or not. The components of inclusion under discussion having been analyzed in accordance with this model are as follows: 1) Association, the way to represent the social actors in a group and bring them together in an action. 2) Activation, the component that is used when social actors are active and are dynamically represented. 3) Differentiation, which refers to a situation in which social actors are differentiated from other actors because of their identities. 4) Nomination, which is divided into types of sub-components of formal nomination, informal nomination, semi formal nomination, and titulation. In formal nomination, social actors are introduced by referring to their last names and in informal nomination they are represented only by their first names. In semi-formal nomination, social actors are represented by their first and last names and in titulation they are referred to by titles. 5) Specification, which is divided into three sub-components: Individualism, Aggregation, and Collectivization. Individualism is a device to represent social actors by referring to a specific and unique name, collectivization means representing social actors by referring to general classes and groups, and aggregation denotes representing actors by referring to numerical sets (Van Leeuwen, 2008). The text under study in this research is the story of "Bijan and Manijeh" taken from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. This poem comprises a total of 1312 verses out of the entire Shahnameh book. This story is made of a series of events that are perfectly connected. In the first verses of the story, the poet speaks about a female storyteller who has narrated the whole story to him, and the poet tells this story to readers again. By considering the importance of the Shahnameh book and using the discourse-oriented components related to inclusion as developed in Van Leeuwen's (2008) model, we can deal with how social actors are represented in the text of this story and then the way it is possible to describe, compare and analyze the application frequency of each component and the relevant sub-components. Correspondingly, the questions of the present study are as follow: How are the types of discourse components of inclusion in Van Leeuwen's (2008) model under investigation represented in the "Bijan and Manijeh" story? What kind of relationship exists between the application frequency of the various inclusion components analyzed following Van Leeuwen's (2008) model in "Bijan and Manijeh" story? According to these questions, the hypotheses of this study are as the following: Different types of discourse components of inclusion under investigation are represented in accordance with the discourse components of Van Leeuwen's (2008) model in "Bijan and Manijeh" story. There is a significant relationship between the application frequency of different inclusion components analyzed following Van Leeuwen's (2008) model in "Bijan and Manijeh" story.

This study explores the comprehensive analysis of the morpheme "-ra" in Persian, a topic that has not been extensively studied despite its importance. Traditionally, "-ra" has been considered a definite/specific direct object marker. However, non-canonical occurrences of "-ra" on adverbs, extracted subjects from embedded clauses, obligatory appearances on extracted DPs from indirect object positions, and DPs extracted from PPs complement positions raise questions about its role as an accusative case marker and the mechanism for case assignment in these constructions. The analysis of the morpheme "-ra" in Persian is of significant importance due to its widespread usage and syntactic/semantic variations beyond its canonical role as a definite/specific direct object marker. Understanding the comprehensive distribution and features of "-ra" is crucial for unraveling the intricate syntactic and semantic properties of Persian. Despite previous attempts to analyze this morpheme, no comprehensive framework has been proposed thus far that can account for all its syntactic/semantic distributions and capture its various non-canonical occurrences. This study aims to address this gap by providing a detailed investigation into the syntactic behavior and case assignment mechanisms associated with "-ra" in Persian. By delving into these aspects, we can shed light on the intricate nature of this morpheme and contribute to the broader understanding of Persian syntax and case marking phenomena.

Simultaneous interpretation is a complex interactional process involving the simultaneous decoding and encoding of information in both source and target languages. Discourse relations play a crucial role in establishing and maintaining coherence within units of discourse, encompassing semantic and pragmatic links. Coherence can be achieved through various frameworks such as elaboration, contrast, inference, and temporal sequence, often facilitated by the use of discourse markers. However, despite the importance of studying discourse relations in simultaneous interpretation, there is a lack of research in this area, particularly in Iranian scientific and educational environments. This study aims to address this gap by analyzing the discourse relations in parallel corpora during the process of simultaneous interpretation, focusing on linguistic and metalinguistic elements and drawing on Coherence Theory and a discourse marker inventory.

Due to the development of smart devices, the ability of computers to understand human language has become a key issue in technology. By learning and analyzing machine-readable, annotated linguistic data, computers are able to comprehend human language (corpus). Corpora plays a crucial role in helping computers comprehend human language. Metaphor is one of the most complicated linguistic data that computers cannot comprehend. Despite the prevalence of metaphor in everyday language use and the importance of identifying it, no corpus has been published for Persian yet. Compiling a corpus of Persian metaphors is the initial step in learning metaphors for computers. To compile a corpus of Persian metaphors, it is necessary to meet two main criteria. Deciding the best definition is the first prerequisite. The best definition is both comprehensive and applicable, comprehensive in the sense that it covers a significant proportion of metaphorical instances, and applicable in the sense that it could be used to build a corpus. The second requirement is the construction of a method for metaphor identification. Without a straightforward data annotation method, it is impossible to identify metaphors.

The study, identification, and explanation of the relationship between linguistic signs and their referents have been topics explored by thinkers in various fields, from philosophy to linguistics. Plato's Cratylus, for instance, delves into the connection between words and their meanings, discussing whether words have intrinsic and real meanings or if the relationship between linguistic signs is conventional. Naturalists also viewed language as a representation of the inherent truth of the universe, believing that each linguistic sign genuinely represents what it refers to. In Greek philosophy, conventionalists divided the linguistic sign into two parts: the mental structure and the phonetic structure. They argued that while the mental structure related to a concept is the same for all individuals and languages, the differences between speakers of different languages lie in the choice of a phonetic structure for a specific concept, leading to variations in words and the formation of different languages. Later semiotic theories, like Saussure's, introduced the conventional nature of the phonetic structure. In contrast to his philosophical predecessors, Saussure introduced the signified, or mental structure, which Aristotle and his followers considered a fixed and common denominator—an agreed-upon concept. Later semiotic theories, like Saussure's, introduced the conventional nature of the phonetic structure. In contrast to his philosophical predecessors, Saussure introduced the signified, or mental structure, which Aristotle and his followers considered a fixed and common denominator—an agreed-upon concept. Throughout history, philosophers and linguists have approached these enduring problems from various perspectives. Onomatopoeia, a small group of words that represent a vocal imitation of sounds associated with them in nature, has been presented as evidence supporting the theory of a natural connection between linguistic form and meaning. Onomatopoeia enhances iconicity, which refers to the relationship of resemblance or similarity between the form and meaning of a sign. From an iconicity perspective, onomatopoeias are "a group of new or conventional words based on the perception of similarity between a part of their phonetic form and the reference or an independent phoneme related to the source of the phoneme" (Benczes, 2019). The formation of onomatopoeia does not necessarily rely on an objective similarity between the word and its reference, the mental perception of such similarity is sufficient. However, many onomatopoeias exhibit a direct or indirect iconic connection to their source. Thus, within the realm of iconicity, phonetic representation takes two main forms. The first form, known as "direct iconicity, " involves a word that directly imitates the intended sound in such a way that hearing it evokes the natural sound in the listener's mind (Masuda, 2002). For example, the word "cuckoo" sounds similar to the sound made by a specific bird, creating a recognizable association for speakers of the language. Van Humboldt (Mueller-Vollmer & Messling, 2017) distinguished between indirect iconicity and its direct counterpart. He referred to a set of words that, instead of directly mimicking the sound heard in nature, reconstruct the auditory effect of that sound on the listener's perception. In this case, rather than replicating the sound itself, the word captures the effect or impression of the sound. For instance, the feeling of pain, movement, happiness, or characteristics like color, sex, tenderness, roughness, softness, distance, or closeness are represented through the letter "Ava, " forming what is known as an "ideophone. "