INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES (THE JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES)
Year:2001 | Volume:8 | Issue:2|Papers Count:3

The present research is the result of an attempt to shed some light on one of the troublesome areas of learning EFL for Iranian students and novice translators, i.e., the figurative use of animal metaphors. Animal metaphors are generally used in the speech act of insulting; however, some of them are also believed to have positive connotations. This study aimed to find out whether and to what extent the animal metaphors and specially their interpretations are similar in Persian and English. The study also aimed to find out whether animal metaphors have also positive connotations or not. Four graduate students of TEFL as native speakers of Persian were asked: 1) to prepare a list of all possible animal terms used metaphorically to describe people, and 2) to assign the most salient and relevant interpretations to those metaphors. On the basis of the suggestions of the informants a list of 36 animal terms and their interpretations were prepared. The list and especially the interpretations were also compared with two other different dictionaries. The information for the English translations of the same list and more specifically their interpretations were collected from three different dictionaries and one textbook of teaching figurative language to non-English speakers. The comparison and contrast revealed that despite outstanding agreements in some cases there are also differences in the animal terms and the interpretations assigned. From the viewpoint of contrastive analysis, the study revealed that when the intended meaning in L1 and L2 are the same but the formal devices to express them differ, negative transfer will take place. The study emphasized the role of immediate, remote and especially cultural context in the interpretations of animal metaphors and hence in TEFL. It is suggested that the findings of the present study should be drawn upon in material preparation and teaching practices of this important aspect of EFL more systematically.

This article describes word order in Persian and selected Iranian languages. Although Persian is mainly recognized as an SOY language, the article shows that out of twenty criteria utilized in Dryer (1992) to distinguish OV languages from VO languages, in two third of them this language behaves like a verb medial language. The study will account for the dual behaviour of the language by providing a historical review of its word order status from Old Persian to New Persian and will draw theoretical implications. It will then analyze word order in selected Iranian languages.

This research involves investigation of the organization of information in Persian. Results of such a study contribute to both theoretical and applied areas. In theory, it suggests verification of a proposed universal, i.e., old information precedes new information (Halliday, 1985; Haviland and Clark, 1974). It also contributes to our understanding of the nature of the second language learners' inter-language and the extent to which it is affected by the L.1 information structure. Such theoretical understanding can he expected to have practical consequences by providing insights into what aspects of an L2 should or should not he focused in teaching.