This study investigated the effects of sociocultural instruction on developing the speech act of criticizing. The participants were second language learners in two English learning classrooms as experimental and control groups. The participants in the experimental group operated under the basic principles of the socio-cultural approach with interactive tasks, cooperation, and scaffolding. They were asked to read and criticize a peer’ s work orally. For this group, the teacher provided fined tuned instruction and mediated individual tutor feedback. For both the experimental and control groups, the learners’ pragmatic development was measured through pre-tests, immediate and delayed posttests performance of discourse completion and role-play tests. The researchers analyzed the results of tests through statistical procedures such as paired and independent t-tests. The results revealed that the experimental group signifi cantly improved and performed better than the control group, indicating the successfulness of sociocultural instruction. Next, the researchers interviewed the participants to find about their feelings. After interviewing the participants, the researchers found positive feelings of learners about this kind of instruction including low degrees of stress, high levels of excitement, fun, motivation, and clarity that provided another evidence for worthwhile impacts of sociocultural instruction.

The most important medium through which human beings can form relationships and connections is using different methods such as speaking, writing and sign language. The point that deaf or semi-deaf people are ignored in communities is because of their disability in forming intimate relationships, and also the lack of common training''s according to what is needed in the society. The present study seeks to design a system that receives spoken language as an input and changes it to Farsi sign language after all the necessary normal language analysis is done. The challenges on our way are: a) number of sign language words which are few compared to the words in spoken language and b) the ambiguity and pun normally used in Farsi language. So, common systems architecture could not be applied. Therefore, an architecture is introduced in which Farsi to sign language translation system performance is improved and accuracy and practicality are reinforced through removing pun modules and changing inputs in ways applicable to the world of the deaf applying the related ontology.

According to the French thinker Michel Foucault, power is so pervasive that it can overshadow many areas of human life. This influence penetrates even in the language of literary texts and it manifests itself in the form of metaphors, signs and symbols. Lyrical Story in a Footnote is written by Mahsa Mohebbali is one of the stories of technique-oriented and form-based, which shows the author's familiarity with philosophical approaches and also his mastery in the field of storytelling. But one of the most challenging points in the text is the non-desirable image of the female character in the story. Despite the femininity of the narrator and the writer, the question arises as to why such an idea is portrayed by the female character in the story? In the present study, based on Michel Foucault's theory of power, one can point to the penetration of masculine power in the language of the story. Of course, the concepts such as the protesting and rebellious bodies, as well as some of Nietzsche's views, such as the ethics of masters and slaves, show that some seemingly fragile images of women are themselves are in opposition to masculine language, but in the end it can be proved that this story is one of the concrete examples of Michel Foucault's theory of power: because masculine power is present in many linguistic elements. They have penetrated and overshadowed it.