Problem statement: Urban billboards are one of the most effective advertising media and due to the way that Visual elements are used in them, they play an important role in attracting the audience. The use of Visual metaphors in this advertising medium is very important and its recognition depends on understanding the interaction between Visual elements and the way the message is conveyed. Little research has been done on Visual metaphors in the field of Iranian advertising, and therefore their performance has been less studied in this field of art. Research objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the Visual Representation of metaphor in terms of structural features in advertising billboards in Tehran. In this regard, a social semiotic approach based on Visual mechanisms has been adopted. In addition, metaphorical analysis of interactive meanings is also examined. The main research question is whether the Visual metaphors used in advertising billboards can be considered in accordance with certain Visual mechanisms. Research method: The research method used is descriptive-analytical. The purposeful selection of the statistical population includes 35 billboards in Tehran, the main design of which are Visual metaphor. Conclusion: The metaphors used in billboards have played the role of messaging through the interaction of Visual elements, which are compatible with the Visual mechanisms of the social semiotic approach, and their Representation consists of certain structural features. The results of the analysis of the purposeful statistical population consisting of 35 billboards in Tehran, show that all billboards comply with one of the mechanisms. The actional mechanism-which is realized by substituting the conventional element with an unconventional element-has been most used, and on the other hand, the classificational mechanism that have numerous Visual elements; has been less used.

In this study, the researcher chose three different vocabulary techniques (Visual Representation, Textual Enhancement, and Glossing) and compared them with traditional method of teaching vocabulary. 80 advanced EFL Learners were assigned as four intact groups (three experimental and one control group) through using a proficiency test and a vocabulary test as a pre-test. In the Visual group, students used flashcards; in the textual enhancement, every synonym and antonym were highlighted and numbered and in the glossing group new vocabularies were numbered and their explanations were provided in the margins or footnotes. Students in the control group learned vocabulary through traditional way by meaning explanation, translation, or providing synonyms and antonyms. All the other three groups had the same procedure as control group but besides these processes they had access to Visual, textual, or glossing techniques, too. The results showed that in the posttest, all three experimental groups outperformed the control group. However, the highest improvement in both post-test and delayed post-test was for glossing group. As a whole, we can say improvement in vocabulary learning was respectively for glossing, then Visual, and finally textual enhancement. Therefore, it can be concluded that using pictorial, textual cues and glossing enhance their interlanguage system.

With the advent of globalization, especially in its third phase (see Robertson, 2003), global relations of domination have undermined abuse of power at national and local levels (Fairclough, 2001). Global ELT textbooks, as corollaries of the globalization process, are not immune to the embedment of discriminatory discourses, as various studies have shown (see for example, Gray, 2010, 2012; Babaii and Sheikhi, 2017). On the other hand, a social actor analysis of verbal and Visual discourse will contribute significantly to the disclosure of discriminatory discourses (see van Leeuwen, 2008; Hart, 2014). The current study, therefore, reduces the gap in research on ideology of ELT materials by probing into the nursery rhymes in children and young-adult ELT textbooks. Visual Representation of social actors in the images accompanying nursery rhymes in Magic Time, English Time, Let's Go and Family and Friends were, thus, examined, using van Leeuwen's (2008) framework. Regarding results, the most frequent exclusionary discourses in the corpus included religion, nationality, race, and gender respectively. Significantly, it was found that monochromatic depiction of social actors constituted a strategy for the discursive construction of otherness in Family and Friends. Additionally, a process, called whitenization of blacks in the terminology of the current study, was found to be at work in which blacks were depicted as having the facial features of whites.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate culture Representation in ACT series, a recently developed EFL textbook by Iran Language Institute, with a focus on the Visuals. Two models were taken into account for content analysis: Cortazzi and Jin (1990) to investigate the type of culture (i. e., source, target, & international) and Adaskou, Britten, and Fahsi (1999) to investigate the dimension of culture (aesthetic & sociological). Analysis of 1581 Visuals indicated that textbook developers have placed a high value on presenting international and source cultures while target culture has received comparatively little attention to fulfill the mission for which the series was developed. Additionally, as of the two dimensions of culture, Visuals representing the sociological dimension of culture outnumbered those manifesting the aesthetic dimension. To conclude, it can be claimed that ACT series can be beneficial in promoting intercultural awareness among its audience and providing the learners with an opportunity to communicate their cultural and national identity with other bilingual speakers of English. The study ends with some future lines of research for the interested researcher.