"Conceptualization" is a dynamic process based on which language units serve conceptual operations and background knowledge. Cognitive science experts consider language structure to be a direct reflection of cognition; Accordingly, a single word can have different conceptualizations in different situations. schemas, as one of the tools of cognition, are general concepts that are created from the internalization of lived experiences and are responsible for organizing, interpreting and exchanging information. pragmatic micro-schemas are micro-schemas that are called depending on the situational and functional context. This research, paying attention to the macro-schema of self-destruction, seeks to classify the pragmatic micro-schemas and their corresponding conceptualizations. The scope of the current research is children's stories with the theme of self-destruction. Each of the stories is considered as a pragmatic and objective situation for calling a specific micro-schemas of the macro-scheme of self-destruction. The present research with analytical-descriptive method aims to answer how to conceptualize the self-destruction scheme in the situational contexts of children's stories. The result of the research introduces five pragmatic schemas as five different conceptual bases: schemas of discontinuity, continuity, individual discontinuity-continuity, collective discontinuity-continuity, and unwanted discontinuity. For the first time, this article focuses on self-destruction in children's literature

Cognitive pragmatic schemas are one of the topics in cognitive linguistics, and applying this approach to the study of death in children's literature serves as a bridge between the fields of literature, cognitive linguistics, and philosophy for children. A single word can have different meanings under various cognitive pragmatic schemas. Cognitive pragmatic schemas are dependent on situational and functional contexts. This research aims to categorize the representations of suspended death based on cognitive pragmatic schemas. In children's literature, death is often portrayed as a reversible phenomenon; therefore, this motif has been chosen as the research subject. The statistical sample of the current research is the stories for age groups "A," "B," and "C," works that featured the assumption of its reversibility in their content. Each of these stories is like an practs to call and form the scheme of death. The current research aims to answer how situational speech acts in children's stories modify the frightening representation of death in forming and invocating the schema of suspended death. This article introduces five situational speech acts for the schema of suspended death: resurrection with external stimulus, resurrection with internal stimulus, transformation with external catalyst, transformation with internal catalyst, and delusion. Since concepts like "death" are abstract, philosophical, and emotionally provocative in nature, the way these concepts are conveyed to children has always been a subject of debate. This research, employs a descriptive-analytical method, demonstrates that children's stories modify the frightening representation of "death" by using various cognitive schemas of reversible death.

Within the context of courtroom discourse, participants, ranging from legal professionals to lay individuals, strive to present their own narratives of events and establish the veracity of these narratives in their own minds. Consequently, courtroom discourse can be described as a "War of Narratives". In this struggle for narrative dominance, participants employ a range of discursive and interactive strategies, some of which are non-linguistic in nature and warrant investigation. One such strategy is the utilization of oaths, which serve as a persuasive tool aimed at influencing the audience. This study aimed to analyze the structural, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions of oaths in court discourse, employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine the data. In the qualitative dimension, we explored the functions of different types of oaths within the framework of "cultural linguistics" (Sharifian, 2017), utilizing "cultural schemas". In the quantitative dimension, we employed statistical calculations to investigate the structure and frequency of various types of oaths. Examination of the data revealed that the most frequently used types of oaths were associated with the semantic domains of God (Allah) and the Quran (Word of God). Additionally, the presence of semantic diversity in the types of oaths employed could be attributed to the socio-cultural backgrounds of the participants. Furthermore, the analysis of various cultural schemas of swearing in court discourse confirmed identification of at least five discursive functions, namely self-defense, claim substantiation, slander, threat or warning, and request. Introduction Within the context of courtroom discourse, participants, ranging from legal professionals to lay individuals, strive to present their own narratives of events and establish the veracity of these narratives in their own minds. Consequently, the courtroom discourse can be characterized as a "War of Narratives". In this struggle for narrative dominance, participants employ a range of discursive and interactive strategies, some of which are non-linguistic in nature and warrant further investigation. One such strategy is the use of oaths, which serve as a persuasive tool aimed at influencing the audience. This study aimed to analyze the structural, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions of oaths in court discourse, employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine the data. In the qualitative dimension, we explored the functions of different types of oaths within the framework of "cultural linguistics" (Sharifian, 2017), employin "cultural schemas". In the quantitative dimension, we employed statistical analyses to investigate the structure and frequency of various types of oaths. When examining the linguistic phenomenon of swearing, particularly as it pertained to our research topic, two major approaches could be identified in the existing research projects. The first approach prevalent in studies conducted within Western societies and languages examined the use of sacred words, such as the names of God and Christ, within the context of offensive language. The second approach rooted in studies conducted within religious societies, primarily Islamic countries, viewed the use of holy names as an act of commitment, whereby speakers incorporated religious phrases or words with sacred significance to pledge their adherence to or avoidance of a specific action, whether verbal or non-verbal. In this study, we adopted the second approach. Although the use of swearing in court discourse could be examined from the perspectives of both lay and professional participants, the primary focus of this research was to analyze the utilization of oaths by lay individuals. References to its usage by legal professionals were also considered. Based on this premise, the present study aimed to address the following questions: What cultural pragmatic schemas are expressed through the use of oaths in court discourse? What structures and themes are prevalent in oaths used in court discourse? Additionally, what is the frequency of their usage by participants in different court settings (civil, criminal, and family courts)? Methods The data corpus comprised a total of 96,373 words collected from various criminal (investigation and judicial), civil, and family courts, as well as the prosecutor's office of Dorud City in Lorestan Province. The data collection period spanned from January 2nd, 2023 to June 10th, 2023. Subsequently, the data were tagged using Python software (version 3.10.11) based on predetermined criteria. An excerpt of the tagging process is illustrated in Example 1: (1) مبلغ چقدر بوده؟ دویست تومن بوده. In Example 1, each speaking turn of the participants is treated as an utterance, which may consist of varying numbers of sentences. Additional indicators included file numbers, question types, participant types, and their genders. After annotating the corpus data, all types of oaths were extracted from the corpus separately for each part. General information of corpus can also be seen in table (1): Table 1. The ratio of utterances in corpus Types of courts Total number of cases Total number of utterances civil 34 3042 family 26 2455 criminal 50 3134 total 110 8631 The subjects of the cases in the corpus, within the legal context, often included fraud, forgery, and similar offenses. In the criminal context, the cases typically involved assault, insult, obscenity, robbery, and theft. In the family context, the primary subject was divorce. It is important to note that, in order to protect the privacy of individuals, all personal information-such as names, surnames, the names of specific places, and any other details that could identify individuals-have been changed and are presented in an abbreviated form. Results Analysis of the collected data revealed that the participants employed swearing as a communication strategy to express various verbal actions. Oaths can be regarded as persuasive tools with distinct pragmatic effects. The structure of oaths encompassed diverse themes and topics with the most frequent occurrence being oaths made in the name of God (Allah) and the Qur'an (the word of God). This observation could be attributed to the court discourse, as the legal system in Iranian courts was founded on Islamic laws derived from the Qur'an. Consequently, it was plausible to infer that the individuals, while having this presupposition in mind, endeavored to substantiate and validate their statements. From a pragmatic standpoint, while swearing served multiple purposes in legal discourse, this study identified 5 culturally applicable schemas: self-defending, asserting claims, slandering, threatening/warning, and requesting. Statistical analysis confirmed that women employed swear words with an average frequency of 0.002 (usage rate of 43%), while men used them with an average frequency of 0.003 (usage rate of 57%) in their speech. This finding contradicted the apparent result reported by Sarabi (2014), which posited that women use swearing more frequently than men. Of course, it is worth noting that such contradictions could be observed in various research studies. It is possible to speculate that women, who are often less present in judicial environments and therefore less familiar with such discourses, perceive themselves to be in a comparatively weaker position than men, leading to their reduced use of oaths. Nonetheless, verifying this claim necessitates examining the usage of swearing in diverse contexts. Another noteworthy finding from the data analysis was the identification of certain themes or sub-themes utilized in the structure of oaths by the participants, which were unfamiliar to the researchers as native speakers. This observation underscored the importance of adopting a socio-cultural approach in research. More specifically, the findings indicated that even within the same culture- namely, Lorestan Region- the themes employed in oath constructions could vary among individuals. These variations not only reflected religious beliefs, but also signified distinctive cultural and ethnic characteristics. Therefore, it is recommended to conduct studies employing both intra-cultural and inter-cultural approaches to explore the conceptualization of different types of oath constructions. Furthermore, there is a need for separate investigations into the content of swearing in the speech of women and men, as the usage of oaths can reflect diverse communication strategies and abilities. Conclusion Examination of the data revealed that the most frequently used types of oaths were associated with the semantic domains of God (Allah) and the Quran (Word of God). Additionally, the presence of semantic diversity in the types of oaths employed could be attributed to the socio-cultural backgrounds of the participants. Furthermore, the analysis of various cultural schemas of swearing in court discourse confirmed identification of at least 5 discursive functions: self-defense, claim substantiation, slander, threat or warning, and request. Ethical Considerations Not applicable Funding Not applicable Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Rational discussion guides, but does not compel individual decisions, and the best process of inquiry and decision should vary with a person’s goals and situation. Sir Karl Popper noted that after a result of observation or experiment has been obtained by independent researchers, scientists agree to reject as false theories that are contradicted by accepted facts. Popper, though, wrongly assumed this consensus also applies to acceptance for purposes of research. In reality researchers develop competing theories about which evidence is currently in conflict, and sometimes even refuting the theories in their current form. Further, Popper asserted that only negative arguments should be used in rational inquiry. In reality, productive inquiry involves also positive arguments, even in science. Positive considerations such as which basic theories are justified by the researcher’s preferred metaphysics, or what theories in applied science are justified by existing accepted basic theories, are also used productively

The present study sought to cast light on differences in strategies of compliment responses used across Persian and American English. For this purpose, participants, under three groups of Persian native speakers, American native speakers, and Persian learners of English, answered a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), followed by a semi-structured interview with the Persian learners of English to cross-check the findings of the DCTs. The collected responses from the DCTs were coded at macro and micro-levels. Moreover, a macro-level of Persian cultural schemas was used for the Persian groups. The chi-square test revealed the independent performance of the three groups. Judged by the written DCTs while performing in English, the learners’ responses displayed cases of utilizing the native Persian cultural schemas. More specifically, the English learner respondents employed different instances of ta’ arof and shekaste-nafsi. Confirmed by the interview, such failures resulted from insufficient exposure to the American English culture and more importantly from their lack of instruction and awareness of cross-cultural pragmatic differences.

Metaphor is practised in all languages worldwide. Over the last two decades, investigation on metaphor has relied on some perspectives, such as lexical-constructional, critical, conceptual, axiological, cognitive theory or underlined aspects, as well as semantic and cultural pragmatic as the least of all. This qualitative study focused on how semantic components and cultural pragmatic were used to study the meaning and function of Balinese women metaphor. The purposive sampling method was to collect data from various sources and triangulated it into key informants. The results showed two classifications of Balinese women's metaphors, namely physical perspective as a concrete metaphor that depicts their body parts and personality perspective as an abstract, which emphasizes their ideal role. The pragmatic cultural interpretation involved the cognitive process of declarative analogy that referred to the similarity of values. Meanwhile, the personality perspective metaphor produced higher emotive values than the physical one. Hence, this type of metaphor is used by the Balinese people to advise women.

This study aimed to examine cross-cultural differences in performing refusal of requests between Persian native speakers (PNSs) and English native speakers (ENSs) in terms of the frequency of the semantic formulas. Also examined in this study was whether Persian EFL learners would transfer their L1 refusal patterns into the L2, and if there would be a relation between their proficiency level and the transfer of refusal strategies. To do so, 66 PNSs (studying Archeology and Law) and 59 ENSs from both genders filled out the Persian and English versions of the same discourse completion test (DCT), respectively. Also, the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used to form 2 groups consisting of 61 high proficient (HP) Persian L2 learners and 81 low proficient (LP) ones, who all filled out the English version of the DCT. The refusals strategies used by the participants were turned into semantic formulas, and then classified into 3 groups of Direct, Indirect, and Adjuncts to Refusals. Findings showed no significant differences in the use of Direct refusal strategies between the ENSs and the PNSs. Unlike the PNSs who outweighed the ENSs in the use of Indirect strategies, the ENSs employed substantially more Adjuncts to Refusals. Findings also indicated the occurrence of pragmatic transfer in the use of Indirect and Adjuncts to Refusals by both the HP and LP L2 learners. However, the LP group was found to transfer their L1 refusal patterns more than the HP group.

This research sought to assess the integrated impact of CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) and PLT (pragmatic Language Teaching) on language competency, pragmatic awareness, and cultural competence. The study used a mixed-methods methodology, integrating both pre-and post-tests, questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observations, in addition to technological tools to enhance learning experiences in 150 advanced EFL students from five Iranian universities. The results obtained from repeated measures of ANOVA and t-tests demonstrated that the integrated use of CLT and PLT approaches leads to a considerable enhancement in language proficiency, pragmatic awareness, and cultural competence when compared to the utilization of either method individually. Qualitative findings demonstrated a notable rise in student self-assurance, enhanced comprehension of different cultures, and heightened levels of involvement. The results highlight the efficacy of combining Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and pragmatic Language Teaching (PLT) through the use of technology to improve global language training. The study's findings emphasize the necessity of providing instructor training in both strategies, developing a curriculum that effectively combines communicative and pragmatic features, and doing additional research to understand the long-term effects of integrated language teaching approaches. The research enhances our understanding of how the integration of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and pragmatic Language Teaching (PLT) might optimize language learning consequences and better equip students for real-life communication.

The aim of the present paper was to explore the cultural schema of mehmân-navâzi (hospitality) in Persian. An ethnographic approach was utilized to collect data from a number of resources including online and naturalistic data gathered from movies and daily conversations. The constant comparison method (Creswell, 2013) was then employed to analyze the data for the rituals and linguistic formulae used to enact the schema. The results indicated that the rituals in the practice of this cultural schema can be divided into three categories of welcoming, serving, and leave-taking. The examples of linguistic formulae and expressions used in the enactment of the schema revealed that the realization of this schema was closely associated with other cultural schemas underlying many aspects of communication in Persian including tâ’ârof, âberu, rudarbăyesti, shekastehnafsi, adab va ehteram, and tavazo’. The findings were then discussed with reference to the implications the study has for intercultural communication and more specifically, cross-cultural politeness research, as well as for teaching English as an international language.