مریم فرنیا

In recent years, Instagram has gained considerable attention in scientific research because of its popularity among English language learners. This study aimed to conduct a systematic review of empirical studies that investigated the use of Instagram as a mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) tool in ESL/EFL and attempted to perform a scientific mapping of the literature. To this end, a corpus of studies since 2010 was retrieved in January 2023 from six academic databases and reviewed through the stages of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA). A critical appraisal of 48 experimental studies included in this review was carried out and a meta-analysis of 11 eligible studies was conducted. The results of the meta-analysis confirmed the significant effect size of the use of Instagram in ESL/EFL. The bibliometric analysis revealed that the research productivity is up and found writing and vocabulary skills as the main focus in most of the studies. This study could have implications for teachers and researchers to gain a broad overview of the integration of Instagram in English language teaching and to know the current research trends in the field for future research.

This cross-cultural study aims to examine how Iranian and American motivational speakers employ metadiscourse devices as a convincing tool to interact with their audience. To this end, eight motivational speeches in English and Persian were randomly selected from 2015 to 2021, and analyzed for the use of stance (i.e., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions) and engagement (i.e., reader-pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge, and personal asides) expressions. The findings showed that self-mention and attitude markers were the most frequently used stance markers in English and Persian corpus, respectively. Moreover, hedges found to be the least frequently used stance markers in the two corpora. With regard to the use of engagement markers, results showed that reader pronoun is the most frequently used engagement markers, and shared knowledge and personal asides were the least frequently used engagement markers in both languages. Finally, the results of chi-square test showed statistically significant differences in the use of stance and engagement expressions in the two languages, confirming cultural septicity nature of metadiscourse markers, and that speakers of different languages employ interactional devices according to their context.

The purpose of this cross-cultural CMC-based study is to investigate how the speech act of criticism is realized in the Instagram comments by Persian and English-speaking users in response to an announcement in Fall 2020 about school reopening during COVID-19. To this end, 400 Persian and English comments were collected in Fall 2020 from the Instagram pages of Iran and the U.S Secretaries of Education where they posted about the students’ return to school during the pandemic. The data were then analyzed based on Nguyen’s (2013) model of speech act of criticism. The findings show that both Persian and English-speaking users tended to use direct criticism over indirect criticism with an explicit expression of dislike and an explicit expression of disapproval as the most frequently used direct criticism strategies. Moreover, with regard to indirect strategies, Persian speaking users employed more request for change strategies while English speaking users outperformed hint strategies. Also, the uses of supportive moves and internal modifiers were similar in the two corpora. The findings of this naturally occurring observational study partially confirm the results obtained by elicited-based research method. The results showed that despite the similarities between the corpora, teaching criticism strategies and mitigating devices can help language learners perform the act of criticism more appropriately and avoid non-native like language use.

The purpose of the present study is to compare the impoliteness strategies employed by Iranian and English students in English and Persian Languages. The participants consisted of 6o Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency, 60 Iranian non-English major students, and 212 native English-speaking students. The data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire in the form of discourse completion task where responses to different threatening situations were elicited. The questionnaire consisted of six situations with variations in social power. The data were analyzed based on Limberg’s (2009) model of threat responses. The findings showed variations in the use of strategies employed with variation of social power in different situations. Moreover, the overall findings displayed the frequent use of tendency strategies, that is, toward compliance, toward non-compliance, by the three groups of respondents. It is hoped that the findings of this study can add to the body of knowledge in impoliteness studies and to our understanding of how threat responses vary cross-culturally in particular.

Abstracts are well-accepted as the clarity and fidelity of language in any article assists the readership to get the central points of the research in a brief l but effective manner. Meanwhile, as a significant feature of any piece of discourse, meta-discourse markers can effectively render article texts more reader-friendly and coherent. The present study aims at investigating the extent to which English and Persian sections of Law articles are cross-culturally similar or different in applying metadiscourse markers. To this end, 80 articles, 40 in each language, were carefully selected from Law articles published from 2010 to 2015 in online archives of leading journals. The selected corpora were analyzed through the models suggested by Hyland and Tse (2004) and Hyland (2005) to find out the type, number, and frequency of the markers, respectively. The findings of the study revealed that English authors enlisted a larger number of metadiscourse markers than their Persian counterparts; Persian authors, on the other hand, employed larger number of transitions among others. Such observed differences may stem from the culture-specific application and organization of discourse followed by diverse nationalities and norms.

تحقیقات متعدد نشان داده اند که اصطلاحات زبان شناسی و محدوده توصیف کننده های خارجی موجود در یک زبان از زبانی به زبان دیگر متفاوت است. پژوهش حاضر به بررسی شباهت ها و تفاوت های میان فرهنگی توصیف کننده های خارجی در کنش گفتار درخواست می پردازد. بدین منظور،پرسشنامه ای از 30 دانشجوی عراقی و 30 دانشجوی مالایی دانشگاه علوم مالزی جمع آوری شد. قالب نظریه مدیریت روابط اسپنسر اوتی (2008) برای آنالیز توصیف کننده های خارجی بکار گرفته شده است. داده های این تحقیق از پرسشنامه ای در قالب آزمون تکمیل گفتاری که از 8 موقعیت تشکیل شده جمع آوری شده است. داده ها سپس براساس طبقه بندی توصیف کننده های خارجی عاریه گرفته شده از بلام کالکا،هاوس و کسپرآنالیز شده است. هدف اولیه این تحقیق مقایسه تاثیرعوامل موقعیتی بر تحقق الگوی توصیف کننده های خارجی کنش گفتار درخواست بین دانشجویان عراقی و مالایی می باشد. نتایج این تحقیق می تواند در مطالعات میان فرهنگی و بین فرهنگی موثر باشد.