ارسلان گلفام

Through uncovering the underlying elements of language, this research aims to reveal the hidden layers of meaning in press texts in the framework of a critical discourse analysis. Having used socio-semantic features of Van Leeuwen's model (1996), this paper has studied, qualitatively, 40 issues of four Iranian Persian publications for a period of two months, from July 22 to September 21, 2011. These publications were 'E'temad', 'Sharq', Resalat' and Keyhan. The analyses included recognizing discursive structures in the texts, determining the linguistic realizations of structures, and explaining along with uncovering the hidden layers of meaning and the ideology behind the texts. The research results out of the data analysis indicate that the ideology dominating the minds of writers and groups is reflected in the texts using discursive features as exclusion, activation, passivation, personalization and impersonalization. Exclusion has been the most frequently used feature in 'E'temad and 'Sharq', whereas activation has had the highest frequency of occurrences in 'Resalat' and 'Keyhan'. The discursive structures take place using linguistic instruments like pre-modifiers, active vs. passive structures, coordination and circumstantials, in the texts. Besides, the relationship between discursive structures and ideology is dialectal, which can be determined by studying these structures in the texts and social institutions.

The present article aims to investigate the appropriateness of the concepts introduced by modern sciences of the sign, particularly by structural and poststructural approaches, to studying God-man communication in the Quran. Such a conception of communication can be described in terms of two models, namely, communication as sending and communication as reading. These two concepts which represent an uncompromising dualism in the modern approaches to the sign, come to a compromise in the religious discourse, leading us not merely to conceiving a powerful God but also to a powerful man.

This paper provides an Optimality-Theoretic account of dissimilation in standard Persian as well as some other accents and dialects of Persian. As such, this work starts by introducing Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) and its basic concepts and then it investigates dissimilation in this framework. It argues for the superiority of OT over derivational approaches regarding a case in which both dissimilation and assimilation, with no clear feeding order, are involved.

Compounding is one of the most common and also very productive word formation processes among languages in the world. Because of its productivity and high frequency, it has precisely been studied by many Iranian and non-Iranian linguists. However, this productive process has not yet been studied in Mazandarani. In the present study, first Mazandarani compound words taken from Tabari dictionary, have been analysed in the form of a table and based on the criteria such as syntactic category, semantic classification of compound types (endocentric, exocentric and dvandva), the position of head and being verbal or nonverbal. By taking into consideration the above mentioned criteria and based on three fundamental concepts, namely, head, dependent (non-head) and feature percolation, the resulting compounds have been analysed separately. At the end of the article, after studying and evaluating the hypotheses, appropriate explanations have been presented. The high frequency of “N+ N → compound noun construction” refers to their predictability in meaning compared to other constructions. It means that there is a direct relationship between high frequency of a word formation process and its semantic predictability. Also, the reason why endocentric compounds are more frequent than others is due to the fact that both constituents of the compound are used in their original meanings. Hence, endocentric compounds are unmarked elements and are easier to learn in the process of language learning. The above mentioned findings are in line with markedness theory. That is why the frequency of occurrence of unmarked elements is higher than marked ones which is related to language universals.

This article has no abstract.

Legal translation is a special type of Language for Special Purposes (LSP) translation involving cross-linguistic communication in the legal context and it tends to involve more cultural specific components. Since the main functions of legal language are normative and performative, it is important to make sure what the actual purpose of the translation of a legal text is. On the other hand, legal translators are expected to produce not parallel texts but texts that are equal in legal effect. So, they must be able to understand not only the legal concepts and the legal effects they are supposed to have, but also how to achieve those legal effects in the target language, especially when it is based on a different legal system. The vast differences in Persian and English legal systems and legal cultures, and consequently the associated incongruity of terminology, highlight the many challenges in legal translation. This paper aims at presenting a strategy through which we can convey the legal culture of SL (Persian) to TL (English) and while creating similar legal effect in TL, improve the quality of legal translation, relying on the two notions inspired by Venuti (1998), i.e. domestication and foreignization. In this regard we analyzed legal translation of 20 Persian to English Divorce Decrees within the domain of Private law, the study of which has been seldom attempted despite the customary presence of these instruments in the legal routine. As a result of this analysis we can conclude that legal texts in different legal systems are translatable and a similar legal effect can be created in TL provided that the legal genre of the source text is preserved and also functional and conceptual equivalences are employed through foreignization and domestication.

In this paper, we argue the effects of explicit multimodal metaphor training in developing speaking and listening skills in an EFL context. To examine the effects of using conceptual metaphors in English language classrooms and assess the metaphorical ability of EFL students, we directed two measuring instruments: pre-test and post-test for control and experimental groups in both listening and speaking skills. The pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group who were exposed to explicit multimodal metaphor training were compared with the control group's scores through this bipartite study. The outcomes of this paper can shed light on teaching and learning the multimodal language in an EFL context. The findings showed that learners who were exposed to multimodal metaphors and received explicit instruction from their teacher resulted in better scores. In other words, this paper found that explicit multimodal metaphor instructions can lead to some improvements in metaphor comprehension and production in an EFL context.