درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Translation of literary texts, especially poetry, is one of the most difficult tasks; it requires mastery and knowledge of the language system and culture, and lack of this might lead to wrong translation. This study aimed to examine the loss and gain of the sociocultural implicit meanings in the English translations of the Mu’allaqat, and assess whether the translators of the Mu’allaqat have succeeded or failed in transferring the sociocultural implicit meanings from the source text (ST) to the target text (TT). The study examined four English translations of two poems; namely, Labid’s poem and Tarafa’s poem. The selected poems are considered as masterpieces of the Arabic ancient poetry loaded with cultural signs. This study combined New mark's approach (1988) of translation with Baker’s taxonomy (1992-2011), i.e. translation equivalence, in analysing the data. The findings of the study showed that there are two types of loss made by translators in translating the Mu’allaqat: inevitable loss and avertable loss. The findings also revealed that the loss of socio-cultural implicit meaning occurred because of the inadequate use of the communicative equivalence by the translators and absence of employing pragmatic equivalence.

Abstract in every research paper has always been functioning as an attention-grabber which can encourage readers to keep reading the research or to dissuade it. Although abstracts are believed to play an important role in distributing the research findings, few studies have been done to evaluate the rhetorical organization of thesis abstracts, especially in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Thus, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the rhetorical moves of the MA thesis abstracts written from 1988 to 2015 in the field of TEFL in Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU), an Iranian university. To this end, 300 MA thesis abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2000) rhetorical move framework. To track the rhetorical move trends of the thesis abstracts and for the ease of analysis, they were analyzed in three time intervals. The results revealed that while in the first interval (1988-1997) the most frequent rhetorical moves were the “Purpose”, “Method”, and “Product”, in the other two intervals (1998-2007 and 2008-2015) the “Purpose” was the most used rhetorical move. In addition, the least frequent rhetorical moves were the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” for the three intervals. The findings, on top of these, indicated that the rhetorical move patterns of thesis abstracts moved from Purpose-Method-Product (P-M-Pr) to Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C). That said, it can be concluded that in the examined thesis abstracts, the highest average of information was provided on the “Purpose” of the study, while the other moves, especially the conclusion move, was not deemed important; moreover, an increasing rate of information provision was detected on the “Method” and “Product” moves. This research bears some implications for L2 learners to better know their community of practice and writing instructors to prepare genre-based writing materials.

Code-switching (CS), an alternation between two or more languages or language varieties, has long been researched in language education. A great number of studies by applied linguists have explored the reasons for, and the potential usages of code-switching in foreign language education over the past years. This study explores the perceptions of English language learners across various proficiency levels concerning teachers’ use of CS, in this case Farsi in English classrooms. It also examines the roles and functions of CS in the classroom. Fifty teachers and 105 language learners from University of Tehran Language Center (UTLC) in Tehran, Iran were involved in this study. The necessary data were obtained through questionnaires. The results suggested that the Elementary (EL) learners seem to benefit from the teachers' use of first language in class, whereas English-only classroom is preferred by Intermediate (IN) and Upper Intermediate (UI) ones. It was also revealed that maximum exposure of the learners to the target language seems necessary. The results suggest that, concerning the learners' levels (EL, IN and UI), teachers’ and learners’ Code Switching can work as a useful language teaching strategy. The findings of this study can have implications for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms and can be used by language teachers.

Development of science and academic knowledge has led to changes in academic language and transfer of information and knowledge. In this regard, the present study is an attempt to investigate lexico-grammaticality in academic abstracts and their full research papers in Linguistics, Chemistry and Electrical engineering papers published during 1991-2015 in academic journals from a diachronic perspective through quantitative research design. The focus of this paper is on transitivity, mood and theme analysis in the corpus according to Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics model. So, all the attempts are to find the changes in abstracts and research papers of these disciplines and how they are to be positioned in different linguistic contexts over time. The results revealed that research papers employ the spectrum of possible lexical realization quite differently as compared to general English, especially concerning the use of specific lexical items. Also, the results of chi-squares of each discipline showed that there are significant differences between papers over time at .05 level of significance (.000< .05) with regard to the transitivity, mood, and theme. 

Second or foreign language (L2) learners’ development of interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) competence to understand and properly interpret utterances under certain social and cultural circumstances plays a pivotal role in the achievement of communicative competence. The current study was designed to explore the effects of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) course modules delivered through social media networks (SMN) on the development of the Iranian L2 learners’ comprehension of implicatures. The participants of the study were 90 English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) undergraduate students attending three intact classes. The classes were randomly assigned to one control and two experimental (SCMC and ACMC) groups. An open-ended implicature comprehension test was used to assess students’ ILP development in this pretest-posttest comparison-group study. The control group received the traditional teacher-fronted instruction, and the S/ACMC groups received instruction via synchronous and asynchronous modules of SMNs for 4 months, respectively. Students’ attitudes towards the CMC-based courses were also sought. Split-plot ANOVA results indicated that both experimental groups developed significant ILP ability to comprehend and interpret L2 implicatures after the instruction; however, by comparison, the ACMC group improved more considerably. It is concluded that, first, comprehending L2 implicatures is not impervious to computer-mediated instruction and, second, different CMC affordances may result in differential ILP developmental effects in teaching L2 pragmatics. The findings can help L2 teachers decide how to use CMC affordances and SMN modules to raise L2 learners’ pragmatic awareness