درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Censorship has a long history in Iran that has interfered with text production, i.e., original writing as well as translation. This phenomenon seems to have marked the borderline between the government and the ‘enlightened’ intellectuals throughout history in Iran. Different governments have delineated ‘redlines’ for authors and translators and dealt with these constructors of culture based on the definitions they set for those ‘redlines’. This historical research aims at exploring and finding out features of these ‘redlines’ as well as the mechanisms and rules of text screening (censorship) throughout Iran’s modern era since the importing of the printing press.

مقاله حاضر بر آن است تا به بررسی استفاده تمثیل به عنوان نوعی از کاربردهای زبان­شناختی بپردازد. در این ساحت از کاربرد زبان­شناختی، تمثیل از توصیف واقعیت­های مرتبط با زندگی روزمره و بازنمود­های اجتماعی ـ که از آنها برگرفته شده­اند ـ استفاده می­کند. این مقاله در چهارچوب مطالعه منظورشناختیِ کاربردهای گفتمانیِ تمثیل قرار می­گیرد که در دو فرهنگ متفاوت فرانسوی و تونسی شکل گرفته است. به عبارت دیگر، این مقاله به مطالعه تمثیل به عنوان کاربرد زبانی در ابعاد محلی و جهانی می­پردازد. بررسی مثال­ها نخست در چهارچوب تحلیل استفاده تمثیل­های مشترک در زبان فرانسه و عربیِ گویشی، و سپس تحلیل گوناگونی­های جامعه­شناختی زبان مرتبط با این دو زبان انجام می­شود. از سوی دیگر، پژوهش حاضر بر اساس ریشه­های فرا زبانی مرتبط با بازنمودهای ذهنی و اجتماعی با ماهیتِ اساساً فرهنگی صورت می­گیرد.

مفهوم ثروت در زندگی و آثار اونوره دو بالزاک از تشخصی ویژه برخوردار است. کمدی انسانی مشحون از شخصیت­های دلباخته پول و ثروت است. این نویسنده که در زندگی موقعیت­های پست و بلند بسیاری در مسایل اقتصادی تجربه کرد، همواره در جستجوی مال­اندوزی بود. در مقاله حاضر، ما در صدد مطالعه همزمان زندگی و آثار بالزاک بر خواهیم آمد و به خصوص به جایگاه ثروت و پول در این دو عرصه یعنی زندگی و آثار او خواهیم پرداخت. برای نیل به این مقصود، تعدادی از آثار داستانی و مکاتبات بالزاک را از این منظر مورد بررسی قرار خواهیم داد.

In Construction Morphology (CM), a compound is treated as a construction at the word level with a systematic correlation between its form and meaning, in the sense that any change in the form is accompanied by a change in the meaning. Compound words as one type of complex words are coined by compounding patterns or templates which are called abstract schemas in CM. These abstract constructional schemas generalize over sets of existing compound words and specify how new compound words can be created. The schemas dominate the compounds so that these words inherit all predictable morphological and semantic properties from these schemas. In fact, this is mainly the constructional schema which determines the properties for every compound word not individual constituents of a compound word. Therefore, the form and meaning of a compound, as a whole, are affected by formal and semantic/syntactic properties of the construction itself. Also, the dominance of schemas and subschema as over the compound words reinforces the idea of hierarchical lexicon. In addition, CM adopts a paradigmatic approach to word formation; that is, the creation of new compound words is caused by the extension of a systematic form-meaning relationship in a set of existing compound words to new cases resulting in new compound words. Regarding these properties of CM, This paper aims to study one type of Persian compounds, that is, compound nouns in the framework of Construction Morphology. From this perspective, two types of compound nouns including endocentric and exocentric compound nouns are treated in a rather similar way because the compound noun construction as a holistic schema plays the main role in specifying the syntactic features, head(if any) and semantic content of compound nouns, not their constituents. According to findings of this study, the analysis of Persian compound nouns based on this model increases the degree of generality in compound noun formation and develops the concept of holisticity in the form and meaning of compound nouns as well as it highlights the paradigmatic relationship in Persian compound noun formation templates.

To direct m-game to be a possible didactic option for Iranian TVT (Technical Vocational Training) trainees, in this study m-game-mediated (Mobile Game-Mediated) materials delivery was incorporated into the conventional teaching method in the blended ESP reading skill platform. So, 52 male trainees fromTechnical and Vocational College of Isfahan were selected by convenience sampling. Afterwards, 48 trainees were defined as homogeneous using Englishtag Test to learn ESP in 16 triads under two different blended learning scenarios in 18 sessions in the academic year 2014-2015. While the first group of the trainees practiced in the blended learning situation with ready-made displaying device and materials, the second-group trainees practiced the same content through the medium of their own self-made PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) and materials; in this way, their learning performance assessed continuously in and outside the classroom. To employ tree-prong approach, interest survey and focus-group interview were embraced, as well. Overall, descriptive and inferential analyses of the collected data disclosed that trainees who were involved in the process of materials development were more excited and learned more than their counterparts who practiced via prefabricated devices and materials. Consequently, self-made (vs. prefabricated) m-game-mediated blended platform was found to be more liable to teaching and learning ESP reading skill.

The application of critical pedagogy in educational contexts has received adequate research attention over the last decades. The main focus of this strand of research has, however, been on raising awareness of the educators. Nevertheless, little is known about the consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy principles from EFL teacher trainers’ perspectives. To begin to address this gap in research, a qualitative (phenomenological) study was carried out to explore the main consequences of violating critical pedagogy in the higher education system of Iran. The participants were 15 faculty members of TEFL and English Literature at 10 Iranian state universities. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews and analyzed according to Radnor’s (2001) model. The results indicated that the main consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy were educational (related to teaching, learning, and testing), psychological, social, and ideological. Therefore, it was concluded that educators must follow the principles of CP in order to avoid the negative consequences and foster the learning and teaching processes more effectively.

The efficacy of genre-based approach to teaching writing has been regarded as an influential practice in L2 writing pedagogy (Hyland, 2007). However, there is still gap between actual structures found in reading materials recommended as textbooks and discourse patterns recommended for L2 writing in EFL contexts, the gap which would highlight the problems of genre and rhetorical patterns for teaching. The current study, therefore, is an attempt to explore the level of consistency between the rhetorical patterns found in reading textbooks and discourse pattern recommended for writing. For this purpose, a number of 22 essays selected from textbooks were analyzed to identify (1) the overall rhetorical structures, and (2) the location of main idea and opinion of writers. The results show that while some texts did not follow the three-part structure of introduction-body-conclusion, main idea was presented in the introductory parts of essays, illustrating a deductive rhetorical pattern recommended for English writing. Further research was suggested as well.

Reading comprehension (RC) and critical thinking (CT) are the two basic cognitive skills that should be developed through involving language learners in a carefully planned instruction. Multiple intelligences (MI) instruction may assist learners in developing RC and CT in L2 education. This study probed the effect of MI-based reading instruction on the Iranian EFL learners’ RC and CT skills. In so doing, it compared the effectiveness of an MI-based reading instruction with a traditional one. To this end, 4 intact classes from several English language institutes, comprising 56 Iranian intermediate-level EFL learners, were selected and randomly assigned to MI-based (experimental) and traditional (control) groups. A multiple- choice RC test, a reading summary test, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test were used as the instrumentations to collect data on the participants’ RC and CT. Analysis of covariance revealed a significant effect for the MI-based reading instruction. Furthermore, the RC scores increased more significantly in the MI-based group in comparison to the traditional one. However, the CT scores did not significantly improve in both groups. There was also no statistically significant difference in the CT scores between the two groups after the treatments. Iranian EFL educators are, then, encouraged to develop MI-based lessons and activities for diverse students and take explicit instruction for the enhancement of CT skills in EFL reading courses