درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Standard political discourse is replete with ambiguity and vagueness. Politicians frequently use vague language to hide their inadequate knowledge, show their low interest in the issue, and/or evoke emotion. This study reports on a qualitative content analysis of vagueness in two Iranian presidents' political interviews within a pragmalinguistic and sociopolitical paradigm. The data consisted of nine question-answer exchanges extracted from seven internationally live broadcast interviews. A total of 57 instances of vague language use were analyzed in terms of 21 pragmalinguistic vagueness strategies. Implications are that vagueness in political discourse is motivated by a multiplicity of factors such as face management, sociopolitical and situational adaptation, conflict avoidance, and personal characteristics of the interviewers and the respondents. Vagueness was also found to be a sign of diplomatic prudence or wisdom.

Textbook evaluation is of paramount importance in ensuring that textbooks are of high quality and aligned with educational goals. This study evaluated two common English language textbooks in Iran (i.e., American English File [private schools] and Vision series [state schools]) based on the brainling (brain+ language) model, heeding EFL learners’ cognition, senses, emotions, and culture. To this end, a brainling-based scale was validated based on “cogling”, “emoling”, “sensoling”, and “cultuling” components of the brainling model and distributed among Iranian teachers (N=218) and EFL learners (N=236). It was found that there were significant differences in the brainling components present in English textbooks used in state and private schools. Moreover, the independent samples t-tests revealed that there were significant differences in mean scores for brainling components between the two types of textbooks for students. However, it is worth noting that such differences were not observed among teachers’ ratings of these components.  The results could assist content developers in incorporating brainling as a worthwhile scale for evaluating English language textbooks.

Crises have always caused many, and sometimes irreparable, damages and injuries to human nations having had adverse impacts on indices of society, economy and environment. Therefore analysis and optimum management of these crises are the priorities in the states around the world. Access to valid and up-to-date information plays the pivotal role in proper and timely programming and performance on managers’ and responsible organizations’ side in various phases of the crisis management cycle. While more than 80% of the required information in crises actually have a local and geographical nature, utilizing the modern technology of GIS with special capabilities in modeling, combining and analyzing the data can be effective and impasse-breaking while analyzing vast layers of information in both phases of prediction and strike of crises. A good knowledge of the crisis-causing factors before their strike or prediction of the essential arrangements to prevent or reduce their affects or aftermaths to the least is one of the base procedures in the management of unexpected events. In this direction, precision in properly locating the installations and passages of the pipes and canals would be immensely important; bearing in mind the key role of continuation of serving essential arteries; particularly water and sewage installations, in controlling and preventing the expansion of crises, and preserving public health and hygiene on the one hand, and the significant expenses of construction or reconstruction of these systems on the other. Thus, through this study, we have discussed how to exploit the creation and production procedures in purposefully locating water and sewage installations and also their other usages in designing, management, programming and development of these installations, in addition to introducing the geographical information systems and clarifications of the creation and production procedures. The location of urban water and sewage facilities is very effective in increasing the resilience of natural disasters through the use of the geographical information system.