درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The problem is how ideas and ideologies intended to liberate the peoples from misery and oppression were reversed into oppression just in the name of freedom. The reason is the reduction of equality to a numerical concept, which was a milestone in world history but finally ended up in obscene inequalities to such an extent, that the social fabric of the Western societies is dissolving, far-right and populistic movements are gaining momentum and the corruption of our values can no longer be ignored. The crisis of the (neo)-liberal world order is returning from the margins to the center. For too long we thought that modern absolute or numerical equality would supersede the former aristocratic concept of proportional equality. But in the end this understanding of equality created a kind of blind spot in our perception – a prominent example is Thomas Jefferson who included the dignity of all people into the American declaration of independence and was virtually blind to realizing that this value contradicted his own practice of possessing slaves.  Therefore we re-invent proportional equality in the footsteps of Aristotle, but transgress his aristocratic concept by balancing it with reversed-proportionality – we propose therefore to understand justice as a pair of scales between freedom and equality.  

  Extreme measures to reduce the number and cost of refugees and immigrants belong among the recent examples of the Kingdom of Denmark’s illiberal responses to crises in the wake of third party armed conflict. Politically, the process of tightening the law and having a transparently unwelcoming attitude towards foreigners began in 2001, at least according to some experts on Danish foreign policy, e.g. Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen. While the causes are controversial, the effects are clear. Denmark is undercutting its own history. However popular the current VLAK-coalition government’s Minister of Immigration, Integration and Housingmay be among the Danes, the ongoing series of restrictive policies cannot but result in Red Flags. Irrespective of any motivationally deeper or underlying reasons for their adoption, the relevant legal and other measures constitute international relations events and changes; and, as such, they affect the order among states. In terms of regional and global politics, the question is whether there is an analogy between post-2013 Qatar and post-2001 Denmark? More precisely, the question is whether Denmark should be listed under past as opposed to present “small and influential states”? By using Mehran Kamrava’s work on Qatar as a platform for a role reversal claim, the authors present a muted subtle power argument for the need to downgrade Denmark, too. Furthermore, a tension between the official Danish image and the climate of cultural values in Denmark creates a complex us versus them disconnect which, in turn, makes it possible to provide or, more to the point, explain some aspects of the evidence for the state’s precarious human rights capacity. Part of the argument derives from pre-2001 literary whistleblowing concerning Danishness – a strategy that accords with the popular Danish Minister’s own use of satire as a truth-recognition methodology. 

The present study investigated the effect of pragmatic eliciting tasks on EFL pre-intermediate learners speaking proficiency. Thus this study aimed at comparing the English language learners who practiced pragmatic eliciting tasks and the ones who used traditional speaking activities such as questions and answers, discussion, etc. In doing so, 40 learners out of 80 were selected through Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) with the band score of 30 to 39. Then they were non-randomly divided into two equal experimental and control groups through convenience sampling method. Both groups took a teacher-made pre-test on speaking proficiency and the scores were recorded. The experimental group received pragmatic eliciting tasks including explicit uses of pragmatic functions of speech (i.e., greeting, thanking, etc.) while the control group received these pragmatic tasks implicitly. Finally, both groups took a posttest which was the modified pre-test. Data were analyzed through independent and paired sample t-tests and the results showed that explicit instruction on pragmatic eliciting tasks were effective than the implicit ones in the control group. Implications of the study suggest that the learners should learn pragmatic eliciting tasks for effective uses of language functions in their conversations.