مطالب

Autobiographies are not merely literary productions but mental functions, stories continuously narrated, owned and believed by the self. By broadening the locus of autobiography from literary productions to mental functions, the connection between its Greek constituent parts: autos (self), bios (life), and graphé (writing), can be clarified and new vantage points become possible for studying the self and its narrative framing. In the genre of autobiography Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory stands out in unraveling the ways in which memory speaks the self. The free indirect style voice of narration and bridging the epistemic gap between the past and the present, both innate to the act of remembering, are masterly used by Nabokov.  This article, following Mark Rowlands’ approach to memory, studies Speak, Memory in order to explore the narrative structure of autobiographical memory and the constitution of the autobiographical sense of self. Thisstudy argues that in Speak, Memory, the self emerges as a narrative thematic pattern across time by being purported in, and at the same time transcending clusters of first-personal narratives that reconstruct the past.

The progression of culture and literature in the three subsequent eras of Modernism, Postmodernism and Post Postmodernism since the late-20th-century can be considered as one of the vivid factors that has led to the chain of transformation of man. In Modernism, the superiority of authentic and governmental power over people was dominant and later in the era of Postmodernism or the late capitalism, the notion of fragmentation controlled the life of the people; but in the third one, Post Postmodernism, a freshgenus of humanism was introduced by innovative authors such as David Foster Wallace who, in his philosophy of writing, illustrates not only the pain and limitations of man but also the healing instruments. Philosophically speaking, through the critical gates of Wallace’s philosophy, the subjectivity of man is given a niche, and thanks to the opportunity he has gained in the social networks, he could have made it possible to create a type of sharing and mutual communication amongst the fragmented individuals. That is to say, all alienated and limited individuals can have the role of active agents, communicators, and producers instead of being passive watchers, readers, and one-way communicators organized by the structures of the past eras. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate David Foster Wallace’s (1962-2008) trilogy—The Broom of the System (1987), Infinite Jest (1996), and The Pale King (2011)—according to his philosophy of Post postmodernism.

Naming, like any other act, is performed in a certain social and cultural context and is affected by these components. Therefore, naming can be regarded as a meaningful act, a cultural act, and thus a social factor. The present study is content-based analysis, and on the based on Saussure's theory (1986), its purpose is to investigate the effect of linguistic, cultural, and social factors in naming commercial centers of Ardabil and Tehran. For this purpose, from 8000 shopping centers in District 10 of Tehran and Ardebil, 368 commercial centers were randomly selected as probabilistic errors based on Morgan's table. The instrument of measurement in this research is a researcher-made questionnaire which consists of three sections: linguistic, cultural and social factors. To test the Null- hypotheses, independent t-test and the Friedman test were used. All statistical analysis were analyzed using SPSS20 and at a significant level less than 0.05. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the role of linguistic, cultural and social indicators in naming commercial centers in Ardebil and Tehran cities (p = 0.001). Finally, it has been shown that the social index has the greatest impact, and the language index has the least impact on the naming of business centers.