مطالب

As far as teaching English as a foreign language is concerned, the role of literature as a medium to enhance language learning or to promote other cognitive and affective variables has been quite contentious. Over the last three decades, however, some practitioners and second language scholars have resurrected literature as an effective vehicle to teach the second or foreign language. As an attempt to shed more light on the use of literature in English Language Teaching (ELT), the present study investigated the role of literature as a medium to foster critical thinking among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. In so doing, a sample of 39 intermediate Iranian EFL students who were the students of two intact classes were recruited. They were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group (n=18) were required to read unabridged, authentic short stories written by literary figures whereas control group students were provided with abridged and simplified texts and short stories. A validated scale of critical thinking was administered as the pre-test and the post-test before and after the treatment. The results of a one way ANCOVA revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group on the post-test of critical thinking, suggesting that use of literary texts has been effective in enhancing the level of critical thinking among Iranian EFL students. The findings of the study have pedagogical implications for ELT theorizers and practitioners.

The current paper provides an analytical study of Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men.” The methods that have been employed in this research are textual and reader-response analyses. The poem has been explored from both approaches in order to know the first impression of the researcher of the poem and backed by critics’ notions of the poem. The study thus intends to shed light on two main themes including religion, spirituality, meaninglessness and nothingness. It also tends to demonstrate how Eliot portrays his own view on the modern men and the modern life through this poem. Eliot believes that modern men are hollow from their insides, and they are empty yet filled with straw just like a scarecrow. The paper tackles the critics’ views on Eliot, Eliot’s view on modernity, and the role of tradition and intertextuality in Eliot’s poetry. The paper finally depicts major themes in the poem. Eliot, in his quest for finding a satisfying religion, penned “The Hollow Men” as a mirror to the conditions of the society after the World War I which caused suffering from lack of faith, religion and morality.

This paper aims to investigate the role of language as a form of political and social control, and a vehicle for power and domination in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Edward Bond’s Lear on parallel bases. Foucault’s famous statement which refers to power as present “everywhere, not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere” clearly points to the always already presence of power. The issue of power has occupied a central position within his works. In fact, language can reflect truth as false and vice versa to sustain dominant group’s desires. Language can both reflect and affect our perception of the world indeed. In fact, King Lear and Lear are both stages for language game. The paper thus aims to focus on the way language plays a key role in King Lear and Lear as a vehicle for power and how language makes you powerful or how it throws you away to be a margin. The result shows that there is a dual relation between language and power, so that the voice of king is doomed to silence through the function of characters’ powerful language usage. In both plays, King is in the margin and language rules powerfully on socio-political relations. This paper has benefited from library documents and sources by use of a descriptive-analytical method.

Discourse has been one of the most challenging interdisciplinary terms during the past few decades which connects variety of fields of study such as politics, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, and literature. One of the approaches which is born out of mutual interaction between Linguistics and socio-political debates is critical discourse analysis (CDA), which studies the relation between language and power. Among the influential figures of this approach, one may refer to Antonio Gramci, Paulo Freire, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Theodore Adorno as one of the key members of this school challenges the basic assumptions of educational system in his writings particularly his essay “Theory of Halbbildung,” by which he meant “Half-education.” In his viewpoint, education is deemed as very forceful, one of the manifestations of power relation, which speaks in its own language to its audience or learners. The present paper is an attempt to analyze the failure of educational system to foster autonomous individuals in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye in the light of Adorno's theory of half-education.

The present paper aims address the Lacanian concepts of the tyche (tuche) and the automaton in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion (1987), and to explore the way the whole novel is based on moments of chance, peril, and jeopardy which are traceable in the transformation of automaton into tyche. Illuminating the track of automaton into tyche, the study endeavors to compare reading women’s writing style to experiencing tyche while going through other styles could be comparable to an automaton. A historiographic metafiction, The Passion is divided into four seemingly unrelated sections connected by the elements of chance and calamity. Via experiencing traumatic happenings, the characters face the incursion of the Real into the Symbolic Order (Tyche), considered beyond the determinations of the Symbolic. Observing the mass slaughter and deplorable death of his comrades, Henri is unable to return to the Symbolic and is obliged to remain in the asylum as a mentally disordered person. On the contrary, Villanelle manages to free herself from the post-traumatic stress and commences a new life.

Neil Simon’s plays, through their comic exterior, target serious social critique at the contemporary media-ridden culture of America. This research is a study of Simon’s theater from the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s speculations on human condition, totalitarianism, and violence. The selected plays, Fools, Lost in Yonkers, and Laughter on the 23rd Floor are scrutinized according to the three main concepts in Arendt’s thought, which are “action”, “work”, and “labor”. Action is a set of goal-oriented human activities carried out in plurality and imbued with the hope for new possibilities. Plural action is the most effective means of resisting totalitarianism that only wishes to downgrade action to work and then labor through violence. However, despite impositions and enforcements of violence, action always remains in the history for future generations to draw inspiration from. In Simon’s theater, despite its nonpolitical and humorous façade, action is inevitably thwarted, but its positive outcomes cannot be plagued. Simon puts on a vivid display the sparkles of pluralism and action regardless of immanent violence and its democratic disguise.