Voice

The present study intends to examine the reconstruction of truth through unreliable narration in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending (2011). In the process of seeking a fiction in which the narrator is manipulated by the authorial voice to self-refutation, it finds Barnes’ fiction to the purpose. As such, we contend that Barnes resorts to unreliable voices to make his readers suspect the truth of his narrative. In addition to the unreliability of the narrator, the reader is also aware of a cunning voice that is not present in the fiction as the voice commenting on the narrator’s words, but as a scheming intelligence distorting the narrator’s integral sequence of events. This study wants to argue that such a voice can itself be established within the novel as unreliable. To this end, a narratological analysis will be conducted in two stages. The first will focus on the level of the story, mainly on the position of the narrator, to suggest that the narrator gives us three main reasons to doubt his reliability: his age, dementia, and addiction to alcohol.  The second stage is going to concentrate on the level of the text to examine the role of the implied author. It will ultimately show that the implied author is an unreliable voice that further twists the narrator’s accounts.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how voice is realized by Iranian EFL learners in persuasive English and Persian text types. This discourse-related notion is a required criterion for writing acceptable English. However, L2 learners from cultures other than English might face problems in realizing it, or even ignore it all through their writing. In this connection, the present study attempted to discover the possible relationship between the intensity of voice and the overall quality of text. Thus, thirty university students were selected as participants. They were asked to write in both English and Persian a persuasive text within the same subject matter. Then, their writings were rated in terms of intensity of voice and the overall quality based on Jacobs’ voice intensity scale and Jacobs’ overall quality scale (1981), respectively. The analysis of their productions indicated that there is a significant relationship between voice intensity and some of its features, and overall quality; while no relationship was found between English and Persian voice intensity. Therefore, voice deserves more attention on the part of writing instructor, as it could enrich the quality of L2 learners’ written productions with more sense of naturalness and smoothness. Moreover, material designers can incorporate English writing materials with various aspects of this critical notion, in addition to other language rhetoric, for learners at appropriate language proficiency level.

This study aims to investigate the semantic and syntactic features of verbs used in the introduction section of Applied Linguistics research articles published in Iranian and international journals. A corpus of 20 research article introductions (10 from each journal) was used. The corpus was analysed for the syntactic features (tense, aspect and voice) and semantic meaning of verbs. The findings showed that in both groups of introductions, the common tenses were the present and past, rather than future. In introductions published in the international journal, the present tense was used more often than in those published in the Iranian journal, whereas past tense was used twice as frequently in Iranian journal introductions. Regarding the aspect of verbs, the simple aspect was common in both groups of introductions, but more frequent in Iranian journal introductions. The perfect aspect was more common in international journal introductions. Concerning voice, the active voice was predominant in both groups of introductions. Semantically, verbs with mental, activity, communication and existence meanings were common in both groups. The semantic meanings of verbs were not significantly different in the two groups of introductions. The findings of this study can have implications for novice, non-native writers in Applied Linguistics in helping them design and write more appropriate research article introductions.

علیرغم اینکه که مطالعات چشمگیری در زمینه تجزیه و تحلیل صدا و حضور نویسنده در نگارش های استدلالی انجام گردیده، هنوز در خصوص تأثیر آموزش بر این حضور تحقیقات کافی صورت نپذیرفته است. بنابراین ، مطالعه حاضر به بررسی تأثیر آموزش مبتنی بر مدل مارتین و وایت و الگوی تعاملی هایلند در شکل گیری صدا و حضور نویسنده و تعامل بین نویسنده و خواننده پرداخته است. برای این منظور، یک گروه کنترل و دو گروه تحقیق در مطالعه شرکت کردند. گروه های تحقیق در مورد عناصر تشکیل دهنده موضع نویسنده و تعامل با خواننده بر اساس دو مدل متفاوت آموزش داده شدند. تغییرات در استفاده از عناصر بین گروههای تحقیق و کنترل پس از آموزش بررسی گردید. زبان آموزانی که از تأثیر صدا و حضور نویسنده بر اساس مدل مارتین و وایت آگاه گردیدند، از موضع گیری تعاملی و تدافعی بیشتری در نگارش آیلتس استفاده کردند و تعامل قابل تو جهی با خواننده داشتند. نتایج حاصل از این تحقیق می تواند به مربیان کمک کند تا آگاهی زبان آموزان را از چگونگی حضور نویسنده در نوشتار بطور موثری ارتقا داده تا نوشتار های تعاملی متقاعده کننده ای را ارائه دهند.