The purpose of this study is to explore meta-discourse
markers in academic correspondence between... more The purpose of this study is to explore meta-discourse markers in academic correspondence between students and professors. To this end, 200 student e-mails (13,103 words in size) were randomly selected between 2019 and 2022 and were analyzed based on Hyland's (2005) model of metadiscourse markers with two categories of interactive (including transitive markers, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidential and code glosses) and interactional metadiscourse markers (including hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions and engagement markers). The relationship between the frequency of either of interactive or interactional markers with one of the Aristotle's rhetorical triangle (i.e., logos, ethos and pathos) (Hyland, 2005) is also discussed. Results show that the use of interactional metadiscourse markers was more than interactive metadiscourse markers in the corpus. Also, the engagement marker as an indicator of appealing to pathos was the most frequently used interactional markers in the corpus. In addition, transitive markers, as an indicator of appealing to logos, have the highest frequency among interactive metadiscourse markers.
This cross-cultural study aims to examine how Iranian and American motivational speakers employ m... more This cross-cultural study aims to examine how Iranian and American motivational speakers employ metadiscourse devices as a convincing tool to interact with their audience. To this end, eight motivational speeches in English and Persian were randomly selected from 2015 to 2021, and analyzed for the use of stance (i.e., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions) and engagement (i.e., reader-pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge, and personal asides) expressions. The findings showed that self-mention and attitude markers were the most frequently used stance markers in English and Persian corpus, respectively. Moreover, hedges found to be the least frequently used stance markers in the two corpora. With regard to the use of engagement markers, results showed that reader pronoun is the most frequently used engagement markers, and shared knowledge and personal asides were the least frequently used engagement markers in both languages. Finally, the results of chi-square test showed statistically significant differences in the use of stance and engagement expressions in the two languages, confirming cultural septicity nature of metadiscourse markers, and that speakers of different languages employ interactional devices according to their context.
Genre studies allow researchers to observe the repeated communicative functions and their linguis... more Genre studies allow researchers to observe the repeated communicative functions and their linguistic components in different genres (Brett, 1994). Writing the introduction section is a tough and burdensome task for both native and non-native speakers (Swales & Feak, 1994). Hence, the present study aimed to investigate the generic organization of English research article introductions written by native English and Iranian non-native speakers of English. A total of 160 published articles were selected from established journals in Applied Linguistics. Following Swales’ (2004) Create A Research Space (CARS) model, the researchers analyzed the articles for their specific generic patterns. Findings displayed that native English writers used significantly more strategies than Iranian non-native speakers of English, yielding richer texts. The findings of the present study contribute to the current knowledge of cross-cultural studies in academic writing to non-native English speakers in gene...
This cross-disciplinary paper explores the ways in which writers promote their research articles ... more This cross-disciplinary paper explores the ways in which writers promote their research articles in the highlights section of journals available online as a digital academic genre. A corpus of highlights from 300 research articles was randomly selected from journals in two major domains of knowledge, hard sciences and soft sciences. The corpus contained texts from the fields of (1) Chemistry and (2) Computer Science representing hard sciences and from (3) Linguistics and (4) Management representing soft sciences published in reputable journals in 2018 and 2019. The corpus was analysed in terms of the promotional and rhetorical moves based on a model developed by the researchers using the uAM Corpus Tool. The results show that despite similarities in the use of rhetorical moves, for example, Promoting the results (Move 4) as the most frequently used move in both corpora, there were disciplinary variations in the highlights section. Whereas hard science majors give secondary importance to promoting the value (Move 2) of their research, soft science majors promoted the scene of the study (Move 1) in the highlights. Analyses of the cyclical patterns of the highlights reveal that whereas hard sciences researchers combined promoting the results with promoting the methodological issues (Move 3), soft sciences writers showcased their results as well as promoting background information (Move 1) related to their actual research.
The present study analyzed questions in the political interviews in Iran and the United States in... more The present study analyzed questions in the political interviews in Iran and the United States in order to show what types of adversarial are used in the journalists’ questions and whether there are differences in the use of adversarial between Iranian and American journalists. To this end, the questions addressing the presidents in Iran (i.e. Presidents AhmadiNejad and Roohani) and presidents in the US (i.e. Presidents Obama and Trump), around 70 journalists (35 in each corpus) in political press conference, were randomly collected from 2012 to 2017. The data were then analyzed based Clayman et al.’s (2006) framework to examine how language is used to express adversarial questions. The findings showed that preface tilt was significantly used more in American corpus while other-referencing frames and global adversarial were significantly used more in Iranian corpus. Moreover, in the two corpora, negative questions were the least frequently used type of question and declarative questions was absent in American corpus.
Journal of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages, 2021
In the language teaching and learning context, with the increase in communicative language teachi... more In the language teaching and learning context, with the increase in communicative language teaching theories worldwide, the use of video as an audiovisual material has proliferated (Bal-Gezegin, 2014). Nowadays, many publishers produce language learning videos tailored specifically for students in a foreign language program to accompany and complete textbooks. Videos are multimodal because they rely on various semiotic modes or sources (language, gesture, visual imagery, movement, color, music, sounds, and so on). Videos can act as powerful elements in creating learners' knowledge of the real world (Katchen, 2002, as cited Bal-Gezegin, 2014). Despite the abundance of research on images (e.g., Elmiana, 2019; Roohani & Saeidfar, 2013, Tahririan & Sadri, 2013, to name but a few), research on other kinds of visual materials such as videos has received scant attention. Considering the possible effects of videos on constructing learners' views and their psychological effects on the mind of learners, this study aims to analyze the elements of the Rasa Persian teaching video series (hence, RPTVS) created for non-Iranian Persian language learners from a social semiotic perspective. Accordingly, the research questions which guided this study are (1) What is the function of visual aspects in RPTVS?, (2) In what way do the visual aspects of RPTVS support interaction between learners and represented participants? To answer the research questions, three Rasa videos were randomly selected and analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) threefold metafunction of visual grammar. The materials selected for analysis in this study
The aim of this cross-cultural study is to investigate conflict management in computer-mediated c... more The aim of this cross-cultural study is to investigate conflict management in computer-mediated communication, and to examine users' strategies in online polylogue interaction in response to the posts of LGBTQ groups in the virtual pages of the group's supporters on Instagram. The corpus consisted of 20 Instagram posts with 2071 Persian comments and 1323 English comments collected from July to October 2018, and were analyzed based on Bou-Franch and Blivich's (2014) model of conflict management. The findings showed that defensive/offensive strategies were the most frequently used strategies, which indicated that users in both groups decided to respond to an action that threatened their face or identity. In addition, the frequency of opposing and withdrawing strategies has been higher in Persian than English corpus. Also, the results of inferential statistics show that, in general, the total number of Persian strategies is significantly higher than English, which can be due to its challenging issue and acceptance status in Iranian society.
This study examined the use of lexical cohesion in English political news articles published in l... more This study examined the use of lexical cohesion in English political news articles published in local and international English newspapers. To this end, a corpus of 40,000 words (20,000 in each corpus) were randomly collected from political news articles published in international English newspapers (e.g. the Washington Post, the New York Times) and local English newspapers (e.g. Iran Front Page, Tehran Times) from January to December, and were analyzed based on Tanskanen’s classification of lexical cohesion. The findings showed that international English newspapers used statistically more substitution, equivalence, contrast, activity related, and elaborative collocations than local English newspapers. On the other hand, local English newspapers used significantly more simple repetition, complex repetition, generalization, specification, co-specification, and order set collocation when writing political news article. Additionally, there was a significant difference between the two groups in subset of reiteration and collocation.
The present paper deals with the perception of Iranian EFL teachers and learners in using humor i... more The present paper deals with the perception of Iranian EFL teachers and learners in using humor in language classrooms. To this end, 10 English classes with a population of 70 female and male students and 5 male and female teachers in English language institutes in Esfahan were observed during spring and summer 2019. Using an ethnographic approach, the data were collected through observation and interview. The results showed that both teachers and learners had a positive attitude towards the use of L2 humor in the classroom. Language learners reasoned that having a sense of humor is one of the important qualities a language teacher should possess. The teachers and language learners acknowledged the positive effects of humor such as reducing the distance between teachers and learners, lowering learners' anxiety, boosting learners' retention of the lesson, as well as increasing their concentration and motivation. Moreover, language learners showed a preference for the use L2 humor, course-related humor, and L1 norm-oriented types of humor in their classroom.
The present study aimed to examine the rhetorical structure of the method sections of English and... more The present study aimed to examine the rhetorical structure of the method sections of English and Persian research articles. To this end, 300 method sections were randomly selected from research articles published in established international English, Iranian local English, and Iranian local Persian journals in Applied Linguistics from 2010 to 2016. Following Lim’s(2006) model, we analyzed the articles for the generic patterns in the method section. Findings showed that the writers of Persian research articles used a significantly greater number of moves in developing the research method section than those of international and local English articles.Moreover, despite variations, there were similarities between international and Iranian local English journals in terms of utilizing moves and steps.
As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging... more As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging for the foreign language learners. However, the body of literature is heavier on the side of humor production than humor perception. The current study explores the extent to which Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners perceive different types of English humor in comparison with the English native speakers. The participants were 153 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency who were randomly selected from English language learners from several English language institutes in Shiraz, Iran, and 30 American English native speakers who voluntarily participated in this study. A questionnaire consisting of six contextualized jokes of three major types of universal, cultural, and linguistic (with morphological, phonological, lexical, and syntactic subcategories) was developed based on Schmitz's (2002) classification of verbal humor to obtain the quantitative data. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was conducted to elicit the perception of those participants who did not find the jokes humorous. The results showed that the majority of Iranian EFL participants did not realize the humor in the jokes. Additionally, the findings revealed that generally speaking, Iranian EFL learners' perception of humor is significantly lower in all types of jokes examined. The best perceived type of humor was found to be the linguistic humor of morphological type for the Iranian EFL learners and the lexical type for English native speakers. It was also discovered that the phonological humor was the least perceived type of humor for both Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers.
The Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice , 2019
The purpose of the present study is to compare the impoliteness strategies employed by Iranian an... more The purpose of the present study is to compare the impoliteness strategies employed by Iranian and English students in English and Persian Languages. The participants consisted of 6o Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency, 60 Iranian non-English major students, and 212 native English-speaking students. The data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire in the form of discourse completion task where responses to different threatening situations were elicited. The questionnaire consisted of six situations with variations in social power. The data were analyzed based on Limberg's (2009) model of threat responses. The findings showed variations in the use of strategies employed with variation of social power in different situations. Moreover, the overall findings displayed the frequent use of tendency strategies, that is, toward compliance, toward non-compliance, by the three groups of respondents. It is hoped that the findings of this study can add to the body of knowledge in impoliteness studies and to our understanding of how threat responses vary cross-culturally in particular.
International Journal of Research in English Education, 2020
In academia, different disciplines tend to represent themselves, their writers, and their readers... more In academia, different disciplines tend to represent themselves, their writers, and their readers in unique ways. To be able to probe into such cross-disciplinary discursive variations, the present cross-disciplinary study used Martin and White's appraisal framework incorporating lexico-grammar and language evaluation strategies to explore the linguistic construal of evaluative stance in the conclusion section of academic research articles. To this end, a corpus of 160 research articles randomly selected from English international journals of psychology as a representative of soft sciences and industrial engineering as a representative of hard sciences were examined in the light of Martin and White's scheme, with a focus on graduation. To code the data, UAM Corpus Tool was used for the ease of descriptive analyses. In general, the findings indicated that the number of graduation words and graduation types were significantly higher in the hard science corpus compared to the soft science one, suggesting that the authors of hard science articles mainly attempted to express their appreciation and judgment and report the fluctuation of a specific feature in their findings.
The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which rhetorical strategies, as a sub-genre ... more The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which rhetorical strategies, as a sub-genre of persuasive discourse, are deployed in scholarship application letters in Iran in Persian and English. To this end, 96 application letters fora fictitious scholarship were written by Iranian university students and were further analyzed according to a framework initially proposed by James, Scholfield and Ypsilandis (1994). Aristotle's taxonomy of logos, ethos and pathos was employed to examine the rhetorical organization or moves in this sample and a mixed analysis with quantitative statistics and qualitative comments was followed. The results showed significant differences in the use of strategies between the two versions of the data collected (Persian and English) in different parts of the letters, such as greetings, openings, self-presentation, and letter closing. On the other hand, it was observed that the most frequently rhetorical appeals selected by the applicants lie under the logos and pathos categories in both Persian and English letters.
This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. ... more This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. For this purpose, four reading comprehension texts with similar topics were selected from the four Touchstone textbooks. Seven pictures accompanying the four texts were analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotics, and the four texts were analyzed with reference to Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. The results depicted fairly high functionality of the visuals in Touchstone series as well as their humanistic communicative trends. Moreover, it was found out that the pictures supported the linguistic text, there by helping learners to comprehend the textual content. The findings also showed that increase in text difficulty made for the occurrence of material and relational processes. Lastly, the results of verbal analysis suggested that reading comprehension texts of Touchstone series chiefly describe real world experiences and actions rather than behaviors, thoughts, or feelings. Based on the outcomes, it can be concluded that the visuals are pertinent to the linguistic passages and help the learners to get a better understanding of the texts.
This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. ... more This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. For this purpose, four reading comprehension texts with similar topics were selected from the four Touchstone textbooks. Seven pictures accompanying the four texts were analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotics, and the four texts were analyzed with reference to Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. The results depicted fairly high functionality of the visuals in Touchstone series as well as their humanistic communicative trends. Moreover, it was found out that the pictures supported the linguistic text, there by helping learners to comprehend the textual content. The findings also showed that increase in text difficulty made for the occurrence of material and relational processes. Lastly, the results of verbal analysis suggested that reading comprehension texts of Touchstone series chiefly describe real world experiences and actions rather than behaviors, thoughts, or feelings. Based on the outcomes, it can be concluded that the visuals are pertinent to the linguistic passages and help the learners to get a better understanding of the texts.
The Journal of Language and Translation (JLT), 2019
This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learnin... more This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learning perspective. Given the centrality of writing for both EFL learners and teachers, writing anxiety was explored through a longitudinal study spanning two years with 25 EFL learners and teachers who participated by providing comments, diaries, and documents. The participants were also observed and interviewed following Mwanza's model as a guide. The obtained data in the whole process was constantly thematized by means of a qualitative software, NVIVO 10. The main themes on writing anxiety were extracted from teachers and learners by applying contradictions as a principle of expansive learning theory. To help learners become transformative agents of anxiety, an intervention process was carried out in the form of an online collaborative writing task. The findings recommend applying contradictions as an initiative point for problem-solving and a driving impellent of activity which may lead to expansive learning. Besides, the dynamic and developmental process is hoped to help learners expand and transform their writing anxiety. Contradictions may also become an initiation for future studies on language learning.
Over the last decade, the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have witnessed a gro... more Over the last decade, the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have witnessed a growing interest in research on linguistic landscape. In this connection, numerous studies have investigated language and linguistic signs as used in the living environment. This study was an attempt to explore shop owners' attitudes towards naming their businesses in two areas of high and low social class in Esfahan. To this end, the data were collected from 100 shop owners by means of a questionnaire in the form of likert and a structured interview. The questionnaire was adopted and modified from Hussein, Nofal and Mansour’s (2015) study. It was employed to elicit factors governing the choice of names for businesses in the two areas of high and low socioeconomic status in Esfahan. Owners' attitude towards naming their shops as influenced by language, religion, location and social status has been investigated.The findings showed that there are statistically significant differences between the low and high socioeconomic status groups with regard to the criteria for naming businesses.
The purpose of this study is to explore meta-discourse
markers in academic correspondence between... more The purpose of this study is to explore meta-discourse markers in academic correspondence between students and professors. To this end, 200 student e-mails (13,103 words in size) were randomly selected between 2019 and 2022 and were analyzed based on Hyland's (2005) model of metadiscourse markers with two categories of interactive (including transitive markers, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidential and code glosses) and interactional metadiscourse markers (including hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions and engagement markers). The relationship between the frequency of either of interactive or interactional markers with one of the Aristotle's rhetorical triangle (i.e., logos, ethos and pathos) (Hyland, 2005) is also discussed. Results show that the use of interactional metadiscourse markers was more than interactive metadiscourse markers in the corpus. Also, the engagement marker as an indicator of appealing to pathos was the most frequently used interactional markers in the corpus. In addition, transitive markers, as an indicator of appealing to logos, have the highest frequency among interactive metadiscourse markers.
This cross-cultural study aims to examine how Iranian and American motivational speakers employ m... more This cross-cultural study aims to examine how Iranian and American motivational speakers employ metadiscourse devices as a convincing tool to interact with their audience. To this end, eight motivational speeches in English and Persian were randomly selected from 2015 to 2021, and analyzed for the use of stance (i.e., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions) and engagement (i.e., reader-pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge, and personal asides) expressions. The findings showed that self-mention and attitude markers were the most frequently used stance markers in English and Persian corpus, respectively. Moreover, hedges found to be the least frequently used stance markers in the two corpora. With regard to the use of engagement markers, results showed that reader pronoun is the most frequently used engagement markers, and shared knowledge and personal asides were the least frequently used engagement markers in both languages. Finally, the results of chi-square test showed statistically significant differences in the use of stance and engagement expressions in the two languages, confirming cultural septicity nature of metadiscourse markers, and that speakers of different languages employ interactional devices according to their context.
Genre studies allow researchers to observe the repeated communicative functions and their linguis... more Genre studies allow researchers to observe the repeated communicative functions and their linguistic components in different genres (Brett, 1994). Writing the introduction section is a tough and burdensome task for both native and non-native speakers (Swales & Feak, 1994). Hence, the present study aimed to investigate the generic organization of English research article introductions written by native English and Iranian non-native speakers of English. A total of 160 published articles were selected from established journals in Applied Linguistics. Following Swales’ (2004) Create A Research Space (CARS) model, the researchers analyzed the articles for their specific generic patterns. Findings displayed that native English writers used significantly more strategies than Iranian non-native speakers of English, yielding richer texts. The findings of the present study contribute to the current knowledge of cross-cultural studies in academic writing to non-native English speakers in gene...
This cross-disciplinary paper explores the ways in which writers promote their research articles ... more This cross-disciplinary paper explores the ways in which writers promote their research articles in the highlights section of journals available online as a digital academic genre. A corpus of highlights from 300 research articles was randomly selected from journals in two major domains of knowledge, hard sciences and soft sciences. The corpus contained texts from the fields of (1) Chemistry and (2) Computer Science representing hard sciences and from (3) Linguistics and (4) Management representing soft sciences published in reputable journals in 2018 and 2019. The corpus was analysed in terms of the promotional and rhetorical moves based on a model developed by the researchers using the uAM Corpus Tool. The results show that despite similarities in the use of rhetorical moves, for example, Promoting the results (Move 4) as the most frequently used move in both corpora, there were disciplinary variations in the highlights section. Whereas hard science majors give secondary importance to promoting the value (Move 2) of their research, soft science majors promoted the scene of the study (Move 1) in the highlights. Analyses of the cyclical patterns of the highlights reveal that whereas hard sciences researchers combined promoting the results with promoting the methodological issues (Move 3), soft sciences writers showcased their results as well as promoting background information (Move 1) related to their actual research.
The present study analyzed questions in the political interviews in Iran and the United States in... more The present study analyzed questions in the political interviews in Iran and the United States in order to show what types of adversarial are used in the journalists’ questions and whether there are differences in the use of adversarial between Iranian and American journalists. To this end, the questions addressing the presidents in Iran (i.e. Presidents AhmadiNejad and Roohani) and presidents in the US (i.e. Presidents Obama and Trump), around 70 journalists (35 in each corpus) in political press conference, were randomly collected from 2012 to 2017. The data were then analyzed based Clayman et al.’s (2006) framework to examine how language is used to express adversarial questions. The findings showed that preface tilt was significantly used more in American corpus while other-referencing frames and global adversarial were significantly used more in Iranian corpus. Moreover, in the two corpora, negative questions were the least frequently used type of question and declarative questions was absent in American corpus.
Journal of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages, 2021
In the language teaching and learning context, with the increase in communicative language teachi... more In the language teaching and learning context, with the increase in communicative language teaching theories worldwide, the use of video as an audiovisual material has proliferated (Bal-Gezegin, 2014). Nowadays, many publishers produce language learning videos tailored specifically for students in a foreign language program to accompany and complete textbooks. Videos are multimodal because they rely on various semiotic modes or sources (language, gesture, visual imagery, movement, color, music, sounds, and so on). Videos can act as powerful elements in creating learners' knowledge of the real world (Katchen, 2002, as cited Bal-Gezegin, 2014). Despite the abundance of research on images (e.g., Elmiana, 2019; Roohani & Saeidfar, 2013, Tahririan & Sadri, 2013, to name but a few), research on other kinds of visual materials such as videos has received scant attention. Considering the possible effects of videos on constructing learners' views and their psychological effects on the mind of learners, this study aims to analyze the elements of the Rasa Persian teaching video series (hence, RPTVS) created for non-Iranian Persian language learners from a social semiotic perspective. Accordingly, the research questions which guided this study are (1) What is the function of visual aspects in RPTVS?, (2) In what way do the visual aspects of RPTVS support interaction between learners and represented participants? To answer the research questions, three Rasa videos were randomly selected and analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) threefold metafunction of visual grammar. The materials selected for analysis in this study
The aim of this cross-cultural study is to investigate conflict management in computer-mediated c... more The aim of this cross-cultural study is to investigate conflict management in computer-mediated communication, and to examine users' strategies in online polylogue interaction in response to the posts of LGBTQ groups in the virtual pages of the group's supporters on Instagram. The corpus consisted of 20 Instagram posts with 2071 Persian comments and 1323 English comments collected from July to October 2018, and were analyzed based on Bou-Franch and Blivich's (2014) model of conflict management. The findings showed that defensive/offensive strategies were the most frequently used strategies, which indicated that users in both groups decided to respond to an action that threatened their face or identity. In addition, the frequency of opposing and withdrawing strategies has been higher in Persian than English corpus. Also, the results of inferential statistics show that, in general, the total number of Persian strategies is significantly higher than English, which can be due to its challenging issue and acceptance status in Iranian society.
This study examined the use of lexical cohesion in English political news articles published in l... more This study examined the use of lexical cohesion in English political news articles published in local and international English newspapers. To this end, a corpus of 40,000 words (20,000 in each corpus) were randomly collected from political news articles published in international English newspapers (e.g. the Washington Post, the New York Times) and local English newspapers (e.g. Iran Front Page, Tehran Times) from January to December, and were analyzed based on Tanskanen’s classification of lexical cohesion. The findings showed that international English newspapers used statistically more substitution, equivalence, contrast, activity related, and elaborative collocations than local English newspapers. On the other hand, local English newspapers used significantly more simple repetition, complex repetition, generalization, specification, co-specification, and order set collocation when writing political news article. Additionally, there was a significant difference between the two groups in subset of reiteration and collocation.
The present paper deals with the perception of Iranian EFL teachers and learners in using humor i... more The present paper deals with the perception of Iranian EFL teachers and learners in using humor in language classrooms. To this end, 10 English classes with a population of 70 female and male students and 5 male and female teachers in English language institutes in Esfahan were observed during spring and summer 2019. Using an ethnographic approach, the data were collected through observation and interview. The results showed that both teachers and learners had a positive attitude towards the use of L2 humor in the classroom. Language learners reasoned that having a sense of humor is one of the important qualities a language teacher should possess. The teachers and language learners acknowledged the positive effects of humor such as reducing the distance between teachers and learners, lowering learners' anxiety, boosting learners' retention of the lesson, as well as increasing their concentration and motivation. Moreover, language learners showed a preference for the use L2 humor, course-related humor, and L1 norm-oriented types of humor in their classroom.
The present study aimed to examine the rhetorical structure of the method sections of English and... more The present study aimed to examine the rhetorical structure of the method sections of English and Persian research articles. To this end, 300 method sections were randomly selected from research articles published in established international English, Iranian local English, and Iranian local Persian journals in Applied Linguistics from 2010 to 2016. Following Lim’s(2006) model, we analyzed the articles for the generic patterns in the method section. Findings showed that the writers of Persian research articles used a significantly greater number of moves in developing the research method section than those of international and local English articles.Moreover, despite variations, there were similarities between international and Iranian local English journals in terms of utilizing moves and steps.
As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging... more As an instance of foreign language comprehension, L2 humor perception is proved to be challenging for the foreign language learners. However, the body of literature is heavier on the side of humor production than humor perception. The current study explores the extent to which Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners perceive different types of English humor in comparison with the English native speakers. The participants were 153 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency who were randomly selected from English language learners from several English language institutes in Shiraz, Iran, and 30 American English native speakers who voluntarily participated in this study. A questionnaire consisting of six contextualized jokes of three major types of universal, cultural, and linguistic (with morphological, phonological, lexical, and syntactic subcategories) was developed based on Schmitz's (2002) classification of verbal humor to obtain the quantitative data. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was conducted to elicit the perception of those participants who did not find the jokes humorous. The results showed that the majority of Iranian EFL participants did not realize the humor in the jokes. Additionally, the findings revealed that generally speaking, Iranian EFL learners' perception of humor is significantly lower in all types of jokes examined. The best perceived type of humor was found to be the linguistic humor of morphological type for the Iranian EFL learners and the lexical type for English native speakers. It was also discovered that the phonological humor was the least perceived type of humor for both Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers.
The Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice , 2019
The purpose of the present study is to compare the impoliteness strategies employed by Iranian an... more The purpose of the present study is to compare the impoliteness strategies employed by Iranian and English students in English and Persian Languages. The participants consisted of 6o Iranian EFL learners at intermediate level of language proficiency, 60 Iranian non-English major students, and 212 native English-speaking students. The data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire in the form of discourse completion task where responses to different threatening situations were elicited. The questionnaire consisted of six situations with variations in social power. The data were analyzed based on Limberg's (2009) model of threat responses. The findings showed variations in the use of strategies employed with variation of social power in different situations. Moreover, the overall findings displayed the frequent use of tendency strategies, that is, toward compliance, toward non-compliance, by the three groups of respondents. It is hoped that the findings of this study can add to the body of knowledge in impoliteness studies and to our understanding of how threat responses vary cross-culturally in particular.
International Journal of Research in English Education, 2020
In academia, different disciplines tend to represent themselves, their writers, and their readers... more In academia, different disciplines tend to represent themselves, their writers, and their readers in unique ways. To be able to probe into such cross-disciplinary discursive variations, the present cross-disciplinary study used Martin and White's appraisal framework incorporating lexico-grammar and language evaluation strategies to explore the linguistic construal of evaluative stance in the conclusion section of academic research articles. To this end, a corpus of 160 research articles randomly selected from English international journals of psychology as a representative of soft sciences and industrial engineering as a representative of hard sciences were examined in the light of Martin and White's scheme, with a focus on graduation. To code the data, UAM Corpus Tool was used for the ease of descriptive analyses. In general, the findings indicated that the number of graduation words and graduation types were significantly higher in the hard science corpus compared to the soft science one, suggesting that the authors of hard science articles mainly attempted to express their appreciation and judgment and report the fluctuation of a specific feature in their findings.
The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which rhetorical strategies, as a sub-genre ... more The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which rhetorical strategies, as a sub-genre of persuasive discourse, are deployed in scholarship application letters in Iran in Persian and English. To this end, 96 application letters fora fictitious scholarship were written by Iranian university students and were further analyzed according to a framework initially proposed by James, Scholfield and Ypsilandis (1994). Aristotle's taxonomy of logos, ethos and pathos was employed to examine the rhetorical organization or moves in this sample and a mixed analysis with quantitative statistics and qualitative comments was followed. The results showed significant differences in the use of strategies between the two versions of the data collected (Persian and English) in different parts of the letters, such as greetings, openings, self-presentation, and letter closing. On the other hand, it was observed that the most frequently rhetorical appeals selected by the applicants lie under the logos and pathos categories in both Persian and English letters.
This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. ... more This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. For this purpose, four reading comprehension texts with similar topics were selected from the four Touchstone textbooks. Seven pictures accompanying the four texts were analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotics, and the four texts were analyzed with reference to Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. The results depicted fairly high functionality of the visuals in Touchstone series as well as their humanistic communicative trends. Moreover, it was found out that the pictures supported the linguistic text, there by helping learners to comprehend the textual content. The findings also showed that increase in text difficulty made for the occurrence of material and relational processes. Lastly, the results of verbal analysis suggested that reading comprehension texts of Touchstone series chiefly describe real world experiences and actions rather than behaviors, thoughts, or feelings. Based on the outcomes, it can be concluded that the visuals are pertinent to the linguistic passages and help the learners to get a better understanding of the texts.
This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. ... more This study attempted to examine visual and verbal characteristics in Touchstone textbook series. For this purpose, four reading comprehension texts with similar topics were selected from the four Touchstone textbooks. Seven pictures accompanying the four texts were analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotics, and the four texts were analyzed with reference to Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. The results depicted fairly high functionality of the visuals in Touchstone series as well as their humanistic communicative trends. Moreover, it was found out that the pictures supported the linguistic text, there by helping learners to comprehend the textual content. The findings also showed that increase in text difficulty made for the occurrence of material and relational processes. Lastly, the results of verbal analysis suggested that reading comprehension texts of Touchstone series chiefly describe real world experiences and actions rather than behaviors, thoughts, or feelings. Based on the outcomes, it can be concluded that the visuals are pertinent to the linguistic passages and help the learners to get a better understanding of the texts.
The Journal of Language and Translation (JLT), 2019
This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learnin... more This qualitative study aimed at exploring the causes of writing anxiety from an expansive learning perspective. Given the centrality of writing for both EFL learners and teachers, writing anxiety was explored through a longitudinal study spanning two years with 25 EFL learners and teachers who participated by providing comments, diaries, and documents. The participants were also observed and interviewed following Mwanza's model as a guide. The obtained data in the whole process was constantly thematized by means of a qualitative software, NVIVO 10. The main themes on writing anxiety were extracted from teachers and learners by applying contradictions as a principle of expansive learning theory. To help learners become transformative agents of anxiety, an intervention process was carried out in the form of an online collaborative writing task. The findings recommend applying contradictions as an initiative point for problem-solving and a driving impellent of activity which may lead to expansive learning. Besides, the dynamic and developmental process is hoped to help learners expand and transform their writing anxiety. Contradictions may also become an initiation for future studies on language learning.
Over the last decade, the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have witnessed a gro... more Over the last decade, the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have witnessed a growing interest in research on linguistic landscape. In this connection, numerous studies have investigated language and linguistic signs as used in the living environment. This study was an attempt to explore shop owners' attitudes towards naming their businesses in two areas of high and low social class in Esfahan. To this end, the data were collected from 100 shop owners by means of a questionnaire in the form of likert and a structured interview. The questionnaire was adopted and modified from Hussein, Nofal and Mansour’s (2015) study. It was employed to elicit factors governing the choice of names for businesses in the two areas of high and low socioeconomic status in Esfahan. Owners' attitude towards naming their shops as influenced by language, religion, location and social status has been investigated.The findings showed that there are statistically significant differences between the low and high socioeconomic status groups with regard to the criteria for naming businesses.
Armenians are a small non-Persian minority group residing in different parts of Iran. Isfahan is ... more Armenians are a small non-Persian minority group residing in different parts of Iran. Isfahan is one of the cities in which Armenians have their own community where they have their own church, neighborhood, and shops, hence furnishing them with the opportunity to better maintain their Armenian identity. The present research survey investigated the attitude of Armenians toward Armenian and Persian as two languages used in the diaglossic community of Armenians in Isfahan. The main purpose was to probe language attitude and identity among Armenians in Isfahan. The participants were 94 Armenians aged from 17 to 71 from different social and educational strata. Initially a questionnaire was devised, piloted, and validated by the current researchers. The results of exploratory factor analysis in SPSS identified six components for the questionnaire: 1) attachment to Armenian language, 2) pronunciation attitude, 3) Armenian language and social status, 4) Armenian language use/exposure in society, 5) language knowledge, and 6) alphabet in Armenian. The results of data analysis based on mean and standard deviation revealed that Armenians are strongly attached to their language as the main source of identity manifestation. The results are also discussed from Bourdieu’s view of language as symbolic power and how Armenians consider their L1 as a source of pride, prestige, and identity in their daily social interaction and transactions.
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Papers by Maryam Farnia
markers in academic correspondence between students and
professors. To this end, 200 student e-mails (13,103 words
in size) were randomly selected between 2019 and 2022 and
were analyzed based on Hyland's (2005) model of metadiscourse markers with two categories of interactive
(including transitive markers, frame markers, endophoric
markers, evidential and code glosses) and interactional
metadiscourse markers (including hedges, boosters, attitude
markers, self-mentions and engagement markers). The
relationship between the frequency of either of interactive
or interactional markers with one of the Aristotle's
rhetorical triangle (i.e., logos, ethos and pathos) (Hyland,
2005) is also discussed. Results show that the use of
interactional metadiscourse markers was more than
interactive metadiscourse markers in the corpus. Also, the
engagement marker as an indicator of appealing to pathos
was the most frequently used interactional markers in the
corpus. In addition, transitive markers, as an indicator of
appealing to logos, have the highest frequency among
interactive metadiscourse markers.
Iranian local Persian journals in Applied Linguistics from 2010 to 2016. Following Lim’s(2006) model, we analyzed the articles for the generic patterns in the method section. Findings showed that the writers of Persian research articles used a significantly greater number of moves
in developing the research method section than those of international and local English articles.Moreover, despite variations, there were similarities between international and Iranian local English journals in terms of utilizing moves and steps.
markers in academic correspondence between students and
professors. To this end, 200 student e-mails (13,103 words
in size) were randomly selected between 2019 and 2022 and
were analyzed based on Hyland's (2005) model of metadiscourse markers with two categories of interactive
(including transitive markers, frame markers, endophoric
markers, evidential and code glosses) and interactional
metadiscourse markers (including hedges, boosters, attitude
markers, self-mentions and engagement markers). The
relationship between the frequency of either of interactive
or interactional markers with one of the Aristotle's
rhetorical triangle (i.e., logos, ethos and pathos) (Hyland,
2005) is also discussed. Results show that the use of
interactional metadiscourse markers was more than
interactive metadiscourse markers in the corpus. Also, the
engagement marker as an indicator of appealing to pathos
was the most frequently used interactional markers in the
corpus. In addition, transitive markers, as an indicator of
appealing to logos, have the highest frequency among
interactive metadiscourse markers.
Iranian local Persian journals in Applied Linguistics from 2010 to 2016. Following Lim’s(2006) model, we analyzed the articles for the generic patterns in the method section. Findings showed that the writers of Persian research articles used a significantly greater number of moves
in developing the research method section than those of international and local English articles.Moreover, despite variations, there were similarities between international and Iranian local English journals in terms of utilizing moves and steps.