پژوهش های زبان شناسی

Despite the fact that impoliteness has been the focus of much investigation in various contexts, including political and cultural, there remains a paucity of evidence on the manifestation of impoliteness in literary texts. Examining Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language (1988) and Ashes to Ashes (1996), this paper discloses the impact of (im)politeness on identity. It posits that because of a mismatch in power dynamics and impoliteness between communicators, identity and self-esteem are subject to threat. Harold Pinter’s plays manifest profound interconnection between (im)politeness and identity construction/destruction. Our analysis shows how, in plays under scrutiny, characters are in a constant verbal struggle for survival and dominance and how this conflict impacts on characters’ social identity. Adopting Bousfield and McIntyre (2018) alongside Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2009)’s model, this paper elucidates how impoliteness operates within the political settings of the plays in which the oppressors’ aggressive language aims to delegitimize the social identity of the oppressed ones. Furthermore, we strive to indicate how the impolite language and social/individual identity are closely related which contributes to a deeper understanding of characterization in literary works.

This paper attempts to demonstrate the prospective contributions that Cultural Linguistics (CL) can offer to the field of Translation Studies (TS). The main objective is to show the common grounds between the two disciplines and the potential capacity CL approach and methodology, in theory, has in enriching TS. First, it sets the stage by introducing the status quo of CL’s relatively novel interdisciplinary burgeoning field and establishing its significance and its current trends, broad applications, and wide-ranging implications in language-oriented studies. It is followed by a concise overview of the principles and practices of the theoretical and analytical frameworks of the CL approach. Next, a critical state-of-the-art account of translation and its expanded definition in the (post)digital revolution era is provided. Bridging the relevant concepts and contexts, we then explore the possible applications of CL’s theoretical and analytical frameworks to TS, identifying the areas where the interplay between the two disciplines is most likely fruitful for TS. These domains encompass –but certainly are not limited to— the following areas: Translation Pedagogy, Postcolonial Translation, Corpus-based TS, Media/News Translation, Multimodal Translation, and Sociological-oriented TS. As for future directions in such an interdisciplinary venture, key trends that may arise in the dynamic interplay between TS and CL include Gender-oriented TS and Translational Activism, AI-informed TS, Cognitive and Ethnographic Approaches to TS, translating tourism, and Translation and Ideology.

This study examines the effectiveness of long-term formant frequency distributions (LTFDs), Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), and their combined application in distinguishing Kurdish-Persian bilingual speakers. Speech samples were collected from 20 early male bilingual speakers who read the fable ' The North Wind and the Sun ' in Kurdish (Sorani dialect) and Persian. The Random Forest algorithm was employed to analyze the data. Feature importance for formant frequencies and MFCCs was evaluated using the mean decrease in accuracy metric. The results indicated that LTFD measures provided moderate accuracy in speaker differentiation, reflecting their capacity to capture vowel-related articulatory patterns. In contrast, MFCCs demonstrated superior performance, effectively encoding spectral and speaker-specific characteristics. When LTFDs and MFCCs were combined, system accuracy was slightly improved compared to using MFCCs alone. This marginal enhancement underscores the potential benefits of integrating LTFDs with MFCCs in forensic voice comparison, where even small gains can have significant practical implications. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of bilingual speaker variability and provide insights for optimizing speaker identification systems in bilingual contexts.

Being rooted in imagery and metaphor, Jungian psychology suggests that metaphors are expressions of archetypal imagery. While extensive research has examined how archetypal theory informs literal metaphors across various languages, less attention has been paid to whether metaphorical conceptualizations can serve as a modality—similar to dreams or active imagination—for representing archetypes and the collective unconscious. Linguistic data from intercultural interactions are crucial for uncovering shared conceptual structures across diverse communities. This study explored the "Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together" signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as a pivotal text in contemporary interfaith dialogue. We analyzed how the processes of metaphorizing archetypes were woven into this discourse. Specifically, we investigated whether archetypes are represented within the conceptual blending processes of metaphors, how the collective unconscious is reflected in the conceptual metaphors employed in interreligious dialogue, and how these metaphors may foster shared understanding among religious leaders. Using Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), we identified metaphorical expressions that projected archetypal content, revealing the presence of key Jungian archetypes, such as the Mother, Rebirth, Shadow, Innocent, and God-Image. Our findings indicated that significant shared conceptualizations existed between Islamic and Christian leaders, which were grounded in the collective unconscious and articulated through archetype-based conceptual metaphors.

This study investigates the representation of starvation in Gaza across two leading Arab media outlets, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, through the lens of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (Hart, 2014). Focusing on agency attribution, role allocation, and event construal, the analysis reveals how media discourse shapes public perceptions of responsibility and crisis. Findings demonstrate that Al-Jazeera denaturalizes starvation by foregrounding Israel’s agency and situating the crisis within a conflictual space open to contestation and alternative narratives. Conversely, Al-Arabiya depicts the issue by naturalizing starvation as a self-propelling humanitarian catastrophe, thereby suppressing antagonism and foreclosing discursive plurality. These divergent discursive trajectories illustrate how discursive stratifies such as de-naturalization and naturalization are enacted in media discourse and highlight the ideological orientations of representing humanitarian crises. The study contributes to scholarship on mediated representations, and Critical Discourse Studies by foregrounding the role of event construal in mediating political action and public consent.

This study investigated the developmental trajectory of Scalar Implicature (SI) comprehension in monolingual Persian-speaking children, examining how linguistic typology, contextual support, and cognitive abilities influence this process in a Subject-Object-Verb language. 60 children divided into 2 age groups (4-5 and 6-7 years), along with 20 adults, participated in a Statement Evaluation Task involving the quantifier "some" ("ba'zi"). The task was designed to evaluate whether participants interpreted "some" as "some but not all" in scenarios where the alternative "all" is true with two contextual conditions: Basic and Enriched, the latter increasing the salience of the "all" alternative. Standardized assessments of Working Memory (WM) and Theory of Mind (ToM) were also administered to explore cognitive correlates. Results showed a significant main effect of Age Group; older children demonstrated higher SI rates (mean=0.61) than younger children (mean=0.35), indicating a developmental increase in pragmatic competence. Moreover, contextual enrichment significantly enhanced SI rates overall, with older children benefiting more notably as evidenced by a significant interaction between age and context. Correlational analyses revealed that WM capacity (Backward Digit Span) was associated with SI performance in the Basic Context, whereas ToM scores correlated with SI rates in the Enriched Context, suggesting dissociable cognitive mechanisms underpin SI comprehension depending on contextual complexity. These findings supported a universal developmental progression from logical to pragmatic interpretations of scalar terms in Persian-speaking children, emphasizing the roles of WM and ToM in the emergence of pragmatic inference. Overall, the study highlighted how contextual cues and cognitive resources differentially facilitate SI understanding, lending support to resource-dependent models of pragmatic development.

This study adopted Talmy's (1985, 2000) typological framework of motion events to systematically analyze manner-of-motion verbs in three representative Gothic texts: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) and "The Black Cat" (1843) and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948).  The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods, including corpus analysis, to identify key narrative functions of motion verbs (e.g., indicating physical or mental resistance, violence, and deception). It then showed how these verbs built tension, horror, and dread. Findings revealed that fundamental movement verbs dominated (45.6%), establishing an atmosphere of false normalcy, while sudden eruptions of violent motion and physical resistance created a pressure-release dynamic central to Gothic aesthetics. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrated significant stylistic divergences in the authors' employment of motion verbs, reflecting the dual nature of Gothic aesthetics: Jackson’s use of ritualistic motion highlighted communal horror contrasting with Poe’s focus on psychological disintegration. The paper concluded that Gothic fiction transformed mundane actions into kinetic terror, with motion verbs functioning as both narrative catalysts and psychological markers. These insights advance the understanding of how linguistic structures shape genre-specific emotional effects, offering a quantitative and narrative-functional framework for analyzing Gothic literature.