Kourosh Saberi

  Technologies contribute to providing a better

      This study investigates family language policy among two generations of Kurdish-Persian bilingual families in the cities of Kermanshah, Ilam, and Sanandaj in western Iran. These regions have high densities of Kurdish speakers from different dialect groups. Adopting Spolsky’s theory of language management (2009), the study examines language ideologies, practices, and management strategies related to Kurdish (minority language) and Persian (dominant language) within 30 intergenerational families across high, middle, and low socioeconomic statuses. Using a mixed-methods approach, the researcher uses a questionnaire. In addition, one parent from each generation participates in an in-depth interview covering attitudes, identity, aspirations, literacy activities, explicit management efforts, and actual language use behaviors. The study aims to provide empirical insights into the maintenance and shift of minority languages during family transmission. Results reveal that while both generations of parents hold bilingual ideologies and value the use of both languages at home, a tendency toward language shift is evident among lower socioeconomic groups, favoring Persian over Kurdish. Despite this trend, many participants express a commitment to preserving Kurdish as a cultural marker. The study highlights the critical role of family language policy in sustaining minority languages and suggests that supportive policies and community initiatives are essential for the continued preservation of Kurdish.    Key Words‌: Bilingual Families, Family Language Policy, Language Management, Language Ideology  

In the morphological processes like affixation and cliticization, these morphemes are affected by phonological conditions which make alternating forms out of them. In this descriptive?analytic research, the alternating forms of bound morphemes in Kalhori Kurdish were investigated, within the framework of Parallel Optimality Theory. The data were collected, transcribed, and parsed into relevant morphemes through a 12?hour interview of 15 speakers of Kalhori Kurdish from Gilan?e  Gharb. Also, the questionnaire of “Atlas of the Languages of Iran” was answered by a male and female speaker of this dialect; then the answers were collected and analyzed. Vowel hiatus, as one of the undesirable phenomenon in most world languages, was revealed to be the main motive for the alternating forms of morphemes to be shaped. This phenomenon is resolved by different processes like insertion, glide formation, deletion, coalescence, and morpheme displacement in this dialect. The diversity in the resolutions of such a single problem is concerned to the limitations of Kalhuri Kurdish phonological system. In spite of this diversity, there is a systematic order and conspiracy in the application of the aforementioned processes. Assimilation is the only processes applied not related to vowel hiatus. Also, the differences between the behavior of enclitics and verb endings in solving this problem is resulted from their different category. Enclitics as lexical morphemes apply deletion as the last resort, while the verb endings as functional categories apply it first. And the final conclusion is that the parallel version of Optimality Theory can properly explain the investigated data in this research.   

   Having a large number of bird species in all seasons of the year and in most regions, Iran has many capabilities to implement bird watching programs. Villages, as places that are far from the hustle and bustle of the city and close to the pristine nature, have the ability to accommodate and welcome tourists, can benefit from this enjoyable and growing branch of ecotourism. As a unique ecosystem with rich biodiversity, the wetland has many environmental, economic and social functions and values. Every year, a large number of migratory birds that come from different regions of Iran and the world visit Heshilan Wetland for resting and wintering. They choose to spend; This can attract people who are interested in bird watching and watching birds to the wetland and the villages on the edge of the wetland and cause the economic and cultural prosperity of these communities. In the meantime, Heshilan Lagoon as a site for attracting migratory birds has the conditions for the development of rural tourism in the surrounding villages. Therefore, the main goal of this research is the effect of migratory bird attraction areas on the development of rural tourism (case study: villages around the Heshilan lagoon). It is a quantitative, applied, descriptive, analytical research method that uses a questionnaire tool to collect information. The software used is   . The validity of the research was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha (economic, 0.88, social and cultural, 0.84, physical, 0.83, tourism, 0.77) and validity was confirmed by experts in geography, environment and social sciences. The sample size of 256 households was 100 households. The sampling method was systematic random sampling. The findings show that bird watching and incoming tourists have had a positive effect on the economy, society and culture. Also, from an environmental point of view, with the government paying more attention to migratory birds, good environmental opportunities have been created, but pollution, waste, and a lot of garbage were collected in the place. Unfortunately, investment in tourism in the region is limited and the infrastructure is inadequate, which needs attention. The findings from Kruskal Wallis show that there is no significant difference between villages in terms of the impact of bird watching on tourism. Also, Spearman's correlation findings show that there is a significant relationship between bird watching and economic, social and cultural, physical and environmental components. Finally, the regression findings show that the effect on the village environment is the most important strength of bird watching. It is also in the second rank of job creation. In the third place, the reduction of migration has been introduced as the most important effect of bird watching Key words: Heshilan wetland, bird watching, ecotourism, rural tourism

  The present study in the field of pragmatics, employs Jonathan Culpeper’s theory of impoliteness (1996 and 2011) to examine the ways of harming the face of women in Iranian cinema of the 1390s. The first aim of this research was to find the different strategies of impoliteness directed towards women. The primary goal of this research was to identify various strategies of impoliteness directed towards women. The second goal was to investigate how the social context influences impoliteness against women. The third goal of the research was to analyze how the patriarchal system is reproduced or criticized considering the strategies of impoliteness. Given the reciprocal relationship between cinema and society, the cinema of the 1390s is considered a reflection of the cultural and social conditions of women in contemporary Iranian society. For this purpose, five films from the cinema of the 1390s were selected as case studies. Finally, based on the analysis according to Culpeper's theory of impoliteness on the extracted dialogues from the selected works, the way language impacts the portrayal of women from different social classes was explained. The findings of this research indicate that among the five strategies of impoliteness, positive impoliteness and negative impoliteness are the most prevalent types used against women in the cinema of the 1390s, with the former more commonly used against women of the middle- and upper-classes, and the second pattern used against women of the lower-class. Additionally, the research shows that in this decade, some works contribute to the reproduction of the status quo, while others critique it.

According to American exceptionalism ideology, United States of America, because of its unique historical context and social and political structures, is assumed superior than other nations of the world. This line of thought has led Americans to believe that they possess the best sets of values and culture. Because of their presupposed supremacy, Americans believe that they have a special mission to lead humanity toward peace and salvation. American literature, as an integral part of American culture, has been more or less under the influence of American exceptionalism ideology. Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as a well-known American post-modern fiction are no exception. The satiric style and critical viewpoint of Cat’s Cradle toward the established American values and religion make it a good text for the study of American exceptionalism ideology. On the other hand, McCarthy’s The Road illustrates a destroyed America which is quite different from the one that we know today, therefore it is worthwhile to study the narrative to see if American exceptionalism ideology still persists in post-America. This research aims to study three features of American exceptionalism which are most prominent in American fiction in the narrative of these novels. These features include: American hero, American journey, and American mission.  

   Writing is one of the most difficult skills due to requiring highermental and critical thinking ability. The genre of writing is one of theimportant factors affecting the complexity level of this skill. Generally, mostof the EFL/ESL teachers provide feedback on learners’ writing errors as a partof their teaching program; however, the way in which they provide writtencorrective feedback (WCF) should be also taken into account. In other words,teachers need to consider the factors that influence their feedback provisionfor the purpose of decreasing the difficulty of writing skill. Althoughdifferent studies attempted to explore the role of those effective elements,writing genre in spite of its importance has got no attention in this regard.To address this gap, the present manuscript reports a mixed-method studyinvestigating the role of writing genre in WCF provided by EFL teachers. To dothis, 100 EFL teachers participated in this study to provide feedback on threewriting samples. These samples, that were written by EFL learners, includeddifferent genres namely, narrative, descriptive and analytic. Then, teachers’feedback regarding each writing sample was investigated separately to find outthe role of writing genre in WCF. The results of examining the quantitativephase indicated the effectiveness of writing genre both descriptively andstatistically. Furthermore, B.A. and M.A EFL teachers’ WCF was also examinedfor the purpose of discovering the role of writing genre in relation to theteachers’ academic level. The results of investigating this sectiondemonstrated the efficacy of writing genre as well. To complete the next phasewhich aimed at exploring teachers’ beliefs regarding the role of writing genrein the provision of their WCF, some of the teachers were attendedsemi-structured interviews. Anchored in qualitative content analysis, thefindings suggested different perspectives in this regard; therefore, theinterviewees were divided into two groups. The first group of teachersmentioned various points of view, such as the positive role of writing genre indetermining the use of specific structures and the aim of writing which callsfor particular kinds of WCF. These themes supported an association betweenteachers’ beliefs and practices as the quantitative phase showed, while thesecond group emphasized the other factors than writing genre, such as learners,teachers, context and educational system which led to the misalignment inrelation to their beliefs and practices. Finally, in the light of thesefindings, it is suggested to pay more attention to the writing genre in teacher

   This study aims to investigate linguistic landscape and language attitude among Kurdish speakers in the west part of Iran. A total of 772 signs were photographed and were later categorized according to the top-down (governmental) versus bottom-up (private sector) distinction in Kermanshah, Sanandaj, and Ilam. Out of these 772 photos, 578 photos were related to bottom-up and 194 photos were related to top-down signs. For the second part of the research, after studying previous studies on language attitudes, the researcher adapted a questionnaire based on two questionnaires which have been run before. After adapting the questionnaire, the process of piloting the questionnaire began. For the purpose of employing a valid and reliable survey, 150 Kurdish native speakers answered the first draft of the survey (50 participants from each city). After collecting the data, the researcher entered them into   . Then, the normality of the data was checked via KS test. Also, the internal consistency of the collected data from the questionnaire was tested via Cronbach’s Alpha tests. The questionnaire was completed based on a six-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree as the lowest (1) to the highest point (6).   Then the final version of the questionnaire was distributed between people in target cities. 450 people participated in this part and answered the questionnaires voluntarily. The results of linguistic landscape showed that among bilingual signs, Persian-Kurdish has the highest frequency in Sanandaj, while Persian-English signs are more prevalent in Kermanshah and Ilam. In all of the cities, Persian-Arabic signs have the lowest frequency among bilingual signs. Sanandaj was the only city which Kurdish was dominant in Persian-Kurdish signs. The results of language attitude showed that Kurdish language has a very high social status among people in Sanandaj and Kermanshah and high social status among people in Ilam. Regarding its institutional support, people believed that Kurdish language, though vital and widely used with a positive attitude among its native speakers, requires more institutional support. Regarding Kurdish vitality, the results showed that unlike Sanandaj, Kurdish language may die out in future in Kermanshah and Ilam. And finally the results showed that there were no significant difference between males and females towards their attitude to Kurdish language in Kermanshah and Sanandaj, but there was an obviously significant difference between males and females` language attitude in Ilam. Finally, some suggestions for further research were proposed by the researcher.

   Abstract The present study, as a research in the field of gender linguistics, aimed at investigating the Persian spoken by women in Kermanshah based on Lakoff’s dominance approach (1975). The purpose of this study was to investigate, describe and categorize the specific features in women’s speech. It further analyzed the impact of age on the frequency of using these speech features. The data of the present study were collected using questionnaires and interviews from 90 urban middle- 0px 0px 13px; text-align: justify; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr;">   Key words: Gender Linguistics, Lakoff’s Dominance Approach, Freud’s Defense Mechanism, Kermanshahi Farsi

  There has not been a long time since The Grammar of Visual Design was introduced. This new look into pictures is located in social semiotics, and it is implemented in decoding the pictorial signs. The Grammar of Visual Design approach is i  ired by ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions of Halliday. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), by i  iring these three metafunctions have devised a similar structure for reading pictorial signs. They named them, Representational, Interpersonal, and Compositional meanings after three Halliday’s metafunctions. The aim of this study is to investigate these three roles in pictorial pictures based on Siavash and Zahak’s narratives in Shahnamh of Ferdowsi, to explore the dominant grammatical and semiotic patterns in these picture, and further, to find the role of these patterns in forming specific style of the pictures. This study has been done based on the corpus of The Grammar of Visual Design approach. The results of this study show that the Representational, interpersonal, and Compositional meanings in pictures can be recycled. Furthermore, The Grammar of Visual Design approach can be utilized to scrutinize the meaning roles hidden in pictorial signs, except some cases.

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