Language Research

Abstract The aim of this study is to examine the clauses related to reading skills in secondary English books based on a functional grammar approach. Functional grammar approach has a wide impact on different parts of language learning, because instead of focusing only on linguistic structures, it pays attention to the communicative and contextual roles of language. This approach is effective in different language skills, and in this research we only examine reading skills. Reading skills not only help in learning new vocabulary and improving grammar, but also increase critical thinking and general language skills, so they are very important. For this purpose, 808 clauses were examined using a descriptive-analytical method, and the data collection method was documentary-library. The results indicate that from the experiential meta-role perspective, all processes were used in the Vision books in a proportionate manner, and it is only in the mental process that there is no meaningful relationship between the three books. From a textual meta-role perspective, the frequency of simple themes has not changed in all three books, and there is still no significant relationship with non-simple themes in terms of content presentation. However, marked themes are more coherently related to each other in all three books, and with the increase of the base, the amount of their use also increases. Given that the authors have claimed that the content of the textbooks is presented based on the CEFR levels and that students will reach level B1 by the end of upper secondary school, the present study proves the opposite of this claim and we witness many violations of level B1. Considering the above, the reading skills in Vision books need to be revised to be more in line with the needs of students.  The analysis proposed in this research helps textbook designers to use more appropriate language structures in educational texts and encourage language learners to use language more effectively in real situations.

Abstract The aim of this article is to explain the construction of euphemistic meaning via the process of negation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The main question of the present study is how the cognitive mechanism of negation acts for constructing euphemistic meaning and consequently for motivating euphemistic linguistic structures. The present research explains euphemism in Persian by a descriptive-analytical method. Data were also collected manually from mostly library resources containing several Persian-language dictionaries. In this study, it is shown that the cognitive process of negation is volitionally applied to a conceptual content by the conceptualizer and consequently a pleasant conceptual content is activated and attention is drawn toward it. Based on the negation process, the negated pleasant concept is represented phonetically and the strength of attention over the unpleasant content which has not been represented at the linguistic level will decrease. Due to the representation of the negated pleasant concept at the linguistic level and based on the type of guided attention distribution pattern encoded in the negative linguistic forms, the speaker tries to distribute a portion of the listener's attention sources over the pleasant content and he/she tries to decrease the strength of attention on the unpleasant concept. In fact, instead of directly encoding an unpleasant concept at the linguistic level, the speaker uses indirect methods and encodes "the negated pleasant concept". By this indirect reference, lesser attention is assigned to the unpleasant concept than when the concept is directly represented in the language. Therefore, linguistic negations structure the concepts in such a way that the window of attention does not open on the unpleasant aspects of the entity in question and does not put them at the center of attention, and through this way, euphemistic meaning will be constructed. It should be noted that the present study re-emphasizes on the interaction and overlap of language and other general cognitive abilities.

Abstract Providing knowledge for effective communication cannot just be limited to teaching linguistic information, and pragmatic competence should also be considered. Since the main goal of teaching foreign languages is related to teachers, their proficiency and pragmatic awareness are very important; Nevertheless, the conditions for the acquisition of speech acts  is not provided adequately. In this regard, the present study aims to analyze the pragmatic competence of Iranian EFL teachers considering the strategies of expressing speech act gratitude in English.  In order to evaluate the use of strategies of expressing gratitude, a Discourse Completion Task questionnaire (DCT) and a coding scheme proposed by Cheng were used.  Also, the Gratitude Questionnaire-Six Item Form (GQ-6) was employed to study the influence of personality on expressing gratitude. The questionnaires were distributed randomly, and the male and female participants were asked to fill the discourse completion task. They were expected to write down as many words or utterances as they wanted to express their gratitude towards the situation in a limited time. Finally, 133 completed questionnaires were collected. Then, responses were coded based on the Cheng coding scheme.  The findings showed that all 8 gratitude strategies of the Cheng model were applied by teachers. The "Thanking" strategy was the most frequent (39.9%). Also, the results of the Kruskal-Wallis H test showed that the three groups of instructor's field of study (academic discipline) do not show any significant difference in expressing their gratitude strategies.