Language Research

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 The purpose of the present study was to investigate non-manual features (NMF) that convey politeness in Iranian sign language. The data was collected through interviews with 18 deaf people (including nine men, and nine women), and six hard-of-hearing women from Tehran, Zanjan, and Anzali. All the participants used the Iranian sign language and were of different ages and educational levels. The questions of this research are in the field of three speech acts requesting, rejecting, and apologizing. Non-manual features are a complex aspect of all sign languages and perform a range of grammatical and paralinguistic functions, and the second is highlighted in this study. For linguistic analysis, sign orders and the type of words were used first, and then the use of non-manual features with each sign was checked. According to the findings of this research, to convey politeness / impoliteness through Iranian sign language, it is not enough to use signs, and NMF complements the meaning. Non-manual features include movement of the body, head, eyes and eyebrows, lips, chin and nose. The data from this study shows that the movements of the body, head, eyebrow, eyes, and mouth gestures are crucial in every three speech acts. Results show that Squint is the most used NMF across requests, Side tilt is the most used NMF across rejections and polite pucker has the highest frequency of NMFs in apologies in the Iranian Sign Language. The type and extent of use of these NMFs are context-dependent. Distribution of these NMFs depends on context: formal or informal and the variety of functions. This research proved that non-manual features act as the equivalent of prosodic in the Iranian Sign language. The results of this research can help sociologists understand the culture of the deaf community, sign language researchers understand linguistic factors, and translators provide fluent translation

Abstract Based on Foucault's discourse analysis approach, this study examines participants' discourse perceptions of historical-political words and tries to find the answer to the question of how different historical-discourse formulations and their changing nature is expressed in words as a referent of discourse truth (constructed discourse) and reproduced and  recalled by words. In other words, how is the "word" itself a discourse that can be analyzed? This research was conducted in two stages and two questionnaires with 110 and 135 participants. The method of this research is qualitative-quantitative and based on description and analysis. The second questionnaire in 5 groups of questions evaluates the connection of the word with historical periods and discourses, the difference between the discourse of the word in each period, and the individual discourse of the participants. The data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively in the form of statistics and graphs. Quantitative analysis of data from 21 items by SPSS software confirmed a significant relationship between "words" and "historical periods and discourses". The results showed that some words, such as historical-political words, are to some extent formed in discourse and are tied to specific historical discourses. And reciprocally,  independently and disregarding any background and verbal context, they can represent and induce that discourse and reconstruct the components related to that discourse in the mind of the addressee. Thus, although the words have their own lexical meaning in the language, according to different contexts, conditions of occurrence, different minds, and finally different discourses, they show different perceptions, influences, and relative meanings and carry different discourses, and the concept  they have in the mind is a historical  one that has been formed in history. This study concludes that words reflect the reorientation of the discourse formulations and articulations of history and they alone can be studied in discourse analysis and ethnology.