Language Research

Abstract   translator


 



 
Double-click

 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 This research, conducted in the field of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, aims at the describing and analyzing the type and number of request strategies in Kurdish, Mokri dialect, regarding the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of social factors as the gender of user and the power of addressee. To this end, for data collection, a revised version of Discourse Completion Test (DCT) including 12 situations was distributed among 130 (65 males and 65 females) Mokri Kurdish speakers in Mahabad city located in the southern of West Azabayejan province. They were in the age range of 25 to 35, holding at least a bachelor degree. Besides the questionaire, direct observation consisting of 7 hours of everyday normal conversations in various situations and different contexts was employed to collect more natural and reliable data. As the main theoretical framework for the present study, Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) coding scheme used by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) was employed and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory was used as the peripheral framework. Results of the research showed a significant difference across genders in selection of the type of request strategis and the power of addressee had a significant effect on choosing the strategies. It was also shown that power and gender had an interactive effect on the selection of these strategies. According to supporting strategies of the "negative and positive faces" in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory, it was found that Kurdish people as the members of one cooperative group mostly employed positive face saving acts in their communications and interactions. The research findings indicate that it is about time for linguists as educational planners to consider these sociolinguistic differences in teaching Kurdish language to non-Kurdish people in order to prevent any probable mishaps in their communications and interactions with Kurdish speakers.