دو فصلنامه آموزش زبان و ادبیات
سال پانزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 36، بهار 1393)

This paper examines the concept of masculinity and its role in construction of female identity in family relationship framework in Carol Ann Duffy’s poems selected from her main poetry collections chronologically, and is organized in terms of thematic focus of her poems. Being the first woman poet laureate of the Great Britain after hundred years of male domination, situates Carol Ann Duffy’s poems in to the centre of the attentions of the feminism studies; besides one of the major themes of her poetry as a female poet, is portraying the women’s experiences in creating their own identity. Hence this study applies a feminist approach in order to demonstrate the construction of the female identity encountering the masculinity in family framework. Examining masculinity and construction of female identity in Duffy’s poetry tends to show a progression and shift in illustrating the concept of masculinity and its role in construction of female identity from the early poems to the last poems in chronological sequence family relationship framework.

The present study investigated the impact of using pictures of idioms on learners’ short term & long term retention. For this purpose 60 female EFL learners studying English language institute in Langroud, Iran were selected randomly to take part in this research. The Oxford Placement Test was administered in order to select the students of intermediate level. The selected learners (40 students) were divided randomly in to control& experimental groups, each consisting of 20 students. At this stage a pretest of idioms was administered on order to ensure the participants’ unfamiliarity of the idioms. The experimental group was instructed to use pictures, definition, & example, whereas the control group used just the idiom definition & example (no pictures). At the end of treatment which lasted 4 sessions, the same pretest was given to the participants of 2 groups in order to estimate their rate of retrieval of idioms (short-term retention) & the effect of the treatment. Ten days after the treatment, a multiple-choice delayed- posttest of idioms was administered to compare the impact of this teaching technique on idioms achievement between groups (long term retention). The obtained results indicated that experimental group in both posttests outperformed. So, the findings proved the facilitative role of pictures &illustrations on short- and long-term retention of idioms.

One of the most important concepts of Lacanian reading is subjectification. Lacanian subject creates in the process of subjectification that it emerged two movements of self-alienation through language and the separation of desire. One of the American novels that show problems of teenager’s subjectivity is J. D. Salinger‘s “The Catcher in the Rye”. It aims to study hero of the novel, Holden Caulfield‘s self-identity and his struggles to achieve a fix position as a subject and his protest and rebel against his society. It shows that his wanting to be a unified subject is disappointed. He wants to show that how the teenager’s crisis of identity leads to defeat of Subjectification and the conventional social norms and imposed identities cause that children suffered and self-alienated.

Investigating collocation is significant in language studies especially in translation from one language to another. Collocations are words that frequently co-occur and often make certain associations. Lack of attention to collocations in translation will produce unfamiliar and unnatural translations and may cause a distortion of meaning. The present study focused on the translation of collocations and intended to compare two different translations of collocations of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell from English to Persian. It investigated different strategies used in translating collocation according to Vinay and Darbelnet's model of translation. This model contains seven procedures including Borrowing, Calque, Literal Translation, Transposition, Modulation, Equivalence, and Adaptation. For this purpose, sixty collocations from each novel (totally 180 collocations), were selected, and compared with their corresponding translations in the Persian versions. The results showed that employed procedures include Equivalence, Literal Translation, Modulation, Transposition, and, Calque. Equivalence emerged as the most conspicuous procedure (42.2%) in translating collocations in all three novels.

Khaled Hosseini’sThe Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns are about characters who are dealing with psychological trauma in their lives. In both novels, sexual and physical violence, war and natural disasters are evident. The protagonists, Amir and Mariam’s psychological safety are threatened by war and trauma of the Taliban. As a result, both protagonists start to show responses towards the stressors. Since males and females mostly have different reactions when they confront with trauma, the present study aims to explore how gender influence Amir and Mariam’s reactions.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the ideas of aestheticism in relation to power relations in a Foucauldian reading of "The Birthday Party, The Room and The Dumb Waiter". Taking the abovementioned plays of Harold Pinter as only an aesthetical masterpiece -which he also claims in his plays- is like putting it in a dead-end of thought. Likewise all the other critical reading of his works, this study reasserts its significance in this aspect but also aims to explore the boundaries of critical practices in an inevitable way of thought disentangled by Foucault. Theories of power relations which Foucault has claimed are consistent with the way pinteresque characters of Harold Pinter's plays are connected with each other.