Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances
Volume:5 Issue: 2, Summer - Autumn 2017

Our Journal's tendency towards the real world in applied linguistics and literary studies should have significant epistemological and methodological consequences in researching the fields. The interest in the real world makes the problems we may have in our everyday lives our 'points of departure' in research. According to my experience of research in our universities throughout their history, researchers in both applied linguistics and literary studies have attributed great significance to ‘learning’ theories giant scholars have formulated and their main job has been to put the theories to use in the Iranian context for the purpose of teaching English language and literature. The assumption that researchers should confine themselves to theories, frameworks, methodologies and the use of instruments that are of positivistic nature is a dominant characteristic in the Iran context. The paradigm shift, as I understand it, is required firstly as a turning away from linguistics as a science and the unlearning of linguistic theories because no linguistic theory is comprehensive enough to provide us with a real world description of language; new ways of analyzing and understanding language are needed. According to this view, applied linguistics should not be confined to ‘language teaching.’ Its function should be ‘language teaching in the context of the real world,’ although, according to Rajagopalan (2004, p. 415), “There is still a long way to go and many stubborn resistances … to be overcome.”

This study is a corpus-based study of interactional metadiscourse in natural and social science master theses. For this purpose, 30 natural and social science master theses in six disciplines were randomly selected out of the library of five universities. Five master theses were selected in each discipline, in a period of six years (2010-2016).This study analyzed only the discussion and conclusion sections of master theses. To investigate interactional metadiscourse, Hyland’s (2005) classification was used. The results of this study demonstrated that the percentile proportion of total interactional metadiscourse markers in social science master theses was more than natural science master theses. Among the analyzed resources, hedges was the most frequent role in both corpora while attitude markers in social science and self-mention in natural science was the least favored role. The results of the present study suggested that being aware of interactional metadiscourse markers can shed light on the way of writing of academic texts because these markers help writers to negotiate with their readers and make the text more comprehensible and coherent. The results of the present study might offer pedagogical implication of this aspect of metadiscourse for postgraduate students.

This paper deals with the study of how racist ideologies are constructed in Crane’s “A Dark Brown Dog” using the CDA framework. Benefitting from the approaching between literature and linguistics, it focuses on the linguistic examination of the (re)construction of whiteness and blackness based on the assumption that racism is: a social, a discursive, and an ideological construct. This tri-dimensional construct is treated within a theoretical triangulation ranging from cognition, society, and discourse. Based on the view of discourse as a process of coding and decoding of meaning, the text of this story is explored at various levels of language use: a) contextual analysis focuses on the study of how the depiction of the setting and the characters serves to draw the scene of racial inequality; b) textual analysis deals with the way narration contributes to the (re)production of racism; and c) identity analysis is devoted to the study of how racial identity evolves across generations. The results showed that: first, the representation of the characters highlights the binary structure of the southern American society marked by the inferiority of the blacks and the superiority of the whites. Second, the way actions and events are narrated reflects the unequal distribution of power between blacks and whites. The existing asymmetry of power is traced in the duality of punishment and obedience. Third, the racist ideologies and race relations evolve across generations depending on: the amalgamations happening at the family level, the evolution of society, and the evolution of its legislations.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of gender on using reading subskills and reading comprehension skill of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, four subskills involved in the reading comprehension process were selected. Then some reading passages whose comprehension questions were believed to measure the intended subskill were chosen. Eighty-eight EFL adult upper-intermediate learners forming two groups of forty-four males and females participated in the present study. At first, they were homogenized through a Nelson test and then made to sit for a reading comprehension test. The comparison of the means of the two groups in the subskills clearly showed that, in two of the subskills, i.e. making a logical inference and understanding the mood, tone, or impression of a reading passage, males and females differed significantly with males outperforming the females in the first subskill and females outperforming the males in the second one. However, no significant differences were found in the other two sub-skills, i.e. getting the main idea of a reading passage and guessing the meaning from context.

In light of a large number of admirable attempts which look at scientific discourse from social, dialogic and interpersonal points of view, the propositions which consider scientific discourse as an interactive endeavor are now well-established. By the force of our social constructivist gyrations, we have developed glimpses of a social, cultural and historical dimension in which the discourse of science operates. These glimpses indicate us how much the discourse of science is part of complex webs of human’s social interaction. Recognizing this social, cultural and historical nature, the present paper attempts to highlight the heterogeneity and hybridity of scientific discourse and indicate a number of ways scientific discourse is influenced by non-scientific discourses. Recognition of this hybridity helps the author develop a preliminary framework based on the concept of vertical intertextuality and reveal how modern scientific discourses borrow generic, stylistic and rhetorical conventions of non-scientific discourses. The paper is concluded with some of the implications of the developed perspective for ESP pedagogy and suggesting a number of genre-related, style-related and register-related pedagogic tasks.

Collocation is known as one of the most problematic areas in learning a second language and it seems that if one has tendency to improve his or her communication ability in another language, the elaboration of collocation using competence is among the most important issues. This study investigated the role of implicit input enhancement in teaching grammatical collocations for Iranian EFL learners. Two groups of Iranian intermediate EFL high school students in a language institute in Ardebil participated in this study. One group was assigned as control group and the other as experimental that received treatment sessions. A Twenty-item multiple choice pre-test was administrated at first for both control and experimental groups. 10 session of treatment through bolding the target grammatical collocations in the reading passages were provided for experimental group. Post-test was administrated for both control and experimental groups after treatment sessions. The scores of post-test were analyzed using t-test. The results of t-test showed that there is no significant difference between two groups. The findings demonstrated that enhancing the collocational input is not significantly beneficial for EFL learners.

Good language learners slot in a repertoire of strategies and when language tests are at stake, test-taking strategies and test-wiseness pave pay to a prolific outcome. Among such tests, TOEFL iBT seems to be a prerequisite to academic success and a nightmare many Iranian students struggle with. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to raise awareness about the type of questions in iBT, brush up the necessary skills integratively and help them employ strategies that can facilitate optimal results during the preparation course and as they were taking the test. Furthermore, we intended to investigate if the level of proficiency alone was sufficient or strategies played a more important role. Therefore, 34 iBT candidates (18 intermediate and 16 advanced) sat an iBT test and later took part in special strategy training courses. They were interviewed on the effectiveness of the strategies during the course and after they sat the second exam. As the results revealed, there was a significant difference between the two sets of exam results and being test-wise and the strategies of goal setting, covering, interleaving and considering the context along with spaced practice and compensation strategies helped the candidates perform better without further language classes.

The Mnemosyne computer software is a flash-card aid, which optimizes learners’ learning process. The current study was conducted to evaluate the extent to which Mnemosyne can assist college-level Iranian EFL learners to improve their vocabulary learning by utilizing spaced repetition. For this purpose, 60 intermediate-level EFL learners were chosen based on their performance on a proficiency test. Then, they were divided into two equal-sized experimental and control groups, each consisting of 30 participants. The participants of the experimental group were asked to use Mnemosyne on their own computers, their cell phones or other devices. They had opportunity to use numerous numbers of free flashcards on various subjects and users could build their own on different topics. The control group received instructions through conventional teaching methodology. The posttest was given to the participants of both groups in order to check the students’ vocabulary learning. The results of independent sample t-test between the posttest scores of the two groups showed a significant difference between the scores of the experimental group and those of the control group. The results demonstrated that Mnemosyne significantly improved students’ performance in vocabulary learning.

Ecolinguistics: language and ecology delivers an overall view and a critical approach on ecolinguistic studies. This book is an excellent resource to students, researchers, linguists and those working in the area of discourse analysis as well as ecology. The book claims presenting a news course for ecolinguistics including a framework for understanding the theory of ecolinguistics, exploration of consumerism, and discourse analysis of texts of different types. In reviewing this book, the principal criteria included content, organization, theories and reference sources.
Arran Stibbe, the author of the book, is a Reader in ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire where he teaches ecolinguisstics, discourse analysis, ethics and language and communication for leadership. His research and teaching examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing.

Peter Mühlhäusler is the Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Adelaide, and Supernumerary Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He has taught at the Technical University of Berlin and in the University of Oxford. He is an active researcher in several areas of linguistics, including ecolinguistics, language planning, and language policy and language contact in the Australian-Pacific area. His current research focuses on the Pitkern-Norf'k language of Norfolk Island and Aboriginal languages of the West Coast of South Australia. His recent book publications are Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Language of Environment-Environment of Language, Early Forms of Aboriginal English in South Australia (with Foster and Monaghan), and Herrmann Koeler's Adelaide-Observations on Language and Culture of South Australia. He continues to publish on theoretical and applied ecolinguistics. JALDA's Editor in Chief, Dr. Bahram Behin has sat, in an online chat, with professor Mühlhäusler on the issue of ecolinguistics and its relevence to the studies of language and language teaching.