Iranian International Journal Of Social Sciences
Volume:2 Issue: 1, Winter 2012

The article provides a critical assessment of the more recent literature that relies on theoretical frameworks such as post modernism and globalization to deal with national identity, ethnicity and cultural mobility. Explaining sensitive and complicated issues such as identity requires the extensive use of the native historical, cultural and sociological sources related to the Iranian experience in the past rather than extracting generalizations based on a general and a-historical application of general social science theories. Three factors throughout Iranian history have played significant roles in creating a sense of national identity or Iranian-ness among all groups in Iranian society. These factors are the legacy of ancient Iran’s political heritage, the central role of the Persian language in conveying the political, cultural and religious legacy to all Iranian religious and linguistic groups, and the important role of religion in the revival of Iran’s cultural heritage, its independence, and unification.

On the verge of the Constitutionalist Revolution in Iran, the three social forces existing in the socio-political arena were competing with each other and at the same time, struggling with the Monarchy to increase their share of power: independent intellectuals, traditional followers of religion, and merchants. This rivalry set the scene for a discursive battle in which, each social force was trying to load nodal points such as the nation, king, and monarchy with contents that were compatible with other features of their discourse to push forward its hegemonic project. The period under study in this paper, more or less coincides with the outbreak of protests and strikes under the leadership of Sayed Mohammad Tabatabaei and Sayed Abdolah Behbahani against Nouze, the Belgian head of Iran Customs house in 1905which paved the way for emergence of Tobacco Movement. In this era, three social forces were actively involved in the socio-political scene of Iran: independent intellectuals, traditional followers of religion, and merchants

It is argued that language learning is regarded as the cornerstone of human existence. The widespread use of English as an international language makes it highly important in the world. It is no more working as the status of language of the elite class or the educated class of the society such as professors, rather it is working as an instrument to bring success in life. Nowadays, teachers need to learn English language for research works. They may teach different majors but all of them need English Language for their educational improvement. This requires that they have positive attitudes towards English language learning. In this regard, the role of social factors can be useful, too. Hence, this study was an endeavor to examine the social factors influencing non-English major professors' attitude towards English as an academic language. To this end, questionnaire was used as a research instrument. It was administered to 100 non-English major professors of Islamic Azad University (Babol Branch), Babol, Iran. The findings revealed that some social factors can influence on non-English major Professors' attitudes toward English language learning. On the basis of the findings, the study recommended that the university policy should stipulate that English should be strictly used as a language of learning and teaching with the aim of helping teachers because they need English for their academic improvement.

This research aims to understand mother’s and girl’s expectations from their spouses, and shows the difference between these two generation’s expectations. Along this, by using qualitative approach and deep semi-structured interview, we studied the expectations difference among 14 mothers and 14 girls resided at Tehran city’s fifth region (area).Results from the research showed that women’s expectations from their spouses are in five various backgrounds including expectations in domains of communicative – economic, affection – mental, behavior indices and matrimonial expectations. That is so while generational observed differences are of attention in all of these five domains. In a manner that first generation mothers, ask for a minimum expectations from their spouses, and second generational girls have promoted expectations of their spouses. Research findings also indicate that two generations of mothers and girls, because of their different speculative spaces and objective conditions they have been brought up, and consequently their access to social, cultural and economic capitals which are different to each other, have different interactions and expectations from their spouses, and generational observed differences among them are obvious and clear. Oppositeness of mothers’ traditionalism in front of girls’ tradition strikenism, traditional marriages of mothers in front of girls’ modern matrimonies, mothers’ expanded motherhood encountering girl’s’ limited motherhood, governance of patriarchal life in front of spouses’ taking equality level, maximum obedience versus reduced obedience, pretentious conversation versus matrimonial dialogue, interactions based on family versus interactions based on self and mothers’ minimal expectations versus girls’ maximal expectations, are of those contradictions caused by generational gap on the down skirt of expectations from the spouse.

Khuzestan province and other western provinces of the country have been mostly affected by the impacts of the imposed war of Iraq against Iran and due to this impact have experienced special changes. As one of these changes, we could mention the phenomenon of the migration. These areas have experienced different forms of migrations such as exterior, interior, return migration and even the acceptance of foreign immigrants. These circumstances have been exhibited in a special form in Khuzestan as the main center of the imposed war and Ahwaz as the major capital of war making. Therefore, research and study related to the field of social and economic problems yields precise experiences to the country's policy makers. In this study as the result of the vast scope of social and economic problems, we have focused on the immigrations occurred in Ahwaz and especially the immigrants entered into this city. To this end, we have used the descriptive and analytical method and the main focus is on the views of immigrants settled in Ahwaz suburb and the villages in this region. In order to analyze the view of immigrants and villagers, a sample group composed of 761 people was selected according to Morgan's table. Among the group 381 people were family guardians in village and 380 were the guardians in the city. The result of this study shows that the imposed war, Iraq's attack to Kuwait and the U.S. military operations against Iraq have directly affected the rate and type of village- city immigrations. Moreover, the disorders have caused more immigration by muddling the area's tribal structure.

This study was designed to investigate the effects of gender and Schema-based pre-reading activities on the Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension. The sample consisted of 60 male and female students studying at second-grade high school in Abhar city. Two reading passages (“Charles Dickens and the Little Children”, and “Hic, Hic, Hic”) were randomly selected from second-grade English textbook. The subjects were assigned randomly into four groups of fifteen based on school ordering. Then the researcher administrated reading comprehension pre-test in order to know if they were at the same background knowledge. Four groups were exposed to different treatments. Group A and group C (EG) received SBPRA (PTV and PRQ). The subject in group B and group D (CG) received GTM. The subjects were taught for a week and then took reading comprehension Multiple-choice items post-test. The results first showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups (EG and CG). Groups A and C which used SBPRAs comprehended passages better than groups B and D who did not use them. Second, gender did not affect reading comprehension ability so male and female use learning strategies equally. The findings of this study recommended that teachers can use SBPRA as a useful tool for facilitating students’ reading comprehension.

This paper is an attempt to explore how Lacanian concepts of desire, unconscious, as well as alienation are reflected in the major characters of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov’s Lolita. Before unleashing the new, inexplicable yet highly fascinating aspects of psychoanalysis by the advent of French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Freudian psychoanalysis used to play the pivotal and, accordingly, unique role in the realm of literary criticism which suffered from some drawbacks and left many questions unanswered in the psychoanalytic sphere. However, under the auspices of Lacan, almost all of these eerie ambiguities have already been resolved. It would be a gross underestimate that expressing Lacanian concepts in simple words is feasible, since Lacan stipulates that “unconscious is complex, so that the language used to express it, inevitably, should be complicated” (Écrits, 24). The present paper aims to elucidate the ulterior reasons underling the interactions of the three main characters in Nabokov’s Lolita through Lacanian model for the development of psyche, namely: Imaginary Order, Symbolic Order, and the Real.