فصلنامه زبان شناسی اجتماعی
سال پنجم شماره 4 (پیاپی 20، پاییز 1401)

Accepted in the background without argument or catching the attention of the addressee, presuppositions are linguistic structures discussed in semantics and applied pragmatics. Based on Yule’s popular divisions of suppositions - existential, factive, lexical, structural, non-factive and counterfactual, this research aims to answer the following research questions: What are the most and least frequently used presuppositions? Which presuppositions are used by the powerful and powerless families and how is this justified? How are men and women different in their use of presuppositions How are presuppositions and plot line related? The finding showed that the structural and non-factive presuppositions are the most and least frequently used presuppositions, respectively. The powerful family members use more structural presuppositions in order to ask, find and complete their information. The powerless family members use more lexical presuppositions in order to help characterization of themselves and others and help the development of the plot. Although men’s use of presuppositions is higher than women’s, this difference in factive presuppositions is more obvious due to the men’s tendency to be more direct. Furthermore, the plot line and the use of presuppositions are inversely related.

The aim of this paper is investigating the process of applying animal common nouns as human proper names from a cognitive perspective. The theoretical framework of the study is adapted from Barcelona's (2003) ideas on constructing the figurative meaning of proper names of paragons, and the class-inclusion model of conceptual metaphor comprehension of Glucksberg and Keysar (1990). In this framework, applying the conceptual metaphor and metonymy tiers results in the emergence of the salient characteristic of the animal, forming a common class including the animal and the persons endowed with the salient characteristic, considering the animal noun as the prototype of the class, and the figurative use of the animal noun instead of proper human name, respectively. Sometimes, issues like the positive connotation of the salient characteristic, the morphological structure of the animal noun and the cultural beliefs about the animal cause the other individulas who are devoid of the salient characteristic to join the class. This results in fading away and erosion of the salient common characteristic. The erosion, finally, results in the properization of animal common noun to be used as an anthroponym. The successive application and interaction of the conceptual metaphor and metonyms indicate the metaphtonymy at work in this process.

Food as a way of communication between different people in society can turn an individual experience into a collective experience. The aim of this study is to investigate the social function of food in Iranian society in the framework of social semantics. The corpus of the study is the votive food that evokes certain values and beliefs for every Iranian Shiite person. We know that food is a way of communication between different people in society and can turn an individual experience into a collective experience.Votive food has transcendental values and is a link between members of the community, but it is also based on a religious dimension, which is effective and has a predetermined role. Besides enjoying food, the desire to achieve something or fulfill a need is hidden in it. This article shows that, firstly, the votive food has a religious value; and secondly, while mixing the layers of its power, it causes the formation of new layers of power and connects pleasure through the senses to knowledge. and finally, creates a visual system.

In this research, an attempt is made to investigate the characteristics of Persian fake news related to Covid-19 by using statistical analysis.  To this end, first, a language corpus containing reliable and fake news in Persian in the field of Corona is prepared. Then, the language patterns of these two data sets, as well as two statistical analyzes of the amount of information and the readability of reliable and fake news, are examined and compared with each other. According to the exteracted information and the experimental results achieved from the developed corpus on COVID-19 fake news, there are common language patterns in these two datasets. Moreover, the amount of information in reliable news is more than fake news based on two measures of entropy and surprise. Based on the results, the readability level of the fake news is measured based on the readability formulas. According to the results, the text of fake news is simpler than real news. In the process of automatic labeling of reliable and fake news based on the level of difficulty, most news is recognized as simple texts. The results show that fake news is mostly simple and not difficult compared to reliable news. In addition to this achievement, to study linguistic properties of fake news statistically based on the information amount and readability, the applicablity of this statistical information was studied to detect fake news using machine learning methods.

The main objective of this research is to study the reason for multiple names for a single language. To this end, the impact of social and political variables on naming language varieties and the importance of paying attention to the kinship relations and structural similarities of languages are investigated. Then, the registered names for Iranian language varieties in the software of the “Linguistic Atlas of Iran” are classified and analyzed. This research is methodologically inductive, and a descriptive–analytical method has been used. In conclusion, it is argued that naming language varieties is under the influence of non-linguistic social, political, and geographical factors. To distinguish language varieties from each other and determine their exact names, one must pay attention to the distinguishing linguistic features and their main lexicons, the effect of long-term linguistic contact of language communities, and the speakers’ feelings about their linguistic varieties. In different parts of the article, the explications are documented with relevant examples.

Despite the importance of humor as one of the cultural and social elements, most studies in this field have examined humor out of its context, mainly limited to the analysis of canned jokes, whereas conversational humor is the product of a common interaction between the speaker and the audience. In light of this limitation, the present study sought to investigate the conversational humor in Persian. The data were randomly collected from an Iranian talkshow called Doorehmi which was aired on Nasim television channel in 2018. Then, the conversations between the host and the male and female guests were analyzed based on Dynel’s (2009) framework of conversational humor. The results showed that male guests used more humor strategies (n=258) than femal guests (n=220).  Moreover, male guests used more witticism, anecdotes and banter compared to female guests, while female guests employed banter, witticism, anecdotes and self-denigration more than male guests in their conversations. Also, the guests did not use the put-down strategy in their interaction with the male host, and self-denigration was absent in the discourse of the male host.

The representation of gender in male and female narratives and the use of conceptual metaphors and the schemas used by them in narratives have differences that indicate mental, spiritual, and cognitive differences. The purpose of this study is to examine the narratives of male and female authors to determine the extent of gender influences in the use of conceptual metaphors and schemas based on the theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The research method of the article is qualitative content analysis. Eight war-themed stories, including four female- and four male narratives, were examined, resulting in about 3,021 metaphors. The results obtained from data analyses showed that in the works of female writers, the highest number of metaphors is related to ontological metaphor and the lowest is related to directional metaphor, while in the works of male narrators, the highest number of metaphors were structural and the lowest were directional. This difference in the use of metaphors in women compared to men indicates their attitude and ability or desire to objectify abstract concepts. The results of the research show that the above method can be a suitable method for narrative analyses from the point of view of critical analyses of metaphor in the literature of Holy Defense, because schemas, on the one hand, represent linguistic constructions and, on the other hand, indicate the formation of mental images as a result of conceptualization.