Oscar Wilde as a temporal designer : a case study of the picture of Dorian Gray

Since the publication of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, there have been great amounts of ideological criticism both for and against the author and the work. Critics have variously evaluated the work from different perspectives; however, these studies have largely targeted the thematic aspects of the novel, while little serious attempt has been made to examine the narrativity of this great work. As a result, the narrative structure of this novel still remains quite untouched. As a partial fulfillment, the present paper has examined the temporal structure of the novel. The analysis indicated that temporality is one of the very functional elements of the work. In fact, much of the meaning or the effect the author intends to converse through each action, character, or dialogue is firstly embedded in a proper and effective temporal setting. Moreover, the analysis ascertained that the well-set temporal structure of the work has resulted in (1) Ekphrasis, (2) Characterization, and (3) Reader manipulation. According to the paper, these three elements dramatically carry out the influentiality of this great novel

Relationship between Second Language Deep Vocabulary Knowledge and Speaking Performance: Mediation of Task Type

Most of the models accounting for L2 oral production have deemed a significant role for vocabulary knowledge in this process. Previous studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between different aspects of lexical knowledge and performance or proficiency of second language skills including the speaking performance. Meanwhile, the findings have suggested a determining role for the task type used for measuring speaking performance when one or more aspects of lexical knowledge are in focus. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the EFL Learners’ deep vocabulary knowledge (DVK) and speaking performance by scrutinizing the mediating role of task type. To this end, 102 bachelor ELT students were given Word Associate Test to measure their DVK, and a planned presentation task and unplanned tasks of description, narration and reasoning to elicit speaking performance. The elicited samples of speaking performance were transcribed and analyzed in terms of fluency, accuracy, lexical complexity and grammatical complexity. Structural equation modeling indicated a lack of causal relationship between DVK and aspects of speaking performance as measured with both planned and unplanned tasks. However, mixed results were obtained in the case of the correlations of fluency, accuracy, grammatical complexity and lexical complexity with DVK across different tasks. Although the findings do not provide evidence for a strong relationship between DVK and speaking performance when DVK is analyzed in isolation from other aspects of vocabulary knowledge, the variation witnessed in findings provide further proof for the importance of task effectiveness in the study of lexical access

Critical Thinking as an Essential Factor in EFL Teacher Educators’ Professional Development: a Transformative Learning Paradigm

The present qualitative research sought to investigate EFL teacher educators’ experiences and attitudes toward critical thinking and its role in teacher professional development. The adopted design was a case study and the theoretical framework was the theory of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1978). For the data collection purpose, 30 EFL teacher educators participated in in-depth interviews. The  whole procedure of  the data collection was audiotaped for further reference in data analysis. The interviews were transcribed to familiarize with the data and the transcribed interviews were member checked with the participants. The collected data were analyzed through reflective thematic analysis. The data analyzed paved the way for generating three themes: cognition, metacognition, and personal growth/self attainment. The findings of the study comprise a number of implicatios for both theory and practice. One aspect of our contribution is that the notion of critical thinking can be conceived as more than cognitive and metacognitive one; it should be conceptualized as possessing both facets as well as other possible subsets. Beyond that, we suggest that critical thinking should be conjectured as being both a process and a product

Aspects of the role of language in creating the literary effect : implications for the reading of Australian prose fiction / by Bahram Behin.

Errata pasted in front end-papers.Bibliography: leaves 410-432.ix, 432 leaves ; 30 cm.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Linguistics, 1997

A Linguistic Account of the Protagonist’s Development in the Grapes of Wrath

The novel as a modern literary genre is generally regarded as the realization of its main character's journey from immaturity to a status of maturity. The character, usually an uncomplicated person unable to cope with the complexities of life at first, gains an insight and understanding to handle his/her complex situation accordingly later in the novel. It is usually agreed in both literary criticism and linguistic criticism of literature that everything about a character should be established from the evidence of the text (see Fowler, 1977 & 1996 and Peck & Coyle, 2002, for instance). In the present study, the language of Tom Joad, the main character in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, was analyzed to reveal how his social position is established and how his transformation from a young farm-hand holding a carpe diem philosophy to a socially-wise reformist with a commitment to bettering the future is substantialized. Oriented towards a linguistic study of literature, the present paper employsSystemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the analytic framework.  The findings of the study may be useful especially for those involved in teaching English language through literature

First Language Activation during Second Language Lexical Processing in a Sentential Context

Lexicalization-patterns, the way words are mapped onto concepts, differ from one language      to another. This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) lexicalization patterns on the processing of second language (L2) words in sentential contexts by both less proficient and more proficient Persian learners of English. The focus was on cases where two different senses of a polysemous word in Persian are realized by two independent words in English. For example, Persian uses ‘ماه’ to refer to both ‘moon’ and ‘month’ in English. In the present study, the researchers examined the processing of English translations (moon, month) of polysemous Persian words such as ‘ماه’ in a semantic anomaly judgment task. The participants who were two groups of more proficient and less proficient Persian learners of English were presented with two types of anomalous sentences: anomalous test sentences in which one of the two English words (e.g., month) was used in a context where the other word (e.g., moon) was appropriate (e.g., “A pleasant thing to watch at night is a full month”) and anomalous control sentences in which the same word was used in a context where neither of the two words was appropriate (e.g., “A pleasant thing to eat at night is a full month”). The participants were asked to judge, as quickly and accurately as possible, whether the final word could complete the sentence meaningfully (YES response) or whether the final word was semantically unacceptable (NO response). The participants’ reaction time (RT) for correct No responses and their error rates were recorded using DMDX, a psycholinguistics experimentation software package. Using two General Linear Model Repeated Measures, a main effect of sentence type was obtained in the analysis of both RT and errors. Also, there was an interaction between sentence type and proficiency level in the analysis of both RT and errors. The results are discussed in terms of the activation of the semantic specifications of L1 translation equivalent of L2 words

Metaphoric spaces and Wildean narrativity

In recent years the awareness of spatiality has turned into one of the concerns in narrative studies As a case study the present study aims at applying the most influential theories on spatiality proposed by Mark Johnson and Hilary Dannenberg on Oscar Wilde s The Picture of Dorian Gray The paper attempts to identify the implications of spatial narrativity on this work Discovering the novel from such spatial perspective heavily reveals the existence of a spatial structure in the narrative that constructs its abstract level and indicates numerous spatial components that do not come into sight on the surface level Moreover applying the traditional assumptions of space the analysis examined the spatial settings for all the incidents in the novel that showed the presence of an organized spatial narrativity throughout the work The results of traditional and current theories indicated that spatial mappings provide the basis of the narrativity in Wilde s wor

A Comparative Study of Discourse Markers: The Case of three English Applied Linguistic Texts with their Farsi Translations

This research was an attempt to find the relationship between English discourse markers and their Farsi translations. It was conducted in order to find out whether DMs translations completely demonstrate source texts orientation and to what extent DMs translations are functionally appropriate compared to the original text? Six instruments were used. Three of them were the original English books and the other three were their translations. Ten pages from each original book were randomly selected. Then they were compared to their translations by the researcher and two translation teachers according to Farahzad's (1992) scale. The results of the study showed that there is a high degree of relationship between English DMs and their Persian counterparts; however, there is not a 1:1 translation about DMs. It can be also said that Persian translations are, functionally and almost totally, appropriate, compared to the original texts