Generally speaking, lexical items that enter our minds through reading a text commonly leave us with pictures, sounds, echoes, and feelings in the mind. While the ability to produce images in the mind in the process of reading appears to be vital for greater comprehension and recall of texts, research has indicated that many poor readers seemingly do not visualize as they read. On the contrary, those readers who do typically visualize achieve greater comprehension and recall (see Tomlinson, 1997). In this study, in line with Wittrock’s ‘generative learning theory’ (e.g., 1992), two fairly homogeneous groups of EFL undergraduates (N=50), after taking a reading comprehension test to ensure that their reading comprehension differences are not significant, were randomly assigned to attend a short-story course in two different sections—one serving as the experimental and the other as the control group, both studying the same short stories, and both being taught by the researcher as their instructor of the course. The experimental group was instructed how to form pictures in the mind—i.e., how to visualize—before reading, while reading, and after reading a short story, for example, by being requested to draw pictures of the characters, scenes, or settings in the story as they perceived them. The control group, however, did not receive any training with respect to imagery production and was not told to practice visualization before, while, or after reading the same texts as the experimental group did. The results of a reading comprehension test on the short stories that had been discussed in both classes, and also a recall test, administered two weeks later, indicated that the “visualizers” significantly outperformed the “non-visualizers”, i.e., the control group, on both tests. Keywords: visualization; mental imaging; L2 reading strategies; cognitive reading strategies; comprehension and recall of literary texts

Among factors that might manipulate translators’ mind while producing a text is the notion of ideology transmission through text or talk. Adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with particular emphasis on the framework of Van Dijk (1999), the present investigation is an attempt to shed light on the relationship between language and ideology involved in translation in general, and more specifically, to uncover the underlying ideological assumptions invisible in the texts, both source text (ST) and target text (TT), and consequently ascertain whether or not translators’ ideologies are imposed in their translations. The corpus consists of the full text of two different Persian translations of the book Media Control by Noam Chomsky, written in English. In a qualitative phase, a detailed contrastive/comparative study at the micro-level in terms of fore/back-grounding mechanisms including explanation of lexical items and dominant grammatical metaphors (passive vs. active, nominalization vs. de-nominalization, addition vs. omission, and modalization) was conducted to examine, describe and subsequently interpret the patterns in the English source text and its Persian translated versions. In order to make the research data interpretations as objective as possible, having computed frequencies of ideologically significant instances, and percentages, Chi-square formula was applied to find out any difference between proportions of information extracted from the target text concerning their fore/back-grounding and their positions against the source text as well as to test the research null hypothesis, which was consequently rejected. The findings reveal that there are significant changes made by the two translators, either intentionally or unintentionally, in their selection of lexical items and syntactic structures in comparison to those in the source text. The findings of the study also show that many distortions or transformations between the original and the two translated versions were not only arbitrary, but also ideologically encoded in the texts, with specific purposes and functions. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, ideology, power, fore/back-grounding, discursive practice, micro/macro structure, domestication, foreignization, grammatical metaphors, lexicalization

For the Western Iranian languages the transition from the Old Iranian to the Middle-Iranian period is characterised by – among other things – the loss of word-final syllables. This loss had a far-reaching impact on the nominal and verbal systems since it caused the loss of categories which had been expressed by suffixes. The consequences include the emergence of the so-called ergative system. Although descriptions of the ergative construction in Balochi do exist, there is no treatment yet which takes into account the material of the different dialects. Furthermore, the ergative construction in Balochi has been compared with data from Old Iranian, but not with data from Middle Iranian languages, and the development from the Middle Iranian stage to the different types found in present-day Balochi has also not yet been studied. The aim of this paper is therefore to present the data from the Balochi dialects as far as they are known today and to update, complete (and in some points, correct) previous descriptions of the matter.

The purpose of this article is to determine the phonemic status of [h] and [ʔ] in the Sistani dialect of Miyankangi. Auditory tests applied to the relevant data show that [ʔ] occurs mainly in word-initial position, where it stands in free variation with Ø. The only place where [h] is heard is in Arabic and Persian loanwords, and only in the pronunciation of some speakers who are educated and/or live in urban centres, where inhabitants are in closer touch with Persian than in rural areas. The sound [h] also occurs in the pronunuciation of some Arabic loanwords where it replaces the glottal plosive, particularly in word medial, intervocalic position. The investigation shows that neither [ʔ] nor [h] have phonemic status in the Sistani dialect of Miyankangi at present, but that more intense contact with Persian may change this state in the future, particularly for [h]. Keywords:¬ [h], [ʔ], phonemic value, Sistani dialect of Miyankangi, Persian, loanwords.

This article attempts to see, through the structural significances of poetic language, the nature of the split between linguistic description and literary interpretation. Rhythm is the most prominent means of relating form to content in poetic language. The first account of this prominence is seen through identifying its position in the two prosodic forms of metrical and non-metrical poetry. Foregrounding has been seen as a significant feature in literary creation. Following Bradford (1997) the analysis undertakes three stages of analysis as ‘discovery procedures’, ‘naturalization’, and ‘judgment’ (renamed in our work as ‘remarks’). The first level examines the degree of the tension between the two patterns. In the second level, i.e. naturalization, the analysis goes on turning the peculiar language of the poem into that of the ordinary, which means making sense of a text. This translation of the poetic language has been shown to be considerably rooted in elements of form in the classical verse, and of content in modern free verse. The intervening type has thus been judged to exist somewhere between the two. The third level, namely ‘remarks’ evaluates the degree of the poet’s success in managing the tension between the two patterns.

This empirical study deals with language contact phenomena in Sistan. Code-copying is viewed as a strategy of linguistic behavior when a dominated language acquires new elements in lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatic organization, etc., which can be interpreted as copies of a dominating language. In this framework Persian is regarded as the model code which provides elements for being copied into Balochi as the basic code. It is argued here that code-copying affects most readily the lexicon, whereas more structured subsystems like morphology and syntax hardly admit to copying. Instead lexical copies serve as an intermediary for copying phonic and morphological-syntactical features of the model code. Copies of the Persian model code which become established linguistic features of Balochi are distinguished from ephemeral linguistic switches which are studied within the context of communication situation variables and other linguistic or extra-linguistic factors. The study is based upon audio recordings of colloquial Balochi speech made by the author in Sistan during the last six years.

The main West Iranian languages, i.e. Old Persian, Parthian, Middle Persian, New Persian and – in some respects – Avestan, may be studied in a uniquely continuous development stretching over close to 3 000 years. These languages are not only the result of their genetic inter-relations but also of their cultural, religious and political history. They may be labelled ‘high languages’ (‘Hochsprachen’), in the sense that they are cultured and standardized and used for a great number of purposes by people of various linguistic backgrounds. This article presents an over-view of their development seen from a specific perspective. The traditional Iranian walled-in garden, the pairi-daēza- of the Avesta, is used as a metaphor for a high language in contrast to the free vegetation of spontaneous human speech in social interaction. The latter is here called ‘dialect’, a concept that includes both ‘geolect’ and ‘sociolect’. These high language ‘gardens’ are thus viewed as a kind of cultural artefacts. Among other things, this has implications for views on the dichotomy literacy/orality, showing that writing is not language and that ‘orality’ belongs both to ‘high language’ and ‘dialect’. It is furthermore argued that literacy and orality were present in complementary distribution throughout the whole known history of the Iranian cultural sphere.