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Showing 15 results for Social Act


Volume 0, Issue 0 (2-2024)
Abstract

The poetries of Sheevan Foumani are various from the conceptual and functional views.These stylistic varieties in poetries represent the frequency of experience that by means of them the poet incorporates component of meaning to the linguistic community of poetries.He carries out the aim by using the symbolic units in a specific style.Since the most of his poetries are symbolic and symbols of poetries are manifested in the forms of attributes,identification,personalization,impersonalization,the current research aims at investigating the semantic components of poetries of Fokhos and Aghadar in accordance with sociolinguistics. Also, it aims at drawing discursive boundaries through the symbolic representation of social actors based on the discursive functions.Therefore, two combined models of socio-semantic of Van Leeuwan and semio-semantic of Paris have been chosen to achieve these goals.As a main purpose,this research investigates the features of the model of Van Leeuwan on poetries.Consequently,the critical approach of the semio-semantic analysis of Paris tries to explain the discursive boundaries of poetries. Primarily by implementing the model of Van Leeuwan on verses, the results of research indicated that the representation of social actors in two poetries has been mostly formed by the factor of impersonalization. Moreover, based on the saliency of impersonalization, the semio-semantic analysis of poetries is formed by instrumenting this component in the direction of creating discursive spaces and the result indicated that discursive functions of appeasement,resistance,and insistence are often organized in textual layers that are related to the subcomponents of impersonalization.

Volume 3, Issue 2 (6-2012)
Abstract

The main aim of this research is finding the similarities and differences between the representations of social actors in the two different versions of Bahman’s vengeance seeking. Accordingly, the author tried to find the ideological background behind the two texts and show the difference in impression by studying socio-semantic elements that Theo Van Leeuwen offered in his suggested pattern and comparing them with the corresponding parts in Shahnama and Bahmannama. The results showed that some branches of the two main methods are exclusion, and inclusion is to some extent visible in both texts. Also association, dissociation, nomination and categorization along with their subsets are the techniques used to represent the social actors. Analysis of the two texts clearly shows that Bahman in Shahnama is seeking legitimacy for his goal while he has the authority and individuality in Bahmannama while he does not need to use persuasive and approval seeking techniques; so representations of social actors in Shahnama are more than in Bahmannama and they were used deliberately.

Volume 4, Issue 1 (10-2012)
Abstract

Studying the perception of time in everyday life of Iranian actors is the purpose of this article. Sociological studying makes the basis of our analysis of time. Thus, we believe that the perception of time and the way the actors face it in their everyday life are formed socially and take different patterns in social interactions. The main purpose of this paper is to present a sociological analysis about one of the everyday life realities, “the perception of time” or more precisely “the awareness” that exists around the time in everyday life and conducts their actions.The grounded theory was used for this research and the research samples were chosen from among urban and rural men and women.  The research findingd indicated the “fluidity of time perception” and that the perception of time like other knowledge categories has horizon or background by which individuals confirm it.The findings confirm that benefiting of such fields as urban or rural, or living in society with special stage of development makes special kind of awareness about time acceptable for individuals who expose to it.The gender creates different cognition over time and leads men and women to have more coexistence with specific dimentions of time. Also the actors see such variations different with respect to the specific way of living, life cycle social roles and social disorders. Under these conditions, they choose special strategies for controlling and managing the time; delaying and scrutinizing strategies are the most important of them.  


Volume 4, Issue 1 (3-2013)
Abstract

Revealing the unequal relations of power, which lead to hegemony in media and make audiences aware of it, has been in the center of attention for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for a long period of time. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) socio-semantic network of social actors is considered as a competent framework for linguists and discourse analysts to do so. In this article, we study 50 hard news and articles published in leading international news agencies and newspapers about Iran’s nuclear program during November and December 2010 to analyze the way the social actors of both sides of the quarrel have been represented in the media. The results showed that although the international news agencies and newspapers claim to stay neutral in representing the events, some linguistic mechanisms to represent Iranian social actors differently from the western ones are obvious and Iranian social actors playing role in this case are shown as irrational hardliners while western counterparts are introduced as logical peace seeker ones.

Volume 4, Issue 2 (7-2013)
Abstract

Critical discourse analysis deals with power and ideology. This approach makes connection between ideology and the manner of expression by the use of discursive features. This article was carried out in discreptive-analytic method to study discursive features in the expressions, sentences and texts of the narration “Miyan-e diruz va farad” from “Azar Mah-e Akhar-e Payiz” (Azar, The Last Month of Autumn) written by Ebrahim Golestan. Therefore, the present article studies socio-semantic features on the basis of Van Leeuwen (1996) in the story of “Miyan-e diruz va farad” for clarifying the ideology beyond the text. This article aims to answer these questions: 1- How are socio-semantic features used in this story? 2- Have social situations been affected in the style of narration? and 3-What kind of functions has the author considered for ideology? The results indicated that this story has used all kinds of socio-semantic features with the exception of symbolization. The author has used implicit features due to political and social situations, and explicit features have been used because of the importance of actors and their actions. The author has also used ideology for transferring group believes. This article makes an attempt to express why the author has used these features and expressed them implicity.
Dāwood Emārati Moghadam,
Volume 4, Issue 15 (12-2011)
Abstract

This article studies the role of “Rhetorical Situation” in the formation of genres. Accordingly, the article discusses the concept of genre in rhetoric which includes a variety of fields ranging from the ancient oratory to the communication studies in 20th century. Unlike literary approaches which define genre mostly on the basis of textual features (form and content), rhetorical approach defines genre according to the extra-textual features such as situation and audience. Before 20th century, the concept of “situation” was very much static and limited to some specific and clear-cut situations and the speaker and audience only had to passively respond to these situations. In 20th century, the theories of Bakhtin and Carolin Miller turned this concept into a dynamic one. According to these theorists, a genre comes to existence in a communicative process and with the participation of speaker and audience. This article first addresses the theories of genre in ancient rhetoric, and then goes on to show that the definition of genre as social action makes genre a tool for production and reproduction of social values and ideological assumptions in different cultures. Finally, the article mentions some of the consequences of rhetorical approach for literary studies.

Volume 6, Issue 2 (5-2015)
Abstract

The goal of this article is to demystify the press texts and discover their hidden layers of meaning in the framework of critical discourse analysis. To do so, using socio-semantic features of Van Leeuwen's model (1996), 40 numbers of four Iranian Persian publications of a two–month period, from July 22 to September 21, 2011 were studied qualitatively. The data analysis results indicated that the ideology dominating the minds of writers and groups is reflected in the text using discursive features as personalization, impersonalization, activation, backgrounding, etc., and the linguistic realization of discursive structures is performed using linguistic structures as nominalization, pre-modifiers, active versus passive structures, coordination, etc. in the texts. Also there is a dialectic relationship between discursive structures and ideology, which can be determined by studying these structures in the texts and social institutions.

Volume 7, Issue 7 (3-2016)
Abstract

This article attempts to analyze the English and Persian (Keyhan and Washinton Post) press applying Van Leeuwen’s (2008) approach. The author attempts to show that ideologies of the press leaders are conveyed to the writers of the newspapers’ articles and then displayed in the texts. The objective of the study is to find an answer to these question that how the political issues of Syria is represented in the Iranian and American newspapers and if there is a difference, in what way it can reveal their owners’ ideologies. The paper represents “social acts” in the form of five oppositions in ten texts extracted from 11 Jul. to 20 Aug, 2011 and investigates the effect of these oppositions in each discourse. The results showed that the press represents the political issues in accordance with its government and the writers have utilized the discoursal tools to convey their ideologies to the readers. Also, the oppositions of material-semiotic, activation-deactivation, agentialization- deagentialization, and concretization-abstraction have been differently represented in the English and Persian press discourse rooted in the difference in the owners’ perspective.

Volume 8, Issue 3 (10-2023)
Abstract

Aim: Low back pain (LBP) is a biopsychological problem which involve all aging groups worldwide which could limited social and sexual activities among suffered people. In this regard, this study aimed to obtain viewpoints of Iranian people involved with LBP.
Method and Materials: This descriptive study was done on Iranian adults who suffered from LBP. To do this study, demographic questionnaire and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) were completed by eligible participants.  The last three sections of this questionnaire which were related to sexual, traveling and social activities were completed by the participants who were satisfied to be studied and signed the written consent form. Completed data were entered into the SPSS version 26 and analyzed through descriptive statistics.
Findings: In total, 238 eligible adult including 159 female  aged 40.06±13.22 years and 79 male aged 35.56±16.12 years   were  assessed. In this study, of 238 responded participants   147 (61.7%) participants explained some LBP , of 179 responded participants 89 (49.7% ) participants described sexual activity limitation and, of 228 responded participants ,146 ( 64%) participants verified that they had social activity limitation due to disability consequently  to LBP.
Conclusion: This study showed the majority of Iranian participants with disability due to LBP have limited social and sexually activities. Therefore, doing further studies to confirm these results and designing proper interventions are strongly recommended.


Volume 8, Issue 7 (3-2017)
Abstract

Van Leeuwen's socio- semiotic network of social actors (2008), is a framework in Critical Discourse Analysis which helps discourse analysts discover how the social features ,settled in the underlying levels of discourses, are represented on the upper levels. This study tries to explore the way social actors are nominated and categorized in “Al” which is a story about the culture of nomadic people in Iran by Mohammad Bahmanbeigi, a famous Iranian novelist and the winner of the UNESCO’s literacy prize. By social actors we mean every single person that plays a role or occupies a specific position in a given society. Particularly, this study attempts to find answers to the following questions:
1. How does the writer use nomination and categorization to express his own viewpoints about the social actors of Nomadic societies of Iran?
2. Can these nominations and categorizations reflect the nomadic people's viewpoints about social actors at the time of nomadic people's illiteracy?
Adopting Van Leeuwen's model of representing social actors, a lot of researcher have tried to explore the social actors of different political and educational discourses but the innovation of this study is that it tries to change the direction of studies from political discourses to literary ones.  Another point is that most of the studies about the representation of social actors have relied mostly on the frequency of the socio- semantic features for their final discussion and results but this study has focused more on qualitative analysis than just counting the frequency of the socio- semiotic features. Although counting frequencies can reveal significant patterns, it is better not to make great claims for numbers. On the contrary, it is important to realize that frequencies often shift with the stages in the writer’s argument and may not be an overall characteristic of the text (vide. Van Leeuwen, 2008: 31).
 The results of this study show that the representation of social actors in “Al” is purposeful and serves to control the viewpoints of the society. The writer, using the advantages of nomination and categorization, expresses his viewpoints covertly and portrays the oppression of women in nomadic societies. On the one hand, the writer categorizes women generically to demonstrate them as the social actors engaged in common complications and on the other hand, he nominates women specifically and individually to picture them as distinguished and independent persons. Men's appraisements are all positive and represent the nomadic people's opinions about males but the appraisements of women, according to the social norms dominating the text, are changing. Using the advantages of deviation, the writer introduces the main character of the story as a deviant actor involved in opposite activities to challenge social norms and beliefs.

Volume 9, Issue 4 (10-2018)
Abstract

According to the important role of linguistic factors in reproducing social power and controlling the mind of subjects by redistribution of ideologies the present research tries to explore the underlying levels of surface aspects related to the structural organization of the discourse which can be led to appearance of a new and deep insight. Thus, mastering discourse concepts is an appropriate instrument for a realistic analysis of group’s minds and ideologies. According to the Discourse- Society- and knowledge , Van Dijk (2006) concludes that, each human being, in order to reach the goal of persuasion of the audience, tries to magnify and emphasize his positive actions and minimize the opposing party's attributes. In parallel to this effort, he tries to mitigate its negative qualities and the positive features of the other party. Strategies used to this end can be classified as: actor description, categorization, comparison, euphemism, disclaimers, evidentiality, example/illustration, generalization, number game, hyperbole, irony, populism, norm expression, national self-glorification, negative other representation, metaphor, implication, presupposition, lexicalization, victimization, vagueness, positive self-presentation, polarization/ Us – them categorization,  Burden and Authority. By naturalizing the text and studying structures, critical discourse analysis tries to eliminate the power relations, discourse-based elements of texts and hidden ideologies in texts.in entrance to the concrete layers of language, human wants to select between options and alternatives. Each selection between alternatives shows the actors ideology, knowledge and attitudes. One of these linguistic tools is the manner of social actor’s representation. Each manner of naming shows the users’ attitude about the named actor. In this research writers tried to study the manner of naming family court actors by divorce demanding women. To do this, we attended 20 meeting of the General Court and family counseling center of Zahedan- Iran and recorded the divorce demanding women’s Statements. With regard to the prohibition of the use of audio and video equipment or any kind of electronic means in the court environment, only a written record of women's statements has been limited. After collecting, data were studied based on Van leeuwen (2008) theory to sort different types of actor’s representation. After that in order to study the goal of each type of naming and representation, each class of representation was studied according to Van Dijk (2006) theory. Research results showed that divorce demanding women represent the others by three type of naming. The first was relational identification, the second was passivation and the third was mitigating the others negative properties and magnify positive characteristics of themselves
 

 

Volume 10, Issue 1 (5-2020)
Abstract

Aims: In the Safavid era, due to the government’s approach to the issue of collective life, as well as attention to the issue of national unity and the society unity, certain changes can be observed in the type and manner of social activities. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to investigate the impacts of the Safavid government on the formation of urban spaces. It is considered the process of turning the bridges built during this period, such as the Allahverdi Khan and Khajoo Bridges, into the context of group activities and the role of the government in it.
Instruments & Methods: In this study, with the interpretive historical method, Safavid Travelogue to extract social activities has been studied. Then, by explaining the role of government in such activities, the causes of government agency in holding various social events are examined and the creation of Allah Verdi Khan and Khaju Bridges as a place of collective behavior of the people are then analyzed.
Findings: Since the legitimacy of the Safavid government relies on the national unity, the public territory, as the sphere of communication of society, has become the scene of national and religious events, and the government has been responsible for establishing and forming many social events. Hence, spaces such as Naqsh-e Jahan Square, Chaharbagh Street, as well as Allah Verdi Khan and Khaju Bridges have been formed during this period.
Conclusion: The urban bridges of Safavid era, i.e. Allah Verdi Khan and Khaju Bridges, have become the context of social activities of the people and the king, and instead of the mere function of a passage, they have formed a key collective space in the structure of Isfahan with their special architecture.


Volume 14, Issue 1 (9-2022)
Abstract

 
In this article, the process of state-formation in the first decade of the Islamic Republic (1979-1989), based on leadership agency, has been studied. The claim of this research is that after the collapse of the previous legal order in 1979, the process of state-formation began with the focus on Ayatollah Khomeini’s agency and the duality of the executive body was established in the constitution. The question of this article is as follows: "How was Ayatollah Khomeini’s agency in the process of state-formation after the revolution in 1979?" According to the theoretical claim, this post-revolutionary state is compatible with the characteristics of a qualitative total state in which the possibility of bureaucratization, that is, the rule of law without personal interference, is minimized, and constant communication with society takes different forms. This text is methodologically based on a configurational approach in which historical data are analyzed at both case level and set relations level. Evidences show that in the first two periods of state-formation, the possibility of moving towards a democratic state with the participation of the majority of the forces involved in the revolution was greater than in later periods. After the revision of the constitution, the characteristics of a qualitative total state are complemented by the dual authority that emerges in the executive body itself.


Volume 22, Issue 1 (1-2015)
Abstract

Through uncovering the underlying elements of language, this research aims to reveal the hidden layers of meaning in press texts in the framework of a critical discourse analysis. Having used socio-semantic features of Van Leeuwen's model (1996), this paper has studied, qualitatively, 40 issues of four Iranian Persian publications for a period of two months, from July 22 to September 21, 2011. These publications were 'E'temad', 'Sharq', Resalat' and Keyhan. The analyses included recognizing discursive structures in the texts, determining the linguistic realizations of structures, and explaining along with uncovering the hidden layers of meaning and the ideology behind the texts. The research results out of the data analysis indicate that the ideology dominating the minds of writers and groups is reflected in the texts using discursive features as exclusion, activation, passivation, personalization and impersonalization. Exclusion has been the most frequently used feature in 'E'temad and 'Sharq', whereas activation has had the highest frequency of occurrences in 'Resalat' and 'Keyhan'. The discursive structures take place using linguistic instruments like pre-modifiers, active vs. passive structures, coordination and circumstantials, in the texts. Besides, the relationship between discursive structures and ideology is dialectal, which can be determined by studying these structures in the texts and social institutions.

Volume 27, Issue 4 (10-2020)
Abstract

Hegemonies imposed from sources of power have been an issue of investigation for many years. In recent years, media and movies have gained particular attention due to their society-affecting power. The present study explores how male and female characters are represented in American movies based on the Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor categorization. Hence, the researchers focus on the scripts of the movies available in fiction genre of COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). A representative sample of words depicting each gender was chosen based on their frequencies, and accordingly, their collocations were extracted. The findings indicate that men and women representations were following stereotypical depiction of gender roles; while men tended to be associated with high-ranked jobs, positions, activities, and identification categories, women were shown to be passively linked with inferior features, low-income jobs, child-bearers, and sexual aspects. More specifically, women were mostly objectified through a patriarchal perspective. The results might shed light on the archetypical imposition of power from above and may pave the way for unbiased media where depths, not just the appearances, of characters are of greater significance.

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