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Critical Thinking (CT) which has been defined as the employment of cognitive skills or strategies for obtaining sound conclusions (Halpern, 2013) has been the subject of different Second Language (L2) studies at national and international levels. The aim of the present study was to provide a meta-analysis on the (quasi) experimental studies of critical thinking in second language education in Iran. To this end, from a total of 168 studies published between 2011 and 2020, 24 studies were selected based on the inclusion-exclusion criteria. The included studies were coded to calculate the mean effect size of the studies. The results show that 1) L2 teaching was positively effective for the CT development in Iran; 2) the most beneficial aspects of L2 teaching on CT promotion were related to teaching L2 speaking and L2 rhetorical strategies; 3) concerning L2 proficiency level, L2 instruction was most advantageous for advanced students’ CT developments; 4) regarding the age groups, L2 teaching contributed the most growth in CT levels for learners in the age group of 10-14 years, and 5) L2 teaching was most effective for the undergraduate students compared to other educational levels. The findings can be beneficial for pursuing the next moves in L2 research, education, and planning educational policies in Iran.

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Giles, Goat-Boy is a black comedy to bite everyone. Embodied in a postmodern fabulation, Barth’s sense of humor allows him to create a political allegory on any structure of power that claims to save humanity. GILES, a hybrid of a machine and a goat, is tasked with the mission to lead the so-called academic society through instrumental intellect. But he can only go so far as not to create a conflict of interest between the ruling powers. The pattern used in creating Giles is an imitation of the classic patterns in creation and journey of a hero, except that Giles is destined to appear as a scapegoat against the positivist Sphinx of Time. Such an approach begs the main question of the research: How ideological systems sacrifice their heroes to secure their interests? This hypothesis is also in line with Frankfurt School’s critical theory, which considers the capitalist system to be a violation of freedom and social values. The intellectuals such as Horkheimer and Adorno consider man to be a victim of objectification and alienation arising from social and political conflicts. They also believe that hegemonic systems have humiliated man with false pleasures. Just as Giles fails to reform the most powerful ruling system, WESCAC, so Barth symbolically paints a bleak picture of human destiny in modern society today. The purpose of the research is to raise human awareness about the harsh laws that are the ominous products of instrumental intellect, as one of the defining elements of capitalist system.
 

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Due to ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, Zahedan has a heterogeneous and diverse population. The diversity of religions and denominations from the formation of this city until the Islamic Revolution has never been a matter of dispute and peaceful coexistence between different religious groups has been established in this city. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution and the continuation and emergence of Shiism as the official religion of the country, the Baluch people, due to differences in religion, became less integrated with the central government than the Sistani's and became more and more isolated in identity. The objective manifestation of these gaps can be seen in the most symbolic religious element of the city, namely the Makki Mosque. The hidden signs in this mosque as an arena to show the ethnic-religious hegemonic power of the Sunni Baluchi's, with unusual dimensions and heights and unfamiliar forms and decorations, have dominated their surrounding context and produced special semantic rules. In the face of such a situation, the narrator of the Makki Mosque has experienced signs of apathy because the signs used in this mosque have acted in disconnection with the previous meanings of the Baluch mosques and have become an unfamiliar text for the narrator. Finally, the Makki Mosque has provided an opportunity to represent concepts and issues that can take us deeper into the Baluch cultural layers and provide a relatively deep understanding of the people's situation in contemporary society. 

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Today, the news media has a momentous role in shaping public opinion and social developments. Journalistic translation thus follows guidelines and standards in order to convey the message and objectives of its source material. The translation of the political press discourse surrounding the US and international sanctions on Iran is particularly sensitive, due to its high potential in impacting international relations and political affairs.
The objective of our research is to highlight the importance of methodologies used for the translation of political press discourse. For this purpose, we have analyzed two important news articles related to the aforementioned sanctions. First, we conduct a critical analysis of the political discourse, based on Van Dijk's model, and then we perform a translational analysis, based on Antoine Berman's views. Finally, we explore the different types of modifications made by translators, as well as the efforts made to adapt the news to the media’s political ideology. In line with Van Dijk's opinions, we have shown that there is a close relationship between the ruling policy (power) and the press discourse (media), in shaping the public perception of policies and events at mass scale. We demonstrate how subtle deletion, change, and intensification is strategically used in jo urnalistic translation, in line with their desired discourse functions to achieve political goals.
 

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Although critical pedagogy (CP) is a worthwhile approach to education, not much attention has been paid to its application in online courses. Acknowledging its pivotal role, this study intended to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ awareness of CP and explore the possible effects of teaching experience on their awareness of CP via a CP questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Furthermore, to evaluate teachers’ actual classroom application of CP, online EFL classes were observed. The results indicated that teachers’ awareness of the significance of CP principles did not help them fully implement the principles in their online teaching practices. A significant relationship between teaching experience and some subscales of CP principles was also found. The findings of this study can offer some implications for English teachers in the post-method era to rethink their previous critical views towards English language teaching and their roles as facilitators.
 

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Being a promising component of educational and occupational success, the inclusion of critical thinking in various aspects of schooling has gained momentum in recent years. Therefore, the present study investigated the Iranian 12th grade English language final examinations based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy in terms of “knowledge dimension” and “cognitive process dimension” over the last five years of exam administration. Using a quantitative content analysis design, the items of the aforementioned examinations administered from 2019 to 2023 were analyzed. The findings of the study showed that the frequency of “conceptual knowledge” items in the “knowledge dimension” and “understand” items in the “cognitive process dimension” were significantly higher based on the results of Chi-square test. Moreover, the frequency of items relevant to lower-order thinking skills was found to be considerably higher than that of the items related to higher-order thinking skills, although instances of top cognitive level items could be traced in these examinations. It was also revealed that there was no considerable change with regard to the inclusion of the two dimensions of Bloom’s revised taxonomy over the five years of administration under study. The results of this study can be a fillip for policy makers, textbook developers, and teachers to accelerate the required changes regarding the consideration of inclusion of critical thinking-based tasks in textbooks, lesson plans and examinations.
 

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Before teachers can transform the reality and promote a liberating education within mainstream educational contexts, they must first gain a thorough understanding of how learners perceive the world. In an attempt to gauge EFL learners’ perceptions, the present study set out to conceptualize the construct of Critical Digital Pedagogy (CDP) by developing and validating a questionnaire for use in online EFL settings. The researchers distributed a preliminary questionnaire with 65 items to 380 adult Iranian EFL learners and used Exploratory Factor Analysis as well as Confirmatory Factor Analysis (EFA, CFA) to analyze the results. After removing 9 items, the final questionnaire consisted of 56 items on a five-point Likert scale. The analysis revealed that CDP consists of 10 factors, namely “consciousness raising,” “community and collaboration,” “empowerment and agency,” “inclusivity,” “dialogism,” “co-creation of materials,” “praxis,” “problem-posing education,” “teachers as transformative intellectuals,” and “critical thinking and reflection.” Additionally, the convergent validity as well as the reliability of the questionnaire to measure the intended construct was statistically confirmed. These findings have important implications for EFL teachers, curriculum developers, course designers, and language researchers as they increase awareness of CDP and its underlying components.

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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.

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This study investigates the fundamental impact of naming on shaping the ideology of texts, particularly the Quran. It explores how naming, as a foundational linguistic process within the frameworks of Hodge and Kress (1996), Van Leeuwen (2008), and Leslie Jeffries (2010), plays a pivotal role in constructing meaning, establishing identity, and exerting power. The research also examines the naming component within the Quran and its contributions to explaining the underlying worldview of this text. To evaluate hypotheses, this research employs critical discourse analysis. It explores the approaches of Hodge, Kress, Van Leeuwen, and Jeffries regarding the naming component and applies these theories to the Quranic text. The goal is to elucidate the embedded worldview and the Quran's approach to naming. The findings reveal that in Hodge and Kress's view, the naming process is an ideological tool for promoting and solidifying specific beliefs. Conversely, Van Leeuwen perceives naming as an identity process and a means of interaction and meaning construction within social contexts. Jeffries, combining explicit (ideology) and implicit (literary language) elements, considers naming a tool for producing and reproducing ideological discourses. An examination of naming within the Quran indicates that beyond ideological, identity, and linguistic factors, other elements such as the relationship between theme and naming, the priority of content over naming, and the connection between action, process, and structure to naming also influence this process.
 

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By studying the Qur'anic narratives, what is most visible is the amazing and elimination that includes a complete part of a story, even at a time. A pity that has been used not only in the Qur'anic stories, but also throughout the Qur'an as one of the highest literary and rhetorical manifestations of the Qur'an. This is one of the mechanisms and tools of the narrative or discourse silence process in which the signs of the narrative are eliminated and with their absence refers to the modules that the reader can rely on succession and companionship. And also from the intersection between the two and the use of brain capacity, fill those holes and gaps, thus fully view and receive the story. The important point in discourse silence is the interpretative and analytical aspect of narrative, and merely, such as the elimination of the classic rhetoric of the Nesith, which appeared in the form of metaphor, metaphor, permissible, and such equipment and to express aesthetics. In this article, we will first explain the silence of discourse in modern cognitive criticism, and then explain the narration of the life of Yusuf (AS) in the Holy Quran, based on the same validity and discourse. The result shows that discourse silence in this sura has been used in three types of structural, semantic and implicit, and with the systematic structure of the Qur'anic narrative structure, these vacuums are received and completed by the reader.
 

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This comparative study deals with the archetypal journey of self-realization as represented in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love. Both novels feature protagonists who starts a spiritual journey to realize their true selves and fulfill their fates. The study also discovers how the writers use different literary techniques to transmit the archetypal journey of self-realization. For example, Coelho deploys the theme of the personal legend which stands for a person's unique ideal which serves as a guiding force for Santiago throughout his journey. On the other hand, Shafak benefits from the Sufi concept of the dervish, which represents a person going after spiritual enlightenment through separation from material possessions. Indeed, it focuses on the protagonists' self-realization journeys to discover the archetypal motifs, symbols, and narrative structures. These selected novels share thematic points embedded in mysticism, spirituality, and personal growth. From these perspectives, the purpose of this article is to provide a general understanding of how these contemporary works contribute to the wider discourse on self-discovery within the context of the protagonists’ archetypal journey.
 

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This paper is focused on fuzzy theory of democracy. Here, it has been argued that the theory of democracy provides a two-valued description of political order (democratic or non democratic).However, this account of democracy is not consistent with the scientific truth. Democracy is characterized by fuzzy truth. Thus, following a critical discussion on the epistemology of critical rationality, a fuzzy epistemic apparatus has been formulated. Considering the fuzzy epistemology, it has been claimed that on this epistemic horizon, every thing is relatively calibrated and truth is something between zero and one. Also, in the mentioned apparatus, the black and white truth transforms into a gray truth and all follow the principle of uncertainty. Consequently, in the fuzzy epistemology, the membership function of zero and one will be generalized to a fuzzy membership based on a range of zero and one. To support the above mentioned epistemic apparatus, the writer of the paper has provided an empirical argument. The evidences the writer provides indicate that democracy as a truth represents values in the range of zero to one. The value of zero represents a completely non democratic country and the value of one represents a full democratic one. Any other value between zero to one is an indicator of a mixed category consisting of both democratic and non democratic aspects. Finally, based on the empirical evidences, it has been concluded that the U.S.A, England, Japan, Turkey, India, France, and Iran (1998-2003) are of democratic countries, albeit the kind and degree of democracies vary

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Abstract:
Relying on the dramatic effects and all cultural potentials of Iranian old and poular literature, this paper aims to deal with the possibilities to contemporarize them for new media productions. Literature is one of the most prominent icons of Iranian rich culture. A notable part of Iranian literature is composed of folklores and popular narratives, which are genuinely full of novel themes and authenticated knowledge to be adapted into film and TV series. The present research will show why exactly Iranian contemporary film-makers and play writers, despite the existing large culrual legacy, have failed so far to apply the potential capabilities. Using a pathological approach to the historical discontinuities happened during the evolution of dramatic functions of Persian old narratives, this study attempts to present a qualitative assessment of these literary art works. After reconsidering the most significant elements of Iranian popular narratives, the paper goes then to propund some common ignored challenges concerning the "adaptation" techniques for media productions. Finally, we would describe a typical narrative of Iranian folklore by which a practical method for new possible adaptation for Iranian TV drama might be provided.

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When the elements and different components of a literary work are studied and their relation to each other and to the totality of the work is made clear,a reader can claim that she/he has had a formalistic reading of the work.Such a reading facilitates commenting on how the elements and components of the work are interrelated( vertically and horizontally). In this paper,the form and structure of a Ghazal( sonnet) of Bidel Dehlavi are re-read, using the intratextual signs.The first line reads: YEK TAARE MU GAR AZ SARE DONYE GOZASHTEI SAD KAHKESHAN ZE OJE SORAYYA GOZASHTEI The theme of this Ghazal which is continuously repeated all through the poem is "advice to return to oneself and put under observation one’s inner self in the bed of the hastening and transitory time".The subject matters of movement,passing,transition and transformation are spread all through the Ghazal .However the link between the lines of the Ghazal is not the sort of link to create a "bodily structure",rather each line of this Ghazal is a separate bead,related to the other beads by a string( the subject matters of movement and passing of time) creating a necklace( a Ghazal).

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For some time hermeneutics has been posed as a competitor for positivism in the field of cognitive and human sciences and has almost prevailed.The field of literature and interpretation of literary texts is one of the fields this branch has influenced.The aim of this article is to examine this subject , coin the term "Literary Hermeneutics" and explain how to apply it for interpreting literary texts,especially novels.To do that,we first define hermeneutics and then literary hermeneutics and its different circles and in the conclusion mention the obligations resulting from selecting each of these circles for interpretation.

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The present work is a comparative study of Aristotelian and narrative dramas with reference to “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles and “Mother Courage and Her Children” by Bertolt Brecht. The basics of Aristotelian drama come from Aristotle’s Poetics, which was considered as an undisputed tradition in drama until the eighteenth century. The aim of this dramatic tradition is catharsis, which is achieved through pity, fear and empathy in the audience. Among the other main principles of Aristotelian drama are the observance of the three units: dramatic climax and peripetia, and the first and the last moments of excitement. The narrative drama is based on Bertolt Brecht's non-Aristotelian theories in drama. Brecht believes that we must create a critical distance from daily events through alienation so that the audience can reconsider them and develop a critical view. The duality of the actor's role, the inconsistency between the actor's thought and action, time leaps, musical interruptions of the story, strong lightening on the stage, a half-empty stage with a half open curtain, the use of titles at the beginning of the scenes, and putting placards that free the audience from illusions are some of the alienation techniques used in Mother Courage and Her Children. Aristotelian drama emphasizes the unity of sequences and coherence of events, and considers the play as a whole, which aims at involving the audience wholeheartedly and making the audience identifies himself with the hero of the play.  In contrast, narrative drama is a  montage of single  scenes, which causes pauses in the play. In this type of drama, the audiences, because of frequent interruptions, does not get involved in the play, gets distance from the scenes, and is persuaded to critically view the play, present solutions, and make decisions. In sum, the fundamental difference between these two types of drama lies in the effect they have on the audience. In this work, an attempt has been made to discuss the major difference between Aristotelian and narrative dramas with a number of examples taken from Oedipus Rex and Mother Courage and Her Children.  

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Introduction: As one of the oldest and the most dynamic branches of political geography, Electoral geography has experienced ups and downs more than other branches of political geography. The objective ontology of the phenomenon of vote and its spatial distribution have linked this branch to spatial approach so that a large proportion of works in the area of Electoral geography have been written based on this approach. With the fall of positivism, the researches of Electoral geography also decreased. On the other hand, domination of descriptive, case, and applied studies without a robust theoretical and philosophical basis on theoretical and basic writings, is the main deficiency of Electoral geography in International and Iranian level. The aim of the present theoretical-fundamental study was to explain the dominant theoretical approaches in Electoral geography.
Conclusion: The Electoral geography can be explored in five theoretical approaches. The first approach is the traditional approach that deals with the spatial patterns of voting in the form of a regional school and human-environment relations. The second one is a spatial-behavioral approach that examines the voting behavior according to the measurement and analysis of key spatial variables based on the spatial school. The third approach is a radical approach that base on radical geography school deals with the theoretical articulation and revealing mechanisms that form Electoral processes. The fourth approach is a location-based approach that focuses on the impact of geographic-historical context on electoral behavior on the basis of the humanistic geography school and structuration theory. And, the fifth approach is a critical approach that criticizes the current approaches to the study of electoral geography and the presesentation of alternative readerships of electoral geography based on schools such as feminism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism.

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