Concessionaire Department of English Language and Literature

Concessionaire Department of English Language and Literature, SBU Managing Director Sasan Baleghizadeh (PhD, TEFL) Editor-in-Chief Mehrdad Yousefpoori-Naeim (PhD Candidate, TEFL) Editorial Board TEFL Maryam Abbasi (MA, TEFL) Literature Hossein Mohseni (MA, English Literature) Cover Design AA Brothers Studio Website Design Maryam Marandi Special Thanks to Ghiasuddin Alizadeh and Sadegh Heydarbakian Contributors Maryam Abbasi Vahid Ahmadi Nasrin Bedrood Mehdi Dadashi Ali Derakhshesh Ataollah Hassani Niloufar Hematyar Mahshad Jalalpourroodsari Nahid Jamshidi Rad Masood Farvahar Kalkhoran Mohammad Mohammadi Hossein Mohseni Ali Nazifpour Amin Raeisi Hamid Rastin Mojgan Salmani Saleh Tabatabai Ebrahim Zanghani Saman Zoleikhaei

Advisory Board Jalal Sokhanvar, Prof., Shahid Beheshti University Seyyed Abolghassem Fatemi Jahromi, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Kian Soheil, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Shideh Ahmadzadeh Heravi, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Amir Ali Nojoumian, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Mohammad Reza Anani Sarab, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Sara C. Ilkhani, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Alireza Jafari, PhD, Shahid Beheshti University Sofia A. Koutlaki, PhD, Quran and Hadith University Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, PhD, the University of Tehran Hossein Mollanazar, PhD, Allameh Tabataba'i University

Publisher Shahid Beheshti University Publishing House Website http://www.sbu.ac.ir Indexed by noormags.com Address Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences Shahid Beheshti University, Evin, Tehran, Iran Tel.: +982129902486 Email: [email protected] Price 3000 T

Submission Guidelines

•Threshold welcomes contributions of original (not previously published) works of interest in the disciplines of Translation Studies, English Language Teaching, English Literature and Comparative Studies along with related reports, news, profiles of eminent scholars, book reviews, and creative writings.

•The contributors are expected to submit their works for the coming issue no later than 30 Azar, 1393.

•Prospective authors are invited to submit their materials to the journal E-mail address: [email protected]

•The manuscripts are evaluated by editors of each section and at least two referees from the advisory board.

•The editors require the following format styles: .Informative title .Abstract (150-200 words) .Keywords (3-5 words) .Introduction (500-800 words) .Background or review of related literature (1500-2000 words) .Methodology (500-700 words) .Results and discussion (500-700 words) .Notes and references

• The name of the author(s) should appear on the first page, with the present affiliation, full address, phone number, and current email address.

• Microsoft word 2007 is preferred, using Times New Roman font and the size of 11 with single space between the lines for the abstracts and the same font size and line spacing for the body of the paper. Graphics can be in JPEG format.

• Footnotes should only be used for commentaries and explanations, not for giving references.

• All papers are required to follow the APA style for citations and references.

Table of Contents - Editorial 1

Literary Studies - Profile: Ted Hughes / Hossein Mohseni 5 - Kim Scott’s True Country: A Transnational and Post-Colonial Study / Vahid Ahmadi 13 - Unconscious Submission to ISA and Lack of Agency: An Althusserain Reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” / Saman Zoleikhaei 29 - Enough It Is! That All the Day Was Yours: The Carnivalesque in Spenser’s "Epithalamion" / Ali Nazifpour 39

English Language Teaching - Profile: Randolph Quirk / Maryam Abbasi 53 - The Role of Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Reading Comprehension Performance / Mohammad Mohammadi, Mehdi Dadashi, and Ebrahim Zanghani 57 - EFL Students’ Attitudes toward Adopting Computer Assisted Language Learning / Amin Raeisi 75 - Investigating Nation’s Four-Strand Model of Language Acquisition in Interchange Series Course Books / Hamid Rastin 93

Interview - An Interview with Dr. Amir Zand-Moghadam on Allameh Tabataba'i University ELT Conferences and English Students / Ali Derakhshesh 111

Army of Letters - Short Story: A King Who Did Not Want to Be “Down to Earth” / Saleh Tabatabai 119 - Poem: Join Us! / Ataollah Hassani 120 - Poem: Sauntering Shoes / Masood Farvahar Kalkhoran 121 - Poem: In Memoriam / Saleh Tabatabai 123 - Translation: Perplext in Faith / Saleh Tabatabai 124 - Translation: A Way to the Purification of the Soul from the Impurities: A Religious Excerpt / Mojgan Salmani 126

Translation Challenge - Profile: Mohammad-Taqi Bahar 133 - Tombstone / Mahshad Jalalpourroodsari 136

- Tombstone / Nahid Jamshidi Rad 137 - Headstone / Hossein Mohseni 138 - Tombstone / Nasrin Bedrood 139 - Next Issue Translation Challenge 140

Views and Reviews - Play: A Review of Faust’s Adaptation in Tehran / Nahid Jamshidi Rad 143 - Novella: Kafka’s Metamorphosis: Borrowing, Reinterpretation, or a New Creation of Greek Myths? / Niloufar Hematyar 149 - Short Story Writer: A Comparative Study of Joyce Carol Oates’s Short Stories / Hossein Mohseni 159 - Language: English: Its Past, Present and Future / Saleh Tabatabai 167

Threshelf - Literary Theory: The Basics 179 - Literary Theory 180 - Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader 181 - What English Language Teachers Need to Know Volume III: Designing Curriculum 182 - Language Education and Applied Linguistics: Bridging the Two Fields 183 - Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education: Vygotskian Praxis and the Research/Practice Divide 184

- Farsi Abstracts 185

Threshold

Editorial

We all thank God for His grace, which made the on-time publication of another issue of Threshold possible. I should also express my gratitude to all our readers as well as contributors for their support and continued interest in the journal. Although Threshold was first opened to realize the potential of Shahid Beheshti University students, it has never limited itself to only one university and has always welcomed contributions from all over Iran, and even at times, from universities around the world.

Having gone through many ups and downs, Threshold has grown in many ways over the years, which makes us learn more and more from the past, be proud of where we stand now, and have hopes of an even brighter future. We have focused our efforts on the improvement of both format and content of the materials, attempting to make the journal better known among the students, teachers, and researchers of the field. The outcome of such efforts is reflected firstly in the journal itself and secondly in a few awards that we have been honored to receive during these years. Once more, I am glad to inform you of another success: Threshold was chosen as the best scientific student journal of Shahid Beheshti University in the 2nd Student Journals Festival of SBU this year.

Mehrdad Yousefpoori-Naeim

Editor-in-Chief

1 8Volume Number 1,

2 Threshold

Literary Studies

3 8Volume Number 1,

4 Threshold

Profile

Ted Hughes By Hossein Mohseni

Ted Edward James Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire, the son of one of seventeen men from a regiment of several hundred to return from Gallipoli in World War One, a tragedy that imprinted the imagination of the poet. He was educated at Mexborough Grammer School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where in his later year he changed his course of study from English to archeology, pursing his interest in the mythic structures that were later to inform is poetry. In 1956, he married the American-born poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. As poets, they explored the world of raw feeling and sensation, a world that Hughes’ poems tended to view through the eye of the predator, Plath’s through the eye of the victim.

Theories, Cast of Mind, and Major Works Hughes’ Interest in the Natural World: Whereas Philip Larkin had the urbane conversational tone, Ted Hughes was more intense and more physical. He was reaching to a poetic generation who has wanted to render everything casual and everything in the language of conversation. That is why in his much lauded The Hawk in the Rain, the language had strong aural qualities; its guttural consonants and harsh plosives are indicative of the physical nature of the verse. Later, Hughes’ identification with D.H. Lawrence use of free verse- as opposed to Eliot’s use of fragments and allusions- and his exploration of the natural world made him quite distinct from the literary and cultural elite of his time. Hughes’ verse is dominated by strong and often unexpected images that create cohesion both within a particular poem and within the wider context of his work as a whole. Natural imagery dominates Hughes’ work. However, his attention to visual detail is not Wordsworthian in its precision. Instead, he transforms the natural world. So, the effect of the imagery in Hughes’ poems is

5 8Volume Number 1, to communicate meaning in a very physical way. It is a means of elevating the ordinary to a symbolic level. Nature is both other, quite apart from man and an integral part of the lifecycle to which we are all subject. Hughes’ poems therefore exist on two levels; at a physical and literal level, we see him recreating a specific scene, moment in time or idea, using analogy to bring abstractions to life. He then goes beyond this, revealing something about life and the way we perceive it. So the natural landscapes are animated by a sense of process and become the backdrop to man’s metaphysical quest for understanding.

Hughes’ Crow (1970) and The Trickster Figure: The publication of Crow (1970) was to remain one of Hughes’ most enduring volumes. Retelling the legends of creation and birth through the vision of a mocking and predatory crow, Hughes attacks traditional beliefs and ridicules a tyrannical God with its bleak and bitter tone. Hughes’ mythic imagination immediately recognized the manifold mythic potentialities of the crow, as trickster, quest hero and embodiment of almost all the themes that were most urgent to Hughes at that time. The crow figures prominently (usually as trickster) in many mythologies, including the Red Indian and the Eskimo. The tale drew not only on trickster mythology, but on the whole body of myth, folklore and literature. Its basic shape was that of the traditional quest narrative, ending, like all quests, with the

6 Threshold hero’s emergence from the blackness of his crimes and sufferings into a raw wisdom, the healing of the split within him, the release of his own deepest humanity, all expressed in images of ego-death, rebirth and marriage. The Trickster Tale, derived from primitive literatures, seems to have released Hughes from depression, or coincided with a release from depression, leading him to a more narrative, neat-statement poem, parabolic, making a single point as bleakly, lightly and obliquely as a nursery rhyme. Jung, a large influence on Hughes, wrote an essay "On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure," seeing the trickster as the Shadow, an unconscious archetype incorporating the psyche's unacceptable traits, the opposite of those consciously deployed. Hughes himself has contrasted Trickster Literature with Black Comedy. Black Comedy is the end of a cultural process, drawing on "animal despair" and "suicidal nihilism" that "afflict a society or an individual when the supportive metaphysical benefits disintegrate." Trickster Literature, on the contrary, comes at the beginning of a cultural process and draws on the "unkillable biological optimism that supports a society or individual whose world is not yet fully created, and whose metaphysical beliefs are only just struggling out of the dream stage." It seems likely, therefore, that Crow for Hughes, is the new start after the breakdown. It is evident that the writing affected Hughes therapeutically, had a "physical effect" on him, though he knows that this does not guarantee the worth of the poem on the page. But he sees the tale as archetypal. In a 1970 radio interview, he said:

The main story takes the Crow through a series of experiences which alter him in one way and another, take him to the bottom and then take him to the top, and eventually the whole purpose of the thing is to try to turn him into a man, which, as it stands, the story nearly succeeds in doing, but I haven’t completed it, and whether one could complete it I don’t know……

And this very sense of incompleteness makes his poems addressing reality no longer as something known, but as something uncertain and indefinable. Of course because of a number of misreadings, Hughes regretted having published the poems without their proper contextual notes:

A more graphic idea of the context – of the traditional convention I set out to exploit, as far as I could, and of the essential line and level of the narrative, which might make some misreadings less likely – ought to have been part of those published fragments.

7 8Volume Number 1,

And that is why later he attempted to provide this graphical context by publishing several articles and interviews on aspects of Crow, and by summarizing large segments of the narrative whenever he introduced the poems in recordings and at readings. But all this reached very few readers, and misreadings are still common, not least by professional critics, some of whom have given the poems precisely the opposite interpretation required by the missing context.

Hughes’ Approach to Poetry and Poet: For Hughes, the poet is an observer who perceives the inner life and the energy existing beneath the surface of things, revealing the unconscious in a medium that is paradoxically linked to consciousness, moving from something concrete and specific towards the general and universal. In the process of poetry, common beliefs are rediscovered as the poetic imagination unifies the outer world of objects and the inner world of the self.

Hughes and Yeats’ Influence: The young Hughes ingested Yeats. “The Otter”, which is one of the poems in his collection The Lupercal, picks up Yeats’ image of man as a beggar man, for Yeats a prince, or son of God, wandered into the mire, or matter, and transformed into a ragged man or toad. Yet Hughes’ otter

8 Threshold will revert to nothing at all: he is at once a fact and a mere dream. The here and now are not the intersection of the timeless with time, but "A bare-backed tramp and a ditch without a fire." The otter’s progenitors were mere survivors: dubious honor and hopelessly fearful hope were translated into the practical realities:

Underwater eyes, an eel's Oil of water body, neither fish nor beast is the otter: Four-legged yet water-gifted, to outfish fish; With webbed feet and a long ruddering tail And a round head like an old tomcat. So the self under the eye lies, Attendant and withdrawn.

Linkage between Human and Animal: Described as violent both in the subject matter and the language, Hughes consistently denied such claims, arguing that his poems were not about violence but vitality. He believed that animals are vital rather than violent because they are so much more completely controlled than men. For Hughes, the so called violence of the natural world was quite different from that in the human world: true violence is the inhumanity of man to man and this always condemned. Though Hughes's poetry centers on animals, they are heavily anthropomorphized, are in fact excruciatingly lifelike masks: his pike has "the grin it was born with. Hughes visualizes animals as human beings peeping out of beaks and snouts: that is the horror: sub-human humans wolfing raw meat or being gorged, their appetites and agonies suffused with human consciousness. Contrariwise, Mozart's brain is unconvincingly compared to the shark's mouth. Hughes finds “Thrushes” terrifying:

Triggered to stirrings beyond sense-with a start, a bounce, a stab Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing.... Is it their single-mind-sized skulls, or a trained Body, or genius, or a nestful of brats Gives their days this bullet and automatic

9 8Volume Number 1,

Purpose? Mozart's brain had it, and the shark's mouth That hungers down the blood-smell even to a leak of its own Side and devouring of itself.

The latter image clearly echoes that in King Lear: "Humanity must perforce prey on itself, / Like monsters of the deep"; and Hughes's language in this passage almost deviates from Shakespeare. Yet Shakespeare is testing a morality of sacrifice. Hughes expertly seized what he could handle. Shakespeare's language, he wrote:

has the air of being invented in a state of crisis, for a terribly urgent job, a homely spur-of-the-moment improvisation out of whatever verbal scrap happens to be lying around, and this is exactly what real speech is. The meaning is not so much narrowly delineated as overwhelmingly suggested, by an inspired signalling and hinting of verbal heads and tails both above and below precision, and by this weirdly expressive underswell of a musical near-gibberish, like a jostling of spirits. The idea is conveyed, but we also receive a musical and imaginative shock, and the satisfaction of that is unfathomable.

Hughes's "Hawk Roosting" thinks as no bird could. In verbalizing the dynamics of the hawk, Hughes has sketched a blueprint for tyranny:

It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly- I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads- The allotment of death.

10 Threshold

Hughes’ Definition of Hope and Optimism: He accepted that in writing poems about the natural world, the subject matter often could be described as ugly, but believed that all true poems had to face tragedy and make great complete statements of the world. He thinks of poetry as a biological healing process, which:

seizes on what is depressing and destructive in life and lifts it into a realm where it becomes healing and energizing, or it tries to do. That is what it is always setting out to do and to reach that final mood of release and elation is the whole driving force of writing……

As a result, although Ted Hughes has a bleak tone and dark sense of humor, his verse represents an affirmation rather than a negation of life. Of course, reading "Crow's Undersong" hymning the fertile Goddess:

he brings petals in their nectar fruits in their plush... She has come amorous it is all she has come for If there had been no hope she would not have come And there would have been no crying in the city (There would have been no city)

One could ask: What kind of hope is there? Hughes evidently foresees a pretty catastrophic sort of hope-the kind of hope that for most of us would constitute a despair, an abdication. Hughes is undoubtedly influenced by myth here, the death-and-re-birth myth of the trickster figure, the hero, and the saint. Perhaps, he sees the world as a grandiose version of the psychotic patient-who may have to endure regression, psychic death and rebirth in order to resume growth. Crow will have to endure what Jung calls an enantiodromia: his conscious and unconscious must be turned upside down-the direction in which he is going must be reversed. Crow's "ego-system" has to be destroyed before he can experience "the spirit-dimension of his inner link with his Creator." Perhaps Hughes still hopes that catastrophe can be averted through the creation of poetic death-and-rebirth rituals. Perhaps the imaginative enactment of a psychotic episode will be a healing force. At any rate in Gaudete (1977) he has dramatized such a psychotic episode. In this Gothic dream-narrative, delivered with a scarifying waking realism, it is no accident that the protagonist is a

11 8Volume Number 1, clergyman: this makes him- Lumb, a sacrificial lamb-not only a deluded Christian, and therefore a ruined human being, but a representative of the whole deluded Christian tradition. He will go through a "conversion into his opposite," an enantiodromia: his unconscious becomes conscious, his conscious unconscious, and he embarks on the process Jung calls individuation, where, in a psychotic development, the Self replaces the ego. Sagar, who thinks Hughes has outflanked Lawrence, Beckett and Eliot, writes:

The orthodox religious/mystical answers won't stand up. In The Four Quarters they are vacuous, the product of desperation and repudiation.

But the words apply more to Gaudete than to Eliot. Even The Waste Land enacts spiritual thirst and refreshment: fertility in sex and work depend on a prior regeneration through the word. Gaudete enacts a barren extravaganza, the physicality without charm, tenderness or love, and ends, such passion spent, in a bogus peace that passes all understanding. It advertises the violence it portrays and recreates the horrors we recoil from in primitive religion.

12 Threshold

Kim Scott’s True Country: A Transnational and Post-Colonial Study

Vahid Ahmadi American Studies, MA, Johannes Gutenberg University

Abstract In this study, I am endeavoring to review this transnational literature with a postcolonial approach to track the steps Kim Scott has taken to resolve the afore- mentioned dilemmas. I argue that Scott is ‘decolonizing the mind’ (Thiong'o, 2004, p. 1126) of its protagonist in order to achieve the very same goal in his readers as well. Upon ‘decolonization of the mind’, the character undergoes the process of self-determination and realization of self-identity so as to overcome his uncertainties and finally discover his true culture and identity. It must be noted that such discovery is just the commence of a bigger project, which is called cultural recovery. To put research claims in its theoretical framework, I will make use of the discussion by Ngugi wa Thiong'o regarding the importance of language, and language as culture. Moreover, how Scott manages to establish the Australian Aboriginal culture within the context of their daily life is also addressed. Furthermore, special attention is paid to the problem of identity, in relation to language and its usage for building a deconstructive literature. Keywords: Kim Scott, True Country, decolonizing, deconstruction, identity, Thiong'o, aboriginal, Australia

13 Volume 8 Number 1,

Introduction It has always been and maybe continues to be an unresolved question for me. And that is the question and the sense of belonging. Whether I belong to a certain country, culture, and ethnicity etc.? Whether I should do so? The dilemma of being at the right place or to what extent I feel happy and comfortable with the group of people I am socializing, living and breathing with? Is it all real, all that the others have said and written about a certain culture - the one you feel close to? Or without intimate personal observation, research and living a culture, all that seems ahead of you is simply just a mirage of the reality! These are some of the preliminary questions reflected in the narration of the novel True Country, by Kim Scott. The central character, a school teacher, Billy decides to discover his true identity and culture which is summed in a place he has left his roots in – his ‘True Country’. It is best to start with the author himself and learn about his background which is definitely one of the main reasons and motivation he has written the novel. ‘Kim Scott is a descendant of people who have always lived along the south-east coast of Western Australia and is glad to be living in times when it is possible to explore the significance of that fact and be one among those who call themselves Nyoongar. His novel, True Country, can be categorized as an Indigenous life-writing genre compared to the western autobiographical novels. This genre is ‘more willing to engage with representational métissage across cultural and language traditions and communities than conventional literary Western paradigms’ (Renes, 2013, p. 178). As a result Scott picks up ‘creative fiction as a freer means to approximate Indigenous reality and identity with a picture “more true than the truth” (p. 178). Renes comments on the writing style of Kim Scott:

His writing analyses his own marginal position in Australian Indigeneity as an assimilated urban Aborigine and the consequences this has for identity formation. Thus, he advocates for a pluralistic, inclusive sense of Indigeneity catering for marginal cases as his own. Kim Scott boasts and boosts an uncanny fringe Indigenous-Australian identity encroaching upon whiteness. He vaunts his own idiosyncratic case to break down static, engrained definitions of Indigeneity and whiteness, putting his identity on the line to confront the mainstream in a ‘patriotic’ act as the Indigenous writer Philip McLaren told me, in which Indigeneity and Australianness hook up and reinforce each other. His writing is instrumental in playing out the latter discursive tension (p. 183).

Threshold

In short, Scott is introducing the challenge of his own identity, within the spectrum of Indignity to being Australian with his central character in True Country.

The Novel: True Country True Country, was published as the first attempt of Scott in novel writing. The narrator is offering the reader a detailed account of a school teacher, who in spite of knowing the fact that he is Aboriginal, has not been in touch with his original home and culture yet. Thus he decides to take a journey to his hometown, where Nyoongar people live, so as to discover, live and identify with his Aboriginal identity. Scott is making use of this character as a paradigmatic case: as someone whose investigation of his personal history shows the possibility and the importance of moving from ignorance to knowledge; from anger and outrage at injustices to a more compassionate view of the oppressors of the past; from a sense of being psychologically damaged and spiritually disinherited to a healing identification with his people and the land. How the novel gets started and the initial lines, is also noticeable. Since, it foreshadows the pivotal theme and the central conflict of the story. Indeed it I an official invitation for the reader who is willing to identify with the main character:

You might stay that way, maybe forever, with no world to belong to and belong to you. You in your many high places, looking over looking over, waiting for a sign. You’re nearly ready, nearly there (Scott, 1993, p. 13).

Hence, the narrator is placing the conflict of identity and attachment to certain language, culture, people and place, right ahead of the reader. So the reader is taken to a quest with an ‘uncertain’ narrator - who is composed ‘to portray the intersubjectivity and Intertextuality of the self and to limit imaginative desire’ (Slater, 2005, p. 149) - in search of the true identity and investigation of its significance.

Aboriginal Identity: An Introduction The initial question regarding Aboriginal identity is what constitutes identity. As Brady (1997) argues:‘[t]he complexities with which Indigenous knowledge is transferred in Aboriginal societies goes beyond mere subject matter and lies

Volume 8 Number 1, within who we are as a people’(p. 420). Therefore, such transformation ought to be realized by having the authorial and indigenous voices at the heart of the narration. Moreover, the function of these various voices is to intimately identify, through the shifting language and structure, the different types of white Australians – teachers, builders, maintenance men, nuns, priests - and the multifaceted nature of the Aboriginal society at the settlement. Doing so, the reader is granted entry into the lives of all the characters to varying degrees, by the nature of realistic dialogue of the narrators. The narrative is seen from within each character as he/she speaks. As a result, the reader is at ease to identify with the characters. Now then, the character, in search of his true identity, needs to undergo a process of transformation. Slater (2005) argues that ‘to respond ethically in cross- cultural engagements one must be open to otherness and not synthesize it into sameness. In so doing, one is exposing oneself to the destabilizing process of not being able to recognize oneself in the other. One’s openness to the other leaves one exposed to another’s desires, and thus subject to being reconfigured and becoming someone other than one is’ (p. 149). He then concludes that:

One’s self is composed from encounters with otherness. To perceive of the self as emerging from encounters with otherness is to radically transform concepts of subjectivity and identity. The image of subjectivity is not one of self-consistency or fixity, but rather of is fluidity and porosity. The other and otherness is not a threat to one’s being, but the site from which one’s identity is generated. In Australia both Indigenous and non- Indigenous identities are constituted from cross-cultural encounters. However, political and social actions are only possible through self- limitation. To take up a speaking position one must participate in the necessary fiction of an arbitrary closure that makes politics and identity possible (p. 149).

And Scott provides us with a dialogue between Franny and Billy in which they are discussing whether Billy belongs to the community or not. In other words, they want to figure out to which extent can someone regard themselves as a native or a stranger?

And when our Billy came back from faraway, searching, he saw Franny peering at him through the repaiered spectacles, his eyes swimming behind the thick lenses. ‘You, Sir, people say you is like us. True?’

Threshold

Well, not black. Or dark brown, or purple-black, or coffee coloured, or black-brown. Maybe tan. But what is this? We are all different. I am not the same. (Scott, 1993, pp. 164-165)

Accordingly, ‘Speaking from the position of vulnerable identity allows Scott to investigate the complexity of postcolonial Australia. It is too late for us to forget one another so we must examine the interconnectedness that history has thrust upon us. Scott explores this interconnected history through his unconsoled narrator, who cannot speak with too much authority (Slater, 2005, p. 150). An instance of such uncertainty and lack of authority can be found in the excerpt below in which such declaration of ‘his identity to be provisional enables him to contest colonialism’s essentialised racial identity constructs’ (p. 151):

‘C’mon Billy, what’ve you got?’ ‘Doubt,’ said Billy. ‘Doubt?’ ‘Yes, doubt.’ About what?’ laughed Gerrard. About me, the past, what I’m doing, where I belong, the future, um … ‘You sound like the mob here,’ slurred Gerrard. ‘You’re drunk Billy,’ said Liz. ‘Anyway, you can’t have doubt. Both B’s are on the board and it wouldn’t fit in.’ ‘Oh.’ His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked tired and pale, a creamy, jaundiced colour. Gerrard and Liz, magnanimous in their victory over him, looked at his letters. ‘D, T, Y.’ ‘Look. Here, with OUGHT.’ ‘DOUGHTY.’ ‘Don’t have doubt, but be doughty,’ Gerrard and Liz seemed to be laughing at him. (Scott, 1993, p. 129)

Volume 8 Number 1,

However, Billy is reassured by other characters, Aborigines, not to have doubt. Instead, he is encouraged to be brave and strong to find his true identity.

National and Cultural Identity: A Transnational Perspective The other central theme of the novel, as can be realized by its title, is the search for national identity. So, he is aiming not only to understand and feel his true country, but also recording and transmitting the observations for all who are in quite the same predicament. The narrator is, as a result, crossing the borders to enter and discover his genuine national identity and at the same time, bringing home his message from that community to the whole world; thus, producing a transnational literature. As Wilson (2001) criticizes the contemporary cultural studies to emphasize on dominant cultural forms, suggests that instead of marginalizing such national identity, and with regard to postcolonial movements, it is best to ‘dialectically juxtapose these competing traditions and put them in critical dialogue in the present rather than keeping them held apart and quietist, confined to the past’ (p. 394). That is why such need has led to the emergence of “Asia- Pacific” literature which ‘demands border-crossing, conceptual outreach, nomadic linkages, and interdisciplinary originality’ (p. 394). It is accurately what Scott is aiming at by writing True Country, which is also making an attempt to single out Aboriginal cultural identity against the view of the colonizers. As Grossman (2006) states:

Since first contact with the colonizers of this country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been the object(s) of a continual flow of commentary and classification … since their first intrusive gaze, colonizing cultures have had a preoccupation with observing, analyzing, studying, classifying and labeling Aborigines and Aboriginality. Aboriginality changed from being a daily practice to being "a problem to be solved" (p. 2).

Therefore, ‘the project of Indigenous writing and representation is seen by many Indigenous scholars as crucial and ongoing in order to maintain and strengthen cultural identities, meanings and histories’ (p. 2). Consequently, we need to broaden the horizon of readership and go transnational to achieve the desired goals of advocating national and cultural identity of indigenous people, here in particular, Australian Aboriginals. Thus, ‘“going transnational” is about adopting a perspective, an angle. Going transnational is not moving to a different field of study, shifting allegiances and references’ (Saunier, 2006, p. 119).

Threshold

Self-Determination In order to provide a well-established position for themselves among the other nationalities and cultures in the world, and for the purpose of ‘going transnational’, indigenous people need to self-determine their own place. Cholchester (2002) emphasizes on the post-colonial view against the domination of colonizers to deprive Indigenous people of the free will to navigate their own destinies:

'Indigenous peoples' - so long the objects of anthropological study – have emerged over the past thirty years both as widely accepted subjects of international law and as global actors in charge of their own destinies [...] Western philosophy has long struggled to reconcile the notions that reality derives from an individual's perception but is assembled collectively by societies (p. 1).

And to mention a historical document Salazar (2009) refers to UN General Assembly’s 'Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples' adopted by a vote of 143 in favor, 4 against, and 11 abstentions in September 2007 (p. 506). Not surprisingly, as he adds:

[T]he four countries that voted against the Declaration (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA) maintained a position of no support because of concerns over provisions on self-determination, particularly on conflicting views over land, water, and other resources, and the potential 'veto' that indigenous organizations may have over national legislation and state and corporate management of resources. The four countries in question expressed dissatisfaction with the references to self- determination in the text and the possible consequences of social mobilization towards territorial independence. Their rejection was a direct reaction to views asking for an open decolonization of the notion of development, a kind of barrier to freedom in Sen's view, in which development is seen not as the ultimate goal of social progress, economic growth, and environmental sustainability, but - in this particular case - as a step towards indigenous self-determination (p. 506).

Nevertheless, such rejection can be argued against when we examine the Indigenous epistemologies regarding self-determination more closely. The fact is that such social change can be viewed both ‘as a material change (recovery, inclusion, survival, and the needs for material development), [and] as an epistemological transformation. The demands of indigenous social movements

Volume 8 Number 1, worldwide towards self-determination are claims […] [in favor of] the right for different knowledge to coexist, and to carry weight in the decisions that affect people's lives’ (p. 508). However, Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and ‘their right to conceive development’ (p. 505) cannot be fully realized unless ‘this concept is translated into everyday life practices, and its meaning deferred into locally embedded knowledge’ (p. 505). As a consequence, Kim Scott becomes aware of the fact that colonial authority is aiming at controlling people’s culture by ‘control[ling] their tools of self-definition in relationship to others’ (Thiong’o, 2004, p. 1135). For this reason, he is making an attempt to allow Indigenous people to identify themselves.

Deconstruction of Western Paradigm For such self-determination to take place, it requires the Aborigines to deconstruct the archetypes imposed to them by the colonizers. As Romero-Little study reveals:

Today Indigenous peoples worldwide are deconstructing Western paradigms, including the classic constructs of literacy connected to alphabet systems, and articulating and constructing their own distinct paradigms based on Indigenous epistemologies and rooted in self- determination and social justice. A vital aspect of these efforts is the “rethinking of our thinking” and a reexamination of our priorities as a means for reconstituting, reproducing, and validating our own intellectual traditions and cultural knowledge. Fundamentally, what is done (or adopted) today should not be understood as a loss of culture […] but a link to the past and future existence of Indigenous peoples (Romero, 2006, p.399).

Accordingly, this concern is reflected in True Country, where Billy is expressing his unresolved dilemma and doubt: ‘About me, the past, what I’m doing, where I belong, the future, um …(Scott, 1993, p. 129) and later on, in the course of the novel, is given a resolution. Hence, it can be a guide for them to be ‘teller of tales’, to self-determine their future and to ‘sing the world anew’, thus to deconstruct the pre-determined and imposed paradigms:

He wanted to be some sort of seer, a teller of tales, the one who gives meaning, and weaves the unraveling and trailing threads of the lives and histories here together so that people can be held up and together by the

Threshold

integrity and sense of the patterns. He who sings the world anew so that you know where you are (p. 169).

On the other hand, the other important aspect of such story-telling within the narrative is as Das (2012) claims: ‘[True Country] closely follows the oral narrative technique of Aboriginal story telling style in English which by all standards is Aboriginal in its form. Moreover, the polyphony of narrative voices produces a Bakhtinian decentralization of Western monopolistic narrative’ (p. 151). So, with the help of such technique Scott hit both targets at the same time – he brings about a change in narrative framework which is different from the western versions and at the same time makes his story more authentic with regard to Indigenity.

Decolonizing the Mind

‘…We didn’t know how to speak the language. We forgot about our language. We talk in English. I couldn’t understand my mummy. I forgot all about our language. We forgot about it… ‘My mummy said that she cannot understand, to other people. Telling them that we cannot understand them and that they cannot talk, when they were talking to us in language. Mummy told them, “They don’t talk, they forgot about their language.” (Scott, 1993, p. 33)

In the excerpt above, we can obviously see ‘the overpowering effects of linguistic colonization’ (Das, 2012, p. 146) on the children being adopted by Australian families. Here, Scott is expressing his great concern regarding the gradual loss of native languages. As a result, the other important factor in which a post-colonial author must deal with, is ‘decolonizing the mind’ of the reader by means of their very essential tool which is the language. As Ngugi wa Thiong'o in his essay titled Decolonizing the Mind states: any language has ‘a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture’ (Thiong’o, 2004, p. 1132). Therefore, an advocate of Indigenous rights must be aware that English, French, Spanish or any other colonizing language ought to merely function as a means of communication with the rest of the world, as it is the dominant language. Based on this argument, the author then should endeavor to keep the source culture by means of the target language. Notwithstanding the fact that the produced post-colonial literature is written in a modern language, a newly produced version of its former style has also been created.

Volume 8 Number 1,

Thiong’o (2004) believes that this new language ‘will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings’ (p. 1129). Scott, in his True Country, tries to provide the same situation for the reader, with respect to Australian Aboriginal communities.

Language as Culture Language as culture, then ‘is the collective memory bank of a people's experience in history. Culture is almost indistinguishable from the language that makes possible its genesis, growth, banking, articulation and indeed its transmission from one generation to the next (Thiong’o, 2004, p. 1134). He then, defines three major aspects of language as culture : the first one being ‘a product of the history which it in turn reflects. Culture in other words is a product and a reflection of human beings, communicating with one another in the very struggle to create wealth and to control it’ (Thiong’o, 2004, p. 1134). In True Country, there are numerous examples of such communications all throughout the novel. Such as:

What were they saying? ‘Who dem gardiya?’ ‘Teachers?’ ‘Look out, ’m fall off not careful.’ ‘Wave ’em, look at ’em they wave. Think they pope, or what?’ ‘Look at that one, blondie one, that short one.’ ‘See that hat? That john Wayne maybe, ridin’ Toyota.’ ‘Aiee! That red hair girl, mine!’ Screams of laughter. (Scott, 1993, p. 18)

The second aspect is ‘an image-forming agent in the mind of a child. Our whole conception of ourselves as a people, individually and collectively, is based on those pictures and images which may or may not correctly correspond to the actual reality of the struggles with nature and nurture which produced them in the first place’ (Thiong’o, 2004, p. 1134). For instance, in this excerpt, an image- forming description is given by an indigenous Aborigine, defining who they are:

Threshold

We Aboriginal people. Look at us. We’re low down, we down there in the dark, and nobody. One time it was different, for us and this land. We had ones that could fix things, and could fly, disappear, punish (Scott 206).

And thirdly, language as culture is defined as ‘mediating between me and my own self; between my own self and other selves; between me and nature. Language is mediating in my very being’ (Thiong’o, 2004, p. 1134). Thus, the struggles and conflicts within the novel, such as the inner challenges of the protagonist, which is the ambivalences between being Australian and Indignity; the reality of the ‘true home’ versus the apparent descriptions he had formerly perceived. Indeed, we can mention that of the people with one another and the last but not the least, that of people and nature are all addressed through language.

The people who belonged here liked to talk and listen around campfires. Yes, they liked to listen. And now they watch vidoes all through the night, and recite lines of dialogue, role-playing with one another (Scott, 1993, p. 171).

The Post-Colonial Language Moreover, in the new post-colonial English which is produced in correspondence with the indigenous community of Australian Aborigines, adaptation with the local language for the very purpose of decolonization of the mind can be observed. The word order, syntax, occasionally semantics and even manipulation in supra-segmental features of phenology, such as stress, intonation and tone of speech can be felt and touched in the new version of language, which is produced in a post-colonial work such as True Country. It can be difficult to argue the latter in a written text; however, with the aid of word order, and familiarity with the original- native - language of the area, we can feel the difference. For instance, in the excerpt below, when we scrutinize the quoted dialogues of the native people, we observe the juxtaposition of the fragmented parts: ‘I used to fish/ with my dad/with a net/ when I was a kid’ (Scott, 1993, p. 107) which is obviously not typical of a native English speaker way of utterance. Here, as Thiong’o (2004) suggests: ‘we learnt the music of our language on top of the content’ (p. 1131).

‘I used to fish, with my dad, with a net, when I was a kid.’ ‘You seen that video?’ ‘Some of the songs the band was doing, I never heard before.’ (Scott, 1993, p. 107)

Volume 8 Number 1,

And such production of new English, suited to the people about whom the text is written, is not restricted to the quoted dialogues, but to the narration as well. For example, the repetition of a word, here ‘yelling’, emphasizes the closeness to the culture from which the text has been brought about. And it can be better felt when we visualize the seen in our mind:

Raphael was yelling yelling yelling all the time and acting like a crazy man. He pushed Sebastian even, a little bit, and Sebastian’s boys came in and they took him away and pushed him, shoved him. He is crazy that Raphael (Scott, 1993, p. 111).

Furthermore, attention to the indigenous orature, oral literature, is of grave significance in True Country. Here, in this interview with an Indigenous person, we can come across the importance of orature in native communities and the consequences we can face upon the loss of it:

There’s another thing that’s been catching my attention … oral traditions and dialogue within the Indigenous group. When they did their interviews with me, one of the…the little grandma, no? She began to talk, talk, talk…she described with so much sweetness, tenderness, I don’t know. It’s like that, no? So if the grandmother dies, with her dies all that she knows and now with the influence of the media of communication, with the highway that’s arrived to the last community, all that used to be practiced and lived is getting lost, the traditional practices of Indigenous peoples are getting lost. And I think that inside all those practices there’s a lesson. There’s a cultural wealth, no? I believe that there’s a unique respect but nevertheless, that now is being lost (Hornberger, 2012, pp. 507-508).

Despite the importance of written literature, Scott is bringing forth the contradictory attitude towards old and new generation with singing, story-telling and even dancing as a nonverbal form of art and literature:

The old people, they couldn’t read or write, but they had their stories in their mouths and they had them in their hands. They danced and they sang all their stories (Scott, 1993, p. 247).

Threshold

And then Scott stresses on the deconstruction of our approach to the colonized literature by ‘[his] style of storytelling [which] rehearse the process of the self being open to and reconstituted by otherness’ (Slater, 2005, p. 153): We gotta be moving, remembering, singing our place little bit new, little bit special, all the time (Scott, 1993, p. 255).

Transformations of Subjectivity Scott is intentionally using a first person narrative that is reflecting his observance and gradually fades away in the course of the narrative. Thus, there is a move from subjectivity to a place where it does not play any role. In that case, as the protagonist is in search of his own identity, he is supposed to leave aside all the master narrative inputs; he has obtained so far in order to welcome his longed experience. Thiong’o (2004) states that ‘[h]ow we see a thing – even with our eyes - is very much dependent on where we stand in relationship to it (p. 1138). Accordingly, a change of perspective and a shift in the angle from which we see things can make a great deal of difference. Scott is proposing such shift in subjectivity so that his reader can better identify with the situation: ‘Kim Scott’s carefully self-reflexive art configures an embracing sense of subjectivity within the possibilities of a strategic employment of identity’ (Renes, 2013, p. 184). As Slater (2005) argues: ‘One can be an author, but never an authority, as one self and the world are ineluctably other’(p. 151). And Scott is maneuvering with his narrator with the same intention. He leaves a space for the digestion of perceived experiences; a space for contemplation: ‘In the performative utterance of addressing one’s unknowable interlocutor, a gap is opened in one’s identity, in which the self is reconfigured’ (p. 149). He tends to give his narrator the opportunity to grasp the identity within the way the Indigenous people narrate their lives and have dialogues: ‘One self is always an improvisation generated within a dialogue’ (p. 153). This way, he opens ‘a new ethics of cross-cultural engagement [that] is reliant on transformations of subjectivity’ (p. 153). An example from the novel can be when Fatima is laughing over the appearance versus reality and a shift in subjectivity:

Fatima laughed, ‘Yeah, and we thought rice was maggots. People thought these white ones wa ghosts, we thought them monks in their habits was like djimi from the caves; white skin, you know, and black clothes floating around them’ (Scott, 1993, p. 39).

Volume 8 Number 1,

Cultural Recovery The final scene of the story is when Billy happens to discover what he was looking for. Nonetheless, his mission is not yet completed. He needs to find new strategies to recover the culture he has discovered and is a part of; if he is really meaning to save, support and nourish it. And as Das (2012) claims : ‘in the final analysis, Kim Scott’s True Country culminates with an identity formation where an individual identity is proved to exist amidst the community identity, the finding of one inevitably leading to the finding of another’ (p. 151). He is, therefore, expected to ‘sing it anew’, a ‘little bit special’ and ‘all the time’:

The rain spat in the window, onto his face. I felt it. See? Now it is done. Now you know. True country. Because just living, just living is going downward lost drifting nowhere, no matter if you be skitter scatter dancing any kind like mad. We gotta be moving, remembering, singing our places little bit new, little bit special, all the time. We are serious. We are grinning. Welcome to you (Scott, 1993, p. 255).

I would call this moment, a touch point, to pick up a business term. Because, here is the time and the place where one has to present his offers and expectations. Indigenous peoples are, as a matter of fact, inevitably living with a dominant culture and language that is the heritage of the colonizers. Still, in order to ‘resist, challenge and reconfigure the colonial project that continues in Australia, where the colonizers’ culture, will and knowledge dominate the social field and notions of “truth” (Slater, 2005, p. 149), they need to find, declare and recover their place on a cross-cultural basis. Brewster, in this regard, argues that:

Without wanting to highjack or erase the specificity of cultural recovery for indigenous communities, I’d like to suggest that, in the Australian context, cultural recovery can also function to (re)connect white and other nonindigenous people to the bodily history of colonisation and (re)establish and (re)configure cross-cultural relations with the indigenous owners of this country. Recognising cross-racial kinship – that is, cross- cultural intersubjectivity and intercorporeality - entails a recognition of indigenous prior occupancy and geopolitical autonomy; of indigenous sovereignty. It also entails an acknowledgment of the founding role that indigenous people played as ‘pioneers’ in the establishment of modern Australia, that is, in the pastoral industry and other industries such as whaling and pearling. Reading, as a zone of cross-racial intersubjectivity

Threshold

and indigenous literature, can enhance the process of non-indigenous reconnection by bringing indigenous people’s accounts of the nation’s formation to mainstream audiences, thus broadening their awareness of indigenous people’s role in that history and the continuance of indigenous sovereignty. To think differently about the past is to open up the ways in which we conceive of the future (Slater, 2005, p. 69).

Indeed, one way for Indigenous people to recover their culture as Slater suggests is choosing names for themselves ‘that are generated from histories, memories and imaginaries that are other to non-Indigenous Australians’ (Slater, 2005, p. 149). A project that Scott has also attempted to fulfill by having genuine Indigenous names like ‘Walanguh’ included in his novel. In Short, the story would not end with Billy discovering his identity; quite on the contrary, it is a beginning for renewing the culture and clearing the dust off of the forgotten treasures.

Conclusion True Country starts with the aim of finding a home, a country to belong to and a lost identity to discover. Throughout the novel, however, other major factors without which such identity cannot survive is discussed. Namely, going transnational so that Indigenous culture is heard all over the world, the idea that they have to determine their own path and rights without the interference of any colonizing force, and deconstruction of all the archetypes that have been created by the western ideologies. Furthermore, language plays a vital role in every culture, particularly for Indigenous people. Kim Scott is making an attempt to decolonize the mind of the readership – the postcolonial reader – as well as the Indigenous peoples. Therefore, a new form of colonized language is produced so that it can give voice to the native culture and request the reader to differentiate between the two forms by reading between the lines; as a result, familiarizing themselves with Indigenous culture. In that case, ‘Scott employs fiction as a space where an Indigenous truth can be told that Official History denies or questions, as well as a space of reflection and Indigenous recovery’ (Renes, 2013, p. 183). His style of narration is in accord with Indigenous culture of storytelling. That is to say, there is a harmony between form and content, which in fact strengthens the effect of his fiction to transcend even to reality. Accordingly, Scott’s ‘sense of Indigenous- Australianness in his fiction, mak[es] him probably the best example of a transcultural, inclusionary sense of self in contemporary Indigenous Australian literature’ (Renes, 2013, p. 186).

Volume 8 Number 1,

Consequently, as the identity is discovered and so the ‘True Country’, it is time for a cultural recovery, reestablishing the motives, and rebuilding the culture which might otherwise be doomed to extinction.

References Brady, W. (1997). Indigenous Australian education and globalization. International Review of Education, 5(6), 413-422. Brewster, A. (2011). Whiteness and indigenous sovereignty in Kim Scott’s That Dead Man Dance. The Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia, 2(2), 60-71. Colchester, M. (2002). Indigenous rights and the collective conscious. Anthropology Today, 18(1), 1-3. Das, A. (2012). Resisting deracination, reviving identity: re-reading Kim Scott’s True Country. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 4(2), 144-152. Grossman, M. (2006). When they write what we read: Unsettling indigenous Australian life writing. Australian Humanities Review, 1-40. Hornberger, N.H (2012). Bilingual intercultural education and Andean hip hop: Transnational sites for indigenous language and identity. Language in Society, 499-525. Renes, C. M. (2013). Kim Scott’s fiction within western Australian life-writing, Coolabah, 10, 177-189. Romero, M. E. (2006). Honoring our own: Rethinking indigenous languages and literacy. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 37(4), 399-402. Salazar, J. F. (2009) Self-determination in practice: The critical making of indigenous media. Development in Practice, 19(4), 504-513. Saunier, P. (2006). Going transnational? News from down under: Transnational history symposium. Historical Social Research, 31(2), 118-131. Scott, K. (1993). True Country. South Fremantle, W.A: Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Slater, L. (2005). Kim Scott’s Benang: An ethics of uncertainty. Journal of University of Sydney Press, 4, 147-158. Thiong'o, N. W. (2004). Literary theory: An anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Wilson, R. (2001). Doing cultural studies inside APEC: Literature, cultural identity and global/local dynamicsin the American pacific. Comparative Literature, 53(4), 389-403.

Threshold

Unconscious Submission to ISA and Lack of Agency: An Althusserain Reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

Saman Zoleikhaei English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract The present paper is to explore the process through which a group of villagers are hailed by an ISA called lottery. They do believe in the power of unknown forces to bring fertility and crops to them only in case of dedicating a human being as sacrifice. Althusser believes that ISAs are the means by which individuals are changed into subjects, subjects to the ruling ideology. Conducting the lottery for choosing a scapegoat is considered to be a cultural ISA by means of which the status quo of dominance is maintained. ISA works primarily by ideology and secondarily by force. The lottery and its mechanics are concrete actions and practices. Such concrete aspects refer to the notion of the materiality of ideology. ISAs tend to manifest themselves in practices and rituals which are ideologically loaded. The process of ideological recognition which shows our relationship to reality is called ‘interpellation’ in the terminology of Althusser. Consequently, subjectivization to the ruling and controlling ideology leads to the restriction of agency. That is why the villagers follow this tradition blindly though there are some traces of resistance among the ‘young folks’. Keywords: tradition, scapegoat, ideology, ISA, materiality, interpellation, Shirley Jackson

8Volume Number 1,

"The Lottery" solely could save Shirley Jackson’s eminence and status in the world of literature though she was a prolific writer. Being published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, "The Lottery" is the story of delusion by ungrounded tradition. One must be stoned to death to satisfy the gods in order to bring about fertility in the crops. The story deals with man’s “all-too-human tendency to seize upon a scapegoat” (Brooks & Warren, 1959, p. 47). Helen Nebeker )4747( believed that the story was an exploration of “unexamined and unchanging traditions" (p. 401). In the critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman )4741( noted that when Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” was published, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received"; hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by “bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse" (p.31 ). The author was inundated with so many letters that she changed her box in post office to a larger one. Strempke-Durgin )9007( has argued that "it is useful to read Jackson’s work as a 20th century Gothic tale that addresses the darker side of human nature and politics" (p. 14). This Gothic essence permeated the thematic skeleton of the literature of the early decades of the 20th century. In Jackson’s story, Mrs. Delacroix, Bobby Martin, and Old Man Warner are among the remarkable and salient representatives of this evil side of human nature . In “The Lottery” a group of villagers do believe in the power of an archetype to transform their destiny. What has been written so far regarding the story has dealt with the dark side of the thematic elements self-sufficiently. The archetype of ‘scapegoat’ is investigated and shown to be an ISA and more importantly ‘material’ by which the villagers are hailed and turned into subjects, subjects to the ruling ideology. The lottery and its mechanics are concrete actions and practices that show the materiality of ideology. I demonstrate how all the characters are ‘hailed’ one by one by ‘naming’ which ends in subjectivization. Althusser (1970) believed that ISA works primarily by ideology and secondarily by force. Moreover I will clarify how these villagers are ‘always already subjects’ since they are born into ideology. Althusser’s anti-humanistic worldview is touched upon to shed light on the villagers’ lack of agency to disrupt the status quo of unconscious submission. Subjectivization to the ruling and controlling ideology leads to the restriction of agency. That is why the villagers follow the tradition of lottery and finding a scapegoat blindly though there are some traces of resistance among the ‘young folks’. In her unique short story, Shirley Jackson dramatizes how all the characters are ‘hailed’ by the dominant ideology, that of tradition and ‘scapegoat’. The lottery, conducted each year on June, is the indirect means by which the material condition, beds for controlling, and the elements needed for its continuation are reproduced. Kosenko (1988) contends that “the lottery is an

Threshold ideological mechanism” and goes on to affirm the story’s reinforcement of “the village’s hierarchal order by instilling the villagers with an unconscious fear that if they resist this order they might be selected in the next lottery” (p. 27). The lottery is ideologically loaded and school children are among its first and notable victims. Choosing one person is the way to bring about fertility. The belief in the power and effect of the lottery is clearly shown by Old Man Warner who warns the villagers: “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (Jackson, 1991, p. 297). Later on he adds the following remarks: “There’s always been a lottery” (p. 297). The very word ‘always’ is richly loaded with the idea that the lottery, ruling ideology, hails ‘always already subjects’ and there is no escape since they are under the influence of two factors, namely time and place which are in close affinity with the power of ideology to form them. Therefore there is no escape and in the case of having such an idea they are labeled as “Pack of crazy fools” (p. 297). Some of the characters especially the young had in mind giving up the lottery. Old Man Warner remarks “Nothing but trouble in that” (p. 297). Dread of trouble is what keeps the villagers bounded to the ideology and makes them participate in the cruel ritualistic ISA. Coulhard (1990) has argued: “It is not that the ancient custom of human sacrifice makes the villagers behave cruelly, but that their thinly veiled cruelty keeps the custom alive. Savagery fuels evil tradition, not vice versa” (p. 226). In addition, the cruelty of the villagers is given further emphasis by the effect of the crowd. Each individual loses the illusion of having an autonomous being and sees himself or herself as a part of the crowd. They justify the act of stoning by psychologically labeling the fellow-villagers as their accomplice. This diffusion of responsibility makes the villagers believe as if they are less responsible. The etymological root of archetype goes back to an ‘original model’ of something or somebody. The tradition of the scapegoat as a ritual finds its origin in the sacrificial offering of two goats, one for the Hebrew God and the other one for carrying the sins of the tribe of the community. From the viewpoint of Yung archetype is “a primordial that recurs throughout human civilization in various forms, always referring back to the original type” (Wilfreys, Robbins, & Womack, 2006, p. 11). Jackson employs the lottery, a recurrent pattern of action, which is conducted each year at June, as a social ritual. The lottery is the means by which the material conditions are reproduced through representation of the imaginary relationships of the villagers to their real state of being. The repetition and recurrence of the lottery ends in the rootedness of the ideology and changes it into a habitual and unconscious act which leaves no place for resistance and revolt. Jackson manipulates the characters to conduct a lottery in order to choose a scapegoat for stoning at the end of the story. This tradition is to be the psychic archetype through which the villagers are deluded to expect a rise the growth of their corns. This way of thinking and leading life is rooted in the unconscious of

8Volume Number 1, the villages since the reference to the black box shows that it “had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born” (Jackson, 1991, p. 292). This black box is the representation of tradition as mentioned by Mr. Summers. Lack of knowledge and literacy brings about such superstitious thought for which there is no firm base. This ritual has changed into an essential part of the life of the villagers as others acts did. Jackson (1991) wrote “The lottery was conducted -- as were the square dances, the teen-age club, the Halloween program -- by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities” (p. 292). In the introduction to part three of Cultural theory: an anthology, ideology has been defined as “the ideational impetus of our actions and practices” (Szeman & Kaposy, 2011, p. 157). What brings all the villagers in Jackson’s story to participate in the lottery is the mechanics of ideology, which has been shown in the story as the material practices of drawing a paper and stoning the chosen scapegoat. Ideology as “an imperative to act” makes the villagers take part in the lottery. Ideology creates the social illusion of proliferation of crops in case of having a human as sacrifice. Althusser brought a kind of revolution to the definition of ideology. Prior to Althusser, ideology designated a way of thinking which is systematically mistaken; in other words, it signified false consciousness. Althusser did his best to change this designation of ideology and to give it a material coloring. He believed in the materiality of ideology which was represented in the mere practice of that way of thinking and consequently following some acts. This definition of ideology is in line with the entry of ‘ideology’ in Key concepts in literary theory:

Ideology may be defined as that nexus of beliefs or ideas which, formed as more or less a dominant consensus at any particular historical moment and as the discursive, philosophical and imaginary mediation of lived social, political, economic and cultural relations, serves to perpetuate or otherwise is put to work in the maintenance of social and civil relationships. (Wilfreys, Robbins, & Womack, 2006, p.53)

Althusser states that Ideological State Apparatuses is a certain number of realities that are presented to the observer in the form of specialized institutions. ISAs are different from RSAs in many respects most significantly, “the Repressive State Apparatus functions ‘by violence’, whereas the Ideological State Apparatus functions ‘by ideology’” (Althusser, 1971, p. 208). He enumerates the following ISAs as the most outstanding of others: the religious, the educational, the family,

Threshold the legal, the political, and the cultural. There is a plurality of ISAs which are under the dominance of the ruling ideology, the ideology of the ruling class in order to maintain the status quo. Having Jackson’s “The Lottery” within this perspective, the lottery can be considered as a cultural ISA that has been passed down to the present generation and is to be transferred to the following ones by focusing on the children as one group of the victims of the hailing. Jackson (1991) wrote “The children assembled first, of course, School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them...” (p. 291). What the children want is ‘liberty’ from one of the ISAs which is ‘School’. Later on in the story she refers to the second recourse, that is repression, by which ISA controls the school children, “their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands” (Jackson, 1991, p. 291). The word ‘reprimand’ highlights the repressive aspect of ISA. Althusser believes that ISA functions massively and predominantly by ideology, but it also functions secondarily by repression. This repression in the domain of ISAs may be even symbolic that is why the process of stoning is given a formal and digestible veneer. It appears not to be violent since it has been filtered through the channel of a needed ISA called scapegoat which brings fertility. Ideology controls the villagers in a way that they themselves surrender to the power of the ideology. This tendency to partake in the lottery is clarified when little Dave is to draw one slip of paper, “Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him to the box” (Jackson, 1991, p. 300). ISA brings about a situation that leads to the ‘willing’ attendance of those who are subjectivized to the ruling ideology. What happens to ideology in the critical writings of Althusser is a matter of materialization; in other words, ideology is “actions inserted into practices.” Althusser believed in the sequence of material action, material practice, material ritual, and material ideological apparatus. He gave ideology a concrete coloring and believed that it creates ‘concrete subjects’ by extension. Althusser argued for the existence of ISAs in practices. Thus in the story such practices are represented by calling names and drawing pieces of paper, “‘all ready?” he called. “Now, I’ll read the names—heads of the families first—and the men come up and take a paper out of the box…’” (Jackson, 1991, p. 296). Ideology always exists in an apparatus and its practices and this existence is material. The lottery is a material action and is conducted each year using different material entities like paper, box, and human being. The visibility of the act is in line with the materiality of the ideology. Ideological interpellation occurs through calling the villagers to draw their slips of papers and focusing on all the members of the community, particularly the children since their vulnerability to the inculcation of the dominant ideology

8Volume Number 1, is higher in comparison with others. Althusser (1971) remarked that “all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects” (p. 218). To put it in another language, through the process of hailing an individual is subjectivized to the ruling ideology. The word ‘concrete’ gives further emphasis to the materiality of ideology. Each villager is no longer an individual but a subject for whom some roles have been defined. The villagers are ideologically subjectivized to lead a lottery. Interpellation is defined in the following way in Louis Althusser,

Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’ (Ferretter, 2006, p. 89)

They are engaged in some repetitive actions that ultimately lead to their failure in recognition that they are giving in to the invalid notions imposed by ISAs. Hailing deals with the moment and process of recognition of interaction with ideology. Thus hailing is a call for participation in the practice of the ideology. This hailing is rooted in the unconscious of the villagers because on the chosen day all gather to partake in the lottery. There is a reference to civic activities in the short story. These civic activities, being defined by the ideology of the ruling class in order to control the mass and maintain the material condition, hails the villagers as the lottery does. Ironically the man who is in charge of managing one of the ISAs has no children and his wife is not enslaved to the ruling ideology. The words and mechanics of the ISAs tend to be general and somehow apologetic; for example, at the time of coming to conduct the lottery Mr. Summers says “Little late today, folks” (Jackson, 1991, p. 292). He tries to apologize and uses ‘folk’ in order to consider all of them as slave to the ideology. Furthermore the stool on which the box of lottery is put has been located at the center which refers to illusionary equality and lack of bias toward any person. The equality is illusionary because those in charge of conducting the lottery are not included in drawing a slip of paper. There is no escape from the ideology for the ‘folk’. Jackson (1991) wrote “by now, all through the crowd there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hands…” (p. 297). Using the word ‘all’ is in line with the omnipresence of ideology and enslavement of all the villagers. This process of hailing is dramatized when the conductors of the lottery go through the list of the villagers and want them to take their slip of paper one by one in the alphabetical

Threshold order. In addition some of the characters cannot partake in the lottery and the rules state that either their wife or their eldest son shall draw for them, like Mr. Dunbar who has got a broken leg. Therefore no excuse for avoiding participation is accepted. The mere act of hailing is given further emphasis when Mr. Summers go through the list. They are directly hailed and they themselves are engaged in the process of hailing. In other words, the villagers hail themselves since they come to the lottery, they had all the rules by heart, and they follow the rituals of the lottery. Jackson (1991) wrote “the box”, the representation of the dominant ideology and tradition, “had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here” (p. 293). This black box “had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the town, was born” (p. 292). Furthermore, Old Man Warner mentions “There’s always been a lottery” (p. 297). These three quotations, by using ‘before…was born,’ and ‘always,’ show that the villagers are subjected to the ideology which has been particularized even prior to their birth; in other words, they are born into ideology. What they do is the mere fulfillment of pre-defined roles which is in parallel with reproducing the material conditions for the production of the means of controlling. Warner shows his loyalty to and belief in the lottery and tradition by telling of her seventy- seventh year of participation. Old Man Warner is in sheer contrast to those who are tired of the tradition and want to subvert it like some young folks. This loyalty to the lottery is the manifestation of the subject’s subjection to the ISAs. This subjection has been defined earlier and the characters have no other option excepting the blind submission to the ritual. Being enslaved to the ruling ideology even prior to birth is in close affinity with the anti-humanistic notion of the lack of agency. Humanists regard the individual as having almost unrestricted agency. On the contrary, Althusser filters this individual through interpellation and changes him/her into a subject. He is an anti-humanist and leaves no place for human agency. Agency is “one’s ability to act on the world on one’s own behalf or the extent to which one is empowered to act by the various ideological frameworks within which one operates” (Wilfreys, Robbins, & Womack, 2006, p. 5). The villagers have no activity and agency to protest against the causes of the lottery though Hutchinson revolts only on the account of being chosen as a scapegoat. Resistance signifies the ways through which any individual resist his position as a subject of ideology. In the words of Althusser (1971) man is inside ideology and there is no place for and possibility of resistance. The villagers are hailed even prior to their birth though some news of discarding the tradition is heard from other areas. They have no agency to subvert the ruling ideology.

8Volume Number 1,

The gradual change which is to occur to the ruling ideology and the movement toward resistance are artistically brought to light by Jackson while describing the black box, “Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off…it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained” (Jackson, 1991, p. 293). The ruling ideology or the ISA is to ‘fade off’ and is ‘splintered’ to some extent. Later on Shirley Jackson refers to discarding and forgetting some rituals of the lottery. In another part of the story Mr. Adams says “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery” (p. 297). These groups of villagers are referred to as “pack of crazy fools” and Old Man Warner who is the supporter of the ISA adds “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them” (p. 297). Kosenko (1988) has argued that “it is important to note that the people who are in charge of the lottery are also those who are socially dominant in the town” (p. 28). What is needed to subvert the present status is acting in an ‘absurd and foolish’ manner by the young folks. Their ‘absurd and foolish’ behavior stands against the ISA. The young folks have the potentiality to show traces of resistance, though unfulfilled, since they have been less contaminated with the ideology. When Hutchinson is chosen to be stoned, she angrily says that the lottery has not been conducted fairly and she has not been given enough time to draw the paper. Thus she starts to move toward resistance against the ruling ideology by including her own family member in the final lottery which is a mere representation of her cruelty. She is content to transfer the lot to even one of her own family members. Her voice of resistance is silenced when Mrs. Graves says: “All of us took the same chance” (Jackson, 1991, p. 298). Lastly when they are to stone Tessie Hutchison at the end of the story to complete the ritual, there is a reference to the gradual passage of the tradition which shows hope despite the bleak phrase of “they still remembered to use stones” (p. 301). At the last parts of the story Jackson uses ‘someone’ in order to refer to the process of transferring the dominant ideology to the following generations. The clash between ‘children’ and ‘someone’ explicates the need for providing the beds for the production of the material conditions needed for the reproduction of ideology, “The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” (p. 301). Thus the traces of resistance fade off rather than get actualized form in the anti-humanistic approach of Althusser. When a group of people tend to reply the calls of ISA they must pay for its consequences. The restriction of agency is what the villagers pay for their blind submission. Such viewpoint originates in lack of knowledge and superstitious beliefs. The notion of blind loyalty to a tradition due to lack of knowledge brings about a situation that leaves no space for compassion and humanity. Bill Hutchinson is ready and willful to transfer the lot to another

Threshold member of her family. Cruelty and lack of care for stoning another are dramatized. Humanistic values are ignored and his/her status is degraded. All these villagers are hailed by diverse but coherent ideologies which end in being ‘always already subjects’. This state of being ‘always already subject’ to the ISA is an anti-humanistic approach which leaves no area for activity and active role in one’s life. Shirley Jackson turned a ritual into an ISA in order to not only control the ‘always already’ poor villagers but also maintain the status quo through the unconscious reproduction of the ruling ideology. “The Lottery” portrays how a common and everyday mechanism plays a key role in formation of subjectivity and maintenance of rooted ideology. The very lottery itself creates a hierarchy in the story by means of which those in charge of the act prepare the beds for the reproduction of the ideology. Jackson’s locating the children in the margin of the lottery and the story is intentional since she intends to portray the mechanism of ideology which is latent and indirect. By giving the children a marginal status in the skeleton of “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson critiques the ruling ideology of the early decades of the twentieth century.

References Althusser, L. (2011). Ideology and ideological state apparatus (Notes towards an investigation). In I. Szeman & T. Kapossy (Eds.), Cultural theory: An anthology (pp. 204-222). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Abrams, M. H., & Harpham, G. G. (1999). A glossary of literary terms. (7th ed.). Boston, Mass: Thomson Wadsworth. Bloom, H. (2001). Comprehensive research and study guide Bloom’s major short story writers: Shirley Jackson. Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers.

Brooks, C. & R.P. Warren (1959). Understanding fiction. New York: Appleton-Century- Crofts. Coulthard, A. R. (1990). Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’. Explicator, 48, 226-228. Ferretter, L. (2006). Louis Althusser. London and New York: Routledge. Friedman, L. (1975). Shirley Jackson. Boston: Twayne. Jackson, S. (1991). The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar. Kosenko, P. (1988). A Marxist/Feminist reading of Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’. New Orleans Review, 12, 27-32.

8Volume Number 1,

Nebeker, H. (1974). ‘The Lottery’: Symbolic tour de force. American Literature, 46, 100- 107. Strempke-Durgin, H. D. (2009). Patriarchal power and punishment: The trickster figure in the short fiction of Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates. Corvallis: Oregon State University. Wolfreys, J., R. Robbins & K. Womack (2006). Key concepts in literary theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Threshold

Enough It Is! That All the Day Was Yours: The Carnivalesque in Spenser’s "Epithalamion"

Ali Nazifpour English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract Edmund Spenser’s poem, Epithalamion, can be considered a good example of Bakhtin’s concept of Carnivalesque as much as Rabelais, although it can be shown that the attitude towards Carnivalesque is scared and anxious. Bakhtin looks at carnival as a time in which the normal social hierarchies are inverted, and people are temporarily freed from the social bounds through joy, laughter, and chaos, and as a result these unofficial festivities create a temporary freedom for people, leading to a state of “gay relativity” and grotesque realism. Considering such elements, it becomes deducible that Spenser’s attitude was a dual attitude, and therefore in his treatment of the Irish nature lets in the elements of the Carnivalesque and grotesque even if it was against his will. The opening of the poem is happy and personal, marked with drinking and an erotic gaze, moves on to a religious phase which is void of any Carnivalesque elements, and then moves on to a third phase concerned with privacy and silence, in which anxiety overcomes joy and the Carnivalesque is over, as the old social ranks have been restored, order has prevailed, and therefore the collective sense of freedom has ended. Keywords: Spenser, Carnivalesque, Bakhtin, Epithalamion

8Volume Number 1,

The concept of Carnivalesque was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin in his study on Rabelais and the Renaissance culture in general. It was later applied to some other authors as well, including Shakespeare. But it seems that another Renaissance figure, Edmund Spenser, has been neglected in this regard. Spenser’s Epithalamion is a wedding poem; and applying Bakhtin’s concept of Carnivalesque could be rewarding and help our understanding of the poem. In this paper I aim to do so. I will do so first by summarizing Bakhtin’s points and then applying them to the text. Bakhtin introduces the concept of Carnivalesque in his book Rabelais and His World (1965). Bakhtin looks at carnival as a time in which the normal social hierarchies are inverted, and people are temporarily freed from the social bounds through joy, laughter, and chaos. He begins by explaining the importance of these festivities in the popular life of people:

Carnival festivities and the comic spectacles and ritual connected with them had an important place in the life of medieval man. […] These occasions built a second world and a second life outside officialdom, a world in which all medieval people participated more or less, in which they lived during a given time of the year. […] All the comic forms were transferred, some earlier and others later, to a nonofficial level. There they acquired a new meaning, were deepened and rendered more complex, until they became the expression of folk consciousness, of folk culture. […] During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom. It has a universal spirit; it is a special condition of the entire world, of the world's revival and renewal, in which all take part. Such is the essence of carnival, vividly felt by all its participants (Bakhtin, 1968, pp. 6-8).

And then goes on to explain how these unofficial festivities create a temporary freedom for people. They do so by first reversing the official hierarchy:

The suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of particular significance. […] All were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age. The hierarchical background and the extreme corporative and caste divisions of the medieval social order were exceptionally strong. Therefore such free, familiar contacts were deeply felt and formed an essential element of the carnival spirit. People were, so to speak, reborn for new, purely human relations. These truly human relations were not only a fruit of imagination or abstract thought; they

Threshold

were experienced. The utopian ideal and the realistic merged in this carnival experience, unique of its kind (Bakhtin, 1968, p. 10).

This reversal of official ranks leads to a state of “gay relativity”. The carnival also leads to what Bakhtin calls grotesque realism. Grotesque realism focuses on an idea of bodily degradation. It is the lowering of the spiritual to the material level. Therefore, the emphasis on the body shifts to its material functions, such as eating, evacuation, and sex:

In grotesque realism [...] the bodily element is deeply positive. It is presented not in a private, egoistic form, severed from other spheres of life, but as something universal, representing all the people. As such it is opposed to severance from the material and bodily roots of the world; it makes no pretense to renunciation of the earthy, or independence of the earth and the body (Bakhtin, 1968, p. 19).

The other major issue raised by Bakhtin is the issue of laughter. To him laughter which is present during all carnivals and festivities also has a liberating force. To Bakhtin laughter has a philosophical value, as a representative of the material life and ridicule poked at all the spiritual fears and hopes related to the gods and to life after death. “Laughter and its forms represent... the least scrutinized sphere of the people's creation... The element of laughter was accorded to the least place of all in the vast literature devoted to myth, to folk lyrics, and to epics” (Bakhtin, 1968, p. 4). Bakhtin himself applied his ideas to the writings of Rabelais, Cervantes, and Dostoyevsky. He mentions Shakespeare in the passing but the Carnivalesque is extensively applied to him by later critics. There is a book on this subject, called Shakespeare and the Carnival: after Bakhtin, which follows the same tradition: “Bakhtin’s insistence on the cultural ambivalence and perseverance of carnival images began a reconsideration of Shakespeare which consequently stimulated the idea for this volume” (Knowles, 1998, p. 7). Epithalamion, Spenser’s verse commemoration of a wedding ceremony, was printed alongside Amoretti, his love sonnet sequence. This suggests that this wedding is the culmination of the love described in the sonnets. Critics have assumed that the sequence and Epithalamion are about Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. The poem follows a rich classical heritage of the wedding songs, dating back to the Greek and Roman literature. The poem begins by the invocation of the muses, as was the convention of the genre. The bride is

8Volume Number 1, awakened in her bedchamber, and while the people celebrate, puts on her dress, is escorted to the church, the rituals are done, and then people dance and sing and drink lavishly until the night falls, then the speaker asks the crowd to leave and takes the bride to the privacy of his home. It can be argued that Spenser’s text is very potent to be analyzed under this light. The obvious reason is that it is a wedding song, and a wedding which is completely inspired by the Irish festivities and carnivals. Similar to Rabelais, Spenser’s text is also deeply indebted to the popular culture of its time, and in regard to this particular poem, greatly indebted as Spenser was to the rich classical heritage of the genre, he equally relied on folk culture. Furthermore, Spenser too belongs to the Renaissance era. It seems that all the elements of Spenser’s poem beg to be analyzed this way, and therefore applying Bakhtin’s ideas to this poem is completely logically justifiable. Before I move on to apply Bakhtin’s ideas to Spenser’s text I think it is necessary to point out the criticism addressed against Bakhtin’s idea of Carnivalesque. There are three main objections raised against Bakhtin. Firstly:

[T]he most common objection to Bakhtin’s view of carnival as an anti- authoritarian force that can be mobilized against the official culture of Church and State, is that on the contrary it is part of that culture; in the typical metaphor of this line of argument, it is best seen as a safety-valve, which in some overall functional way reinforces the bonds of authority by allowing for their temporary suspension (Denith, 1995, p. 71).

Secondly:

[P]opular-festive forms were not only the cultural property of the ‘people’ in the narrow modern sense, but were shared and used by all ranks in society before the seventeenth century. What distinguished the literate, in a largely pre-literate society, was not their exclusion from popular— cultural forms but their participation, in addition, in a second, learned and élite, culture (Denith, 1995, p. 71).

And finally:

Furthermore, it is hard to accede to a version of carnival which stresses its capacity to invert hierarchies and undermine boundaries, without at the

Threshold

same time recalling that many carnival and carnival-like degradations clearly functioned to reinforce communal and hierarchical norms. […] The carnival inversions, the world-turned-upside-down of these festivities, were clearly not aimed at loosening people’s sense of the rightness of the rules which kept the world the right way up, but on the contrary at reinforcing them (Denith, 1995, p. 72).

We need not worry ourselves with these objections, although they are valid. In our study of Spenser we do not need Bakhtin to be completely accurate, as the same objections raised here can also be proved through the textual evidence within Epithalamion. The point is that the festivities may not lead to a complete temporary reversal of the social orders, but they do reveal the fault-lines within the social hierarchy. The grotesque is a crack; although it may not lead to a complete break. The importance of Bakhtin is that he pointed this crack out, and in my reading of Epithalamion I shall look for these relative cracks and not complete reversals. We can see that the grotesque and the spiritual are both present in Epithalamion, the movement is both upwards and downwards. The poem begins by an invocation of the Muses, as was the tradition of Epithalamion poets. The poet regularly alludes to Greek classical gods, and names Orpheus as a source of inspiration. All of these are the mark of Spenser’s indebtedness to the rich classical heritage of this genre of poem, but his innovation in invoking folk Irish imagery makes it clear that his poem is also influenced by folk writers, and this is something which makes him similar to Rabelais. The refrain of the poem is a sign of that, as the woods described in this poetry are clearly Irish woods. The musical instruments he mentions are Irish instruments and the nymphs can symbolize Ireland as well. Although nymphs are Greek deities but their description matches the feeling that Spenser must have had in regards to the Irish nature. Of course, Spenser was an Englishman, living in Ireland only to assist the colonization of that country; and therefore his take on the Irish folklore and nature is a mixture of fear and fascination, and of attachment and animosity. This mixture is explained here:

Spenser's refrain figures a world that answers his celebration with echoing joy. [5] Those who hear in the refrain something other than unmitigated joy and assurance of the world's responsiveness typically identify the figure of echo as the source of disturbance and regard the disturbances as psychological, vocational, or metaphysical. I wish to shift the emphasis from "Eccho" to "woods" and--moving out from the poem to the woods around Spenser's home at Kilcolman and more generally to the Plantation of Munster--to charge the refrain with social and political significance (Owens, 2000, p. 260).

8Volume Number 1,

However, this is not something to our disadvantage necessarily. Spenser’s attitude was a dual attitude, and therefore in his treatment of the Irish nature lets in the elements of the Carnivalesque and grotesque even if it was against his will. In the introductory stanza, during the invocation of the Muses, the downward movement of the poem begins. Spenser asserts that he usually invokes the muses to praise the deeds of the great men or to lament the sad events, but now he has a different task for them: “Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside/And, having all your heads with girlands crownd/Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound” (Spenser, 1595, p. 421). Crowning one’s head with garland and his call to happiness is a sign of the laughter and joy, and it is also a folk tradition. The complaints are set aside and a happy free zone is being created. He emphasizes that this love is his own, and therefore it is personal, and this distances the poem from the idea of impersonality. The happiness continues as the sun rises and spreads its beams. “Having disperst the nights unchearefull dampe/Doe ye awake; and, with fresh lustyhed/Go to the bowre of my beloved love” (Spenser, 1595, p. 421). The cheerfulness here is praised, and sadness is associated with a night which has dispersed. It is interesting that the poet asks the addressee to go to the chamber bed of his beloved. The intention is to awake the bride. Although the image of her sleeping in her bed is a very private one indeed, yet the poet invites the reader to this private location. The theme of privacy is extremely important in this poem as the first part it is not required but in the second part it is desired. “Lustyhed” means vigor; but one cannot fail to notice that lust is a word used here. Therefore the pot begins by asking the people to vigorously (lustfully) rush into his bride’s private bedroom. Hymen, the god of marriage is mentioned here, whose job was to attend and preside over all the marriages. Although a classical god, he was associated with joyfulness and celebration, and he had a festive nature. Then the supposed addressees of the poet are supposed to stand aside and sing joyful songs as the bride wears her dress. A line of interest here is this one: “Pay to her usury of long delight”. Although usury is a sin which was especially hated by the Elizabethans, here it is used to mean interest. During the succeeding stanzas where the poet asks the bride to wake up he continues to sing with a festive spirit. He uses the word “gay” again and again, and asks the chamber door of his beloved to be decorated with flowers, and her path to be covered by flowers. Although this imagery is not as grotesque as what Bakhtin would prefer it still represents the same worldly laughing spirit that he admired. The image of flowers represents laughter and happiness, and the gathering virgins show the downward movement. Again one cannot claim that this happy imagery is untroubled, as there is the image of wolves which should be scattered before the wedding. He asks the guests to make sure that they look good and that there is no “blemish”, and none of these represent the freedom that

Threshold

Bakhtin sought in festivities, as they represent a manipulation of the reality. Here it seems that Spenser is trying to keep the undesirable at bay. But at the same time there is an agreement “with sweet consent” among the birds “to this dayes merriment”. The singing and the joy is in the air. Since both wolves and birds reside in Irish woods, one can see that although the Irish woods host undesirable creatures as well but today, on this day of festivity, the general mood is happiness. Another sin is mentioned with praise in this part: “The which doe still adorne her beauties pride/Helpe to addorne my beautifullest bride” (Spenser, 1595, p. 423). Since today is her wedding day, it is permissible for the speaker to feel pride, and proud of his wife’s physical beauty at that. When the bride wakes up and finally proceeds outside, the poet has a request for the god of sun: “O fayrest Phoebus! father of the Muse/If ever I did honour thee aright/Or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight/Doe not thy servants simple boone refuse/But let this day, let this one day, be myne/Let all the rest be thine” (Spenser, 1595, p. 423). This request represents the downward movement Bakhtin talked about. Spenser acknowledges that all the days belong to the gods, the spiritual forces, the deities of the classic culture. But he wants this very occasion to be a worldly one and belong to a human. It is a spirit which claims “today is my day!” And his motivation in doing so is also very selfish and worldly; he wants his bride’s face not to be sun-burnt. On his wedding day, unlike in his Amoretti sonnets (sonnet 75 for example) he does not try to immortalize his bride by comparing her to sun, he asks the sun to be absent and not in control for a day. The next stanza begins with this line: “Harke! how the Minstrils gin to shrill aloud”. Shrill is an interesting choice of word. He asks the instrument to shrill and not to “sing”, for example. It creates an idea as if all have begun to scream happily. The tambourines also “smyte”, and the scenes unpon which they sing do “ravish”, and the boys are running through the streets making “confused noyce”. These boys “shout”. These shouts “That even to the heavens theyr shouting shrill/Doth reach”, which results in people applauding them, “And loud advaunce her laud”. The description of the sound and music in this stanza represents no methodical singing but a noisy celebration of a disorderly crowd. Epithalamion is praised for its harmony, but the music it describes does not sound much harmonious. Harmony may resemble order, and lack of it a curious kind of freedom. The next stanza presents both this freedom and the lack of it. The folk gathered at the wedding enjoy their freedom, as they are freely eying the bride. “So many gazers as on her do stare/upon the lowly ground affixed are”. It seems that the English bride has become the entertainment of the Irish folk, and this is a reversal of the social ranks as well. But the bride, (possibly Elizabeth Boyle who was Spenser’s wife) does not enjoy such a freedom, as it seems that she cannot

8Volume Number 1, free herself from her gender roles and enjoy the evening. She feels ashamed at the eyes fixed on her countenance. Plus, she is “so farre from being proud”. As we saw a little ago pride was mentioned with praise but Elizabeth does not enjoy the same freedom as the others. The two following stanzas are in the same vain. The way that Elizabeth is physically and internally described is completely conventional; her body is the “complete body” of the classics and in no way grotesque at all; and her virtues are the traditional virtues that are also indicative of her role as female which is determined by the patriarchy of the time. She is compared with an “angel” and her main virtue is said to be her chastity and “mild modesty”. Mild here is a key word because it is the opposite of all that is grotesque. And the fact that virtue is here compared to a ruling queen (or the ruling queen, Elizabeth I), serves as a reminder of the social ranks and not the reversal of them. Some critics have used Carnivalesque to tackle gender issues as well as it is evident here:

If the grotesque body is a site upon which medieval religious and social hierarchies can be symbolically inverted, it is surely right to point out that the body as Bakhtin describes it is predominantly gendered as female. […] So, although this is an interpretative possibility that is certainly not followed out by Bakhtin, the grotesque body may be a way of mapping not only the social and religious hierarchies of medieval and Renaissance culture, but of mapping gender hierarchies also and valuations that run through them (Denith, 1995, p. 81).

But this is not the case here. Elizabeth at least is an exception to the general mood of freedom. The next two stanzas describe the religious part of the wedding taking place. This part is also completely devoid of any Carnivalesque or grotesque elements. The priest is treated with absolute respect, and the key words are “temple”, “sacred” “altar”. Angels, and not earthly creatures such as birds, are the center of attention, and are asked to sing, and to sing “hallelujah”. The poet is conscious of the “Almighties view”, and the virgins are not there to have fun but to “learne obedience” from the bride. If we contrast the music it would be interesting. Here the music is described thus: “And let the roring Organs loudly play/The praises of the Lord in lively notes/The whiles, with hollow throates/The Choristers the joyous Antheme sing” (Spenser, 1595, p. 426). Here the words are “play”, “notes”, and “anthem”, and they create an atmosphere of churchly and therefore melodic and cultivated music instead of the noisy folk shouting in the outside. Of course, this is an official ritual of the church and in no way one can

Threshold consider it a carnival or festive. The ritualistic stanzas therefore create a pause in the Carnivalesque. But the Carnivalesque returns with a vengeance. “Joy” is reestablished as a keyword, and outside the church men are ready to have fun. (The gender exclusive word is intentional. The bride here is treated as a spoil of war, called “the triumph of our victory”, which is brought home from the church. This detail serves to remind us that at least in Spenser the Carnivalesque does not apply to women and the gender roles). The poet calls this day a holy day which should be blessed by Heaven but then his description seems anything but holy: “Poure out the wine without restraint or stay/Poure not by cups, but by the belly full/Poure out to all that wull/And sprinkle all the postes and wals with wine/That they may sweat, and drunken be withall” (Spenser, 1595, p. 426). This imagery is Carnivalesque to the extreme. Gluttony is encouraged, restrain discouraged. The wine splashed to the wall is a waste, and a drunken mass drinking to the extreme and painting the walls with wine is anything but Christian, and such a behavior would definitely be shunned by Spenser under normal circumstances. And a sweaty, drunken body is a grotesque one. The god praised here is Bacchus, the god of wine, a god treated as a demon by many Christian texts, and also a grotesque god. The god is celebrated by being crowned with a flower garland (a pagan ritual). And to remind ourselves of the ongoing motif of music, here the godly anthem of the church has been replaced by maidens singing carols and dancing. The next stanza asks the young men of town to abandon their usual jobs: “leave your wonted labors for this day”, and to set up fires and dance about them. This shows that today they are not defined by their job and their low social rank but it is a day that they can enjoy themselves and be free. However, Spenser himself appears anxious at the length of the day: “But for this time it ill ordained was/To chose the longest day in all the yeare/And shortest night, when longest fitter weare” (Spenser, 1595, p. 427). This foreshadows the end of the day part and the beginning of the night part. The day has been joyous, and Spenser knows it, but he is counting seconds, growing increasingly anxious, wishing it to just end: “Ah! When will this long weary day have end/And lende me leave to come unto my love?/How slowly do the houres theyr numbers spend?/How slowly does sad Time his feathers move?/Hast thee, O fayrest Planet, to thy home” (Spenser, 1595, p. 427). The day is finally over, and so is the Carnivalesque, festive spirit. Spenser asks the partakers in the party to simply leave. He now asks for silence, not music. He asks for privacy, and not gazing eyes. Anxiety is now the emotion, not joy. And the woods are now a threatening, sinister place, and the creatures are now dangerous monsters of terror. The nature now laments. This sudden shift in the two parts of the poems has been analyzed, and it can be attributed to

8Volume Number 1,

Spenser’s fear of Elizabeth’s femininity; or his fear of his own sexuality at the moment of the consummation of the marriage; or his imperial fear of the Irish subjects. For our purposes one can merely claim that the carnival has ended, the old social ranks have been restored, order has prevailed, and therefore the collective sense of freedom has ended. The Carnivalesque is over. Even if the reader may disagree with this reading, and consider the night a happy episode, still the mood is no more Carnivalesque. Even if we consider the night to be his happy ending, (an inaccurate reading in my opinion), still the joy of the night is a private joy and no carnival is involved. Therefore the concern of this paper ends at the first part of the poem. However, with all its apparent gaps and the moments when the Carnivalesque is interrupted by the return of the conventional social ranks, and as much as Bakhtin’s critics would point out that the carnival was not merely a free zone but also an enforcement of them at times; at the end of the day this poem is much closer to what Bakhtin meant. We have to remember that this poem was composed by the imperial, courtly Englishman, someone at the top of all perceivable social hierarchies. When we look back at the poem we can see that all the enjoyment, fun, drunkenness, singing, dancing, and grotesqueness was for the Irish folk who took part for the wedding, all the anxiety was Spenser’s, and all the shyness his wife’s. The populist that Bakhtin was would be please, as the masses were pleased. Ultimately, if we change our perspective from the poet’s to the normal folk all that we see is the fun; and when the day ends and they leave the fun ends, not before. This is completely evident in this line which is to me the central line of the entire poem: “Enough it is that all the day was yours”. The day was theirs, not his. Why is that? Wouldn’t a wedding day belong to the couple getting married? Not so, because a carnival was going on, and therefore the day belonged to the subjects, not their oppressors. Spenser wishes the day to go away but the end the night brings him no solace either. The Carnivalesque spirit of the day proves that tyranny is shakable, and it will shake. Epithalamion was ignored by Bakhtinian critics, maybe because it was written by someone whom no one would consider Bakhtinian. But in the end Spenser’s poem is reflective of Bakhtin’s philosophy as much as Rabelais, although the Carnivalesque scared the poet and therefore his anxiety became evident in the poem. But the anxiety of the oppressor is the joy of the people, and Spenser’s poetic honesty enables us to see the situation in ways he himself most probably did not.

Threshold

References Bakhtin, M. (1968). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana U Press. Denith, S. (1995). Bakhtinian thought: An introductory reader. London: Routledge. Knowles, R. (1998). Shakespeare and the carnival: After Bakhtin. London: Macmillan Press. Owens, J. (2000). The poetics of accommodation in Spenser's epithalamion. Studies in English literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 40. Houston: Rice U Press. Spenser, E. (1595). The Norton anthology of English literature: The major authors. New York: Norton.

8Volume Number 1,

Threshold

TEFL

8Volume Number 1,

Threshold

Profile

Randolph Quirk By Maryam Abbasi

Quirk was born at Lambfell, where his family farmed, in the parish of Michael on the Isle of Man, the son of Thomas and Amy Randolph Quirk. He attended Douglas High School for Boys on the island and then went to University College London (UCL) to read English (the department relocated to Aberystwyth due to the war) under A. H. Smith. His studies began in 1939 but were interrupted in 1940 by five years of service in Bomber Command of the RAF, where he rose to the rank of squadron leader. He became so deeply interested in explosives that he started an external degree in chemistry, but his English undergraduate studies were completed from 1945 to 1947 (with the department back in Bloomsbury) and was then invited to take up a research fellowship in Cambridge; however, he took up a counter-offer of a junior lectureship at UCL, which he held until 1952. In this period he completed his MA on phonology and his PhD thesis on syntax, and in 1951 became a post-doctoral Commonwealth Fund fellow at Yale University and Michigan State University. Shortly after his return from the US in 1952, he moved to the University of Durham, becoming reader there in 1954, and professor in 1958. He returned to UCL as professor in 1960 and in 1968 succeeded Smith as Quain Professor, a post he held until 1981. Quirk lectured and gave seminars at UCL in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and the History of the English Language. These two disciplines were part of a ten-discipline set of final examinations in the undergraduate syllabus. At that time Old and Middle English, along with History of the English Language, were all compulsory subjects in that course. He also worked closely with A.C. Gimson

8Volume Number 1, and J.D. O'Connor of the Phonetics Department, sometimes sitting in as an examiner for Phonetics oral examinations. In 1985, he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Bath. In 1959, Quirk founded the Survey of English Usage. This ambitious project, early co-workers on which included Valerie Adams, Derek Davy and David Crystal, sampled written and spoken British English produced between 1955 and 1985. The corpus comprises 200 texts, each of 5,000 words. The spoken texts include dialogue and monologue, and the written texts material intended for both reading and reading aloud. The project was to be the foundation of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, a widely used reference grammar and the first of English in real use rather than structured by rules derived from Greek and Latin models. Quirk and his collaborators proposed a descriptive rather than prescriptive grammar, showing readers that different groups of English speakers choose different usages, and argued that what is correct is what communicates effectively. One of Quirk's favorite enterprises was the London University Summer School of English, where the above-mentioned colleagues and other budding scholars and friends of his came to teach for a month. It was considered the most eminent body of English teachers anywhere in the world. The resident students were foreign academics, teachers and students. He threw himself into the social life with gusto and enjoyed singing Victorian ballads over a "couple of pints" with a Cockney accent. When the School moved away from Queen Elizabeth College to New Cross, numbers fell rapidly. The next and last successful Director was the phonetician J D O'Connor. The following universities have expressed their recognition of his work through the award of honorary doctorates: Aston, Bar Ilan, Bath, Brunel, Copenhagen, Durham, Essex, Glasgow, Helsinki, Leicester, Liège, London, Lund, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nijmegen, Open University, Paris, Poznan, Prague, Reading, Richmond, Salford, Sheffield, Southern California, Uppsala, and Westminster. Quirk was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1976 New Year Honours, and was knighted in 1985. Quirk has been a Labour supporter openly all his life, although he sits in the House of Lords as a cross-bench peer. He was President of the British Academy from 1985 to 1989 and became a life peer as Baron Quirk, of Bloomsbury in the London Borough of Camden on 12 July 1994. He sits on the boards of Pearson Education and the Linguaphone Institute. He currently resides in Germany and England, with his wife, German linguist Gabriele Stein. A number of his publications include:

Threshold

Quirk, R. (1951). Textual notes on Hrafnkelssaga. London Medieval Studies, 2, 1-31. Quirk, R., & Sherman, M. (1953). Some recent interpretations of Old English digraph spellings. Language, 29, 143-156. Quirk, R. (1954). The concessive relation in old English poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press. Quirk, R., & Sherman, M. (1955). The Old English digraphs: A reply. Language, 31, 390-401. Quirk, R., & Wrenn, C.L. (1955). An old English grammar. London: Methuen. Quirk, R., & Foote, P.G. (1957). The saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue. London: Nelson. Quirk, R. (1960). Towards a description of English usage. Transactions of the Philological Society, 59, 40-61 Quirk, R. (1962). The use of English. London: Longman. Quirk, R., & Greenbaum, S. (1970). Elicitation experiments in English: Linguistic studies in use and attitude. London: Longman. Quirk, R., & Kempson, R. (1971). Controlled activation of latent contrast. Language, 47, 548-572. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1972). A grammar of contemporary English. London: Longman. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. Greenbaum, S., & Quirk, R. (1990). A student's grammar of the English language. London: Longman.

8Volume Number 1,

Threshold

The Role of Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Reading Comprehension Performance

Mohammad Mohammadi TEFL, Associate Professor, Urmia University

Mehdi Dadashi TEFL, PhD Candidate, Urmia University

Ebrahim Zanghani TEFL, MA, Urmia University

Abstract This study presented here is an attempt to examine the role of GAD in reading comprehension performance in English as a foreign language. 141 male high school students in Zanjan were selected as the subjects of the study. GAD-7 self report scale and a reading comprehension test were administered. The results of the statistical analyses of data indicated that there was a significant negative relationship between GAD and reading comprehension performance. The obtained results also revealed that GAD influences the students’ performance to some extent in reading comprehension. Keywords: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), reading comprehension, performance

8Volume Number 1,

Introduction Reading is a highly complicated process. It requires simultaneous movement of eye and articulatory muscles, recognition of separate words and phrases, short- term memory of what has just been read, long-term memories accrued through the reader's earlier experiences, interest in the reading material, and some degree of intelligence to understand what is read. Comprehension takes place only when all these elements work together, and a failure to comprehend may be due to any malfunctioning of one or more of them. Reading is primarily a matter of comprehension and interpretation of meaning. It is influenced by many factors such as attitudes, motives, interests, curiosity, anxiety, classroom atmosphere, child's background, teacher's sensitivity to the group, and emotional problems. Recent years have witnessed a tremendous interest in affective factors while learning a foreign language. According to Brown (2000), the affective domain is the emotional side of human behavior and it involves a variety of personality factors, feelings about ourselves and about others with whom we come into contact. Hence, affective variables have attracted the attention of many researchers especially in the last two decades. Anxiety affects the curiosity of students which in turn reduces the functioning of cognitive abilities and capacities like logical thinking, keen observation, questioning etc. and because of these the comprehension as such is affected. Several studies have investigated the relationship between anxiety and memory (Borkowski & Mann, 1968; Teebryeki & Borkowski, 1973). The construct of anxiety plays a paramount role in second language acquisition. Anxiety refers to an emotional state of apprehension, tension, nervousness, and worry mediated by the arousal of the automatic nervous system (Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) asserted that foreign language anxiety is “a distinct complex of self-perception, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” (p.128). Language anxiety is a kind of anxiety specifically associated with second/foreign language learning contexts (Horwitz, 2001). One of the most common anxiety disorders seen in general medical practice and in the general population is Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) (Spitzer et al., 2006). GAD is a condition where one has excessive anxiety (feeling fearful, worried and tense) on most days. The condition persists long- term. Symptoms of GAD cause people distress and affect their day-to-day activities. GAD as one of the most common psychiatric disorders (Wells & Carter, 2006) like any other anxiety disorder can impede and consume attention and cognitive processes that could be otherwise allocated to developing foreign language learning.

Threshold

Some conditions of foreign language learning that provoke anxiety in learners like confusion and embarrassment may result from the inability of the learners to comprehend or articulate spoken and written input. Horwitz (2001) and Young (1999) believe these conditions make formal foreign language learning a particularly unpleasant experience for many learners. The issue of anxiety in second or foreign language learning has been the concern of language educators and researchers for many years. Compared to listening, speaking, and writing skills, few studies have addressed the issue of anxiety and foreign language reading skill (Brantmeier, 2005; Sellers, 2000). Reading in a foreign language ends in anxiety and finally poor language achievement "in conjunction of students' levels of reading anxiety and general foreign language anxiety" (Saito, Thomas, & Horwitz, 1998, p. 202). Alderson and Urquhart (1984) describe different variables, which can affect reading comprehension. These variables include the reader’s memory, emotion, attention, feelings, and anxiety, all of which are important for the reader to understand the text. Studies have shown that anxiety can hinder comprehension by interfering with the readers’ cognitive systems which are responsible for processing the information in the reading texts. It appears that anxious readers are most likely to experience interference with their cognitive ability resulting in deficits in their comprehension performance. Hence, anxiety is seen to play a role in influencing comprehension performance among the EFL learners (Mohd.Zin & Rafik-Galea, 2010). To date, a plethora of studies regarding the effect of anxiety on various aspects of language has been conducted. In most of these studies, the anxiety index has been estimated by a questionnaire, particularly the one which was developed by Horwitz (1983, 1986) −Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). The intent of the present study is to investigate the relationship between Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and the students’ performance in reading comprehension in English as a foreign language. According to Spitzer et al. (2006), there have been fewer studies of anxiety, partly due to the paucity of brief validated measures compared with the numerous measures for depression. This study tries to utilize GAD-7 scale to assess students’ anxiety.

Review of the Related Literature According to Kuumaravadivelu (2006) several individual factors like age, anxiety, empathy, extroversion, introversion, and risk taking have been studied in order to assess their role in L2 development. Of these variables, age and anxiety

8Volume Number 1, appear to play a relatively greater role than the others (p. 32). In a series of experiments, Gardner and his colleagues (Gardner, 1985; Gardner, Day, & MacIntyre, 1992; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994) found that anxiety has a significant deleterious effect on L2 development. Anxiety may be either facilitating, in a sense that it affects learning and performance positively, or debilitating, which hinders learning and performance (Alpert & Haber, 1960). Scovel (1991) asserted that facilitative anxiety stimulates the student to ‘fight’ the new learning task while debilitative anxiety motivates the student to adopt avoidance behavior. Anxiety can also be classified as trait, state, and situation. According to Horwitz (2001) trait anxiety is a relatively stable personality characteristic whereas state anxiety is viewed as a response to a particular anxiety-provoking stimulus such as an important test. Situation-specific anxiety is similar to trait anxiety but it is experienced in a single context or situation (MacIntyre, 1999). Brown (2000) states that research on language anxiety focuses specifically on the situational nature of state anxiety (p. 151). Vasa and Pine (2004) believe that the three basic interrelated aspects of anxiety are physiological, behavioral, and cognitive, but it is the cognitive aspect which has received the most attention in recent studies. The relationship between anxiety and language skills in general and reading skill in particular have been demonstrated by different researchers, even though it is still open to more investigation and analysis. Namrata (1992) and Trivdei (1995) found that academic achievement and performance was negatively and significantly related to anxiety. Saito et al. (1999) observed that reading anxiety was related to, but distinct from, language anxiety. In addition, regarding reading anxiety, Japanese learners were the most anxious, followed by French and Russian learners. Sellers (2000) investigated the relationship of language anxiety to reading comprehension with 89 Spanish students. The results revealed that the students with high reading anxiety and language anxiety could recall less content of the article. Abu-Rabia (2004) investigated whether teachers’ attitudes were related to the students’ language anxiety and found that students were less anxious if the teachers’ attitude toward them was more supportive. Matsuda and Gobel (2004) studied language anxiety in university students and observed no significant effect of gender on students’ anxiety. Elkhafaifi (2005) and Liu (2006) investigated students at different proficiency levels and found that students with advanced language proficiency tended to be less anxious. Williams and Andrade (2008) found that anxiety was most often associated with the output and processing stages of the learning process and students attributed the cause of anxiety to the teacher or other people. They also

Threshold propounded that the effect of and response to anxiety were associated with gender and perceived ability level. Wu (2011) showed that reading anxiety (RA) was related to language anxiety (LA), but they were two different phenomena in foreign language learning. Although reading comprehension performance did not differ significantly with the students in different levels of LA and RA, a general trend of lower LA and RA going with higher performance was identified. Mohd.Zin and Rafik-Galea (2010) surveyed anxiety and academic reading performance among Malay ESL learners and concluded that anxiety can hinder comprehension by interfering with the readers’ cognitive systems which are responsible for processing the information in the reading texts. Vazalwar (2011) found that anxiety and reading comprehension in English are correlated negatively but insignificantly in boys and girls separately and boys and girls both. The normal level of anxiety gives positive results in reading comprehension. Jafarigohar and Behrooznia (2012) demonstrated that there was a significant negative relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and reading comprehension; moreover, no such relationship was found between foreign language reading anxiety and age; and compared to males, females suffered more from anxiety. And finally, Tsai (2013) observed that when students’ reading anxiety level increased, their use of reading strategy use decreased. Regardless of male or female group, it was concluded that their degree of reading anxiety had been reduced and their reading strategy degree increased after receiving the reading comprehension strategy instruction. This research is an attempt to answer the following questions: 1. Is there any significant relationship between GAD and reading comprehension performance? 2. To what extent does GAD influence students’ performance on reading comprehension?

Method Participants The subjects were drawn from two different high schools in Zanjan. The selection procedures yielded a sample of 141 third-grade students. They were male and with the age range of 17 to 18, studying math as their field of study. All

8Volume Number 1, the participants have had six years of formal English schooling. Therefore, they had roughly similar types of exposure to English.

Instruments This study employed two kinds of instruments: GAD-7 self report scale and a reading comprehension test. GAD-7 questionnaire was developed by Spitzer et al. (2006) to screen for generalized anxiety disorder and assess its severity in clinical practice and research (see Appendix). It is a 7-item scale and the students rate their responses on a 4-point likert scale. The GAD-7 score is calculated by assigning scores of 0, 1, 2, and 3 to the response categories of “not at all,” “several days,” “more than half the days,” and “nearly every day,” respectively, and adding together the scores for the seven questions. GAD-7 total score for the seven items ranges from 0 to 21. Scores of 5, 10, and 15 are taken as the cut off points for mild, moderate, and severe anxiety, respectively. Using the threshold score of 10, the GAD-7 has a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 82% for generalized anxiety disorder. It is moderately good at screening three other common anxiety disorders – panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and post- traumatic stress disorder. According to Spitzer et al. (2006), the GAD-7 is a valid and efficient tool for screening for GAD. The estimated internal consistency of the GAD-7 was excellent (Cronbach =.92). Test-retest reliability was favorable (intraclass correlation=.83). Convergent validity of the GAD-7 was also good, as demonstrated by its correlations with 2 anxiety scales: the Beck Anxiety Inventory (r=0.72) and the anxiety subscale of the Symptom Checklist-90 (r=.74). Nainian et al. (2011) estimated the reliability and validity of GAD-7 for Iranian context. The estimated internal consistency (Cronbach =.85) and test –retest reliability (r = .48) were also satisfactory in this context. Convergent validity of the GAD-7 was demonstrated by its correlations with 3 anxiety scales: Spielberg State-Trait anxiety inventory (r =.71) and SCL- 90-R (r=.63) which were consistent with previous studies. Reading comprehension test consisted of six short passages. It contained 30 multiple-choice questions. These passages were drawn from “English Tests for Third Grade High School Students” (Anani & Nikoopour, 2010). The difficulty level of these texts was close to that of the textbook passages. The comprehension check questions were retested for item facility, choice distribution, and validation purposes. The test was piloted with 50 high school students in the third grade who were similar to the target group. The reliability of the questionnaire was estimated using Cronbach Alpha, which was calculated to be .67, confirming the reliability of the reading comprehension test. To obtain content validity, the passages were perused by two ELT university instructors

Threshold

and they confirmed both the content and the difficulty level of the passages for the intended population.

Procedure The GAD-7 questionnaire along with reading comprehension test was administrated simultaneously to the students during their English class time. They were allotted 45 minutes to mark the responses on a separate answer sheet. Out of 160 distributed questionnaires and reading comprehension tests, 141 valid samples were extracted. The obtained data were fed into computer and analyzed both descriptively and inferentially, using SPSS version 20. The statistical procedures of Pearson product moment Correlation, T-test, one-way ANOVA, and linear regression were also utilized.

Results 141 male students took part in the study. Table 1 shows the descriptive analysis of data in which the statistic mean and standard deviation for both variables have been represented.

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics

Variable N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Statistic Statistic Statistic Statistic Std. Error Statistic GAD 141 0 21 8.06 .402 4.772 Reading 141 2.75 18.75 12.5816 .30845 3.66261

As it was mentioned before, generalized anxiety disorder is ranged from zero to 21. It is also divided into four levels in terms of severity. As it is evident in Table 2, 39.7% of the students are in the mild level whereas only 12.1% fall into severe level. Therefore, the majority of participants (60%) experience mild and moderate level of anxiety. In contrast, 27% of the subjects are in the minimal or near normal anxiety level.

8Volume Number 1,

Table 2 Severity of Anxiety

Levels of GAD Range Frequency Percent Valid Cumulative Percent Percent Minimal 0-4 38 27.0 27.0 27.0 Mild 5-9 56 39.7 39.7 66.7 Moderate 10-14 30 21.3 21.3 87.9 Severe 15-21 17 12.1 12.1 100.0 Total 141 100.0 100.0

The Pearson product moment correlation was run to test whether there was a significant relationship between GAD and reading comprehension performance. As shown in Table 3, the correlation coefficient between the two variables is r= - .204 at .05 level of significance. This coefficient indicates that there is a significant negative relationship between GAD and students’ reading comprehension performance. In other words, as students’ anxiety increases, their performance on reading comprehension decreases.

Table 3 Correlation between GAD and Reading

Anxiety Reading GAD Pearson Correlation 1 -.204* Sig. (2-tailed) .015 N 141 141 Reading Pearson Correlation -.204* 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .015 N 141 141 *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

In order to investigate whether GAD has any impact on the students’ performance in reading comprehension, the linear regression was run and the results were tabulated. The correlation coefficient between the dependent variable (reading comprehension) and independent variable (anxiety) was

Threshold

calculated to be R=.204, which reveals a very low correlation between the two variables. As it is obvious from Table 4, the adjusted R square indicates that the independent anxiety variable accounts for only .35% of variations in dependent reading variable.

Table 4 Regression-Model Summary

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate

1 .204a .041 .035 3.59869

a. Predictors: (Constant), Anxiety

ANOVA table reports a significant F statistics, indicating that using the model is better than guessing the mean. Table 5 shows that the F ratio is larger than 1(F=6.017) and the level of significance is smaller than .05. Therefore, we can assume that there is a meaningful difference between the two variables and such a difference is not due to chance or sampling error. As a result, the independent anxiety variable can account for some variations in dependent reading comprehension variable.

Table 5 ANOVAa

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. 1 Regression 77.930 1 77.930 6.017 .015b Residual 1800.132 139 12.951 Total 1878.062 140 a. Dependent Variable: Reading b. Predictors: (Constant), Anxiety

Similarly, the obtained results indicate that the independent anxiety variable has a meaningful impact on the dependent reading variable with a 95% of confidence interval (p<.05). The coefficient of standardized regression (BETA) is estimated to be -.204. In other words, when one standard deviation increases in the anxiety

8Volume Number 1,

variable, we will witness .204 standard deviation decrease in reading comprehension variable.

Table 6 Coefficients a

Model Unstandardized Standardized T Sig. Coefficients Coefficient B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) 13.841 .596 23.212 .000

Anxiety -.156 .064 -.204 -2.453 .015 a. Dependent Variable: Reading

Finally, to determine whether the means of four levels of anxiety severity is statistically different, one way ANOVA was run. Table 7 shows the results of one way ANOVA.

Table 7 One-way ANOVA

Reading Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Between Groups 103.325 3 34.442 2.659 .05

Within Groups 1774.737 137 12.954

Total 1878.062 140

The significant value, as it is shown in Table 7, is .05, which is equal to .05. That is why we can conclude that there is a statistically significant difference between the means of four groups. Put differently, the differences between the means are not likely due to chance. The above significant value tells us that there is a significant difference between the means but it does not state which means are different. To be sure of precisely where the differences occur, we need to do a post hoc comparison of the means.

Threshold

Table 8 Multiple Comparisons- Scheffe Test

(I) (J) Mean Std. Sig. 95% Confidence Interval Severity Severity Difference Error Lower Upper (I-J) Bound Bound 1 2 -.46664 .75646 .944 -2.6078 1.6746 3 1.23158 .87904 .582 -1.2566 3.7198 4 1.85217 1.05020 .378 -1.1205 4.8248 2 1 .46664 .75646 .944 -1.6746 2.6078 3 1.69821 .81433 .231 -.6068 4.0032 4 2.31880 .99667 .149 -.5023 5.1399 3 1 -1.23158 .87904 .582 -3.7198 1.2566 2 -1.69821 .81433 .231 -4.0032 .6068 4 .62059 1.09262 .956 -2.4721 3.7133 4 1 -1.85217 1.05020 .378 -4.8248 1.1205 2 -2.31880 .99667 .149 -5.1399 .5023 3 -.62059 1.09262 .956 -3.7133 2.4721 Dependent Variable: Reading

Table 8 illustrates that all of the values are greater than .05. As a result, the comparisons are not significantly different from one another. In other words, the comparisons of means do not reveal statistically significant differences among the groups in terms of their reading comprehension performance. The observed differences among the means can be attributed to chance or sampling error.

Discussion This study shed light on the relationship between the generalized anxiety disorder and the students’ reading comprehension performance. The first question sought to uncover the relationship between GAD and reading comprehension performance in English. In the light of the results, a significant negative correlation was found between the two variables. In other words, the students’ increased GAD lower their optimal performance in reading comprehension.

8Volume Number 1,

Regarding the impact of GAD on the students’ performance in reading comprehension, the results of linear regression indicated that GAD influences reading comprehension performance to a small degree. This accounts for only .35% of the variance. Even though this amount is negligible, it can hinder the optimal performance of both underachievers and overachievers. This finding is consistent with some previous studies (Jafarigohar & Behrooznia, 2012; Keshavarz, 2011; Mohd.Zin & Rafic-Galea, 2010; Oh, 1990; Saito et al., 1999; Sellers, 2000; Tsai & Li, 2012; Vazalwar, 2011). Similarly, Sellers (2000) found that participants with high levels of anxiety recalled significantly less content on a foreign language reading comprehension than participants experiencing lower levels of anxiety. Thus, many studies have identified the negative effect of anxiety on learning tasks, especially reading comprehension. This study provides additional evidence to corroborate the existence of anxiety among the foreign language learners. Evidently, it shows that it influences reading comprehension performance negatively. According to Mohd.Zin and Rafic-Galea (2010), this is important, as this will further strengthen the findings in anxiety research that prove the existence of anxiety in language learning context particularly in reading skills. The obtained findings corroborate the theory of the language anxiety research, propounded by Eysenck and Calvo (1992), which hypothesizes that anxiety has the ability to influence the performance of anxious individuals particularly in evaluative contexts. According to MacIntyre and Gardner (1994), ''anxious students have a small base of second language knowledge and have more difficulty demonstrating the knowledge that they do possess'' (p. 301). As it was mentioned before, GAD can be divided into four levels in terms of severity, namely; minimal, mild, moderate and severe. The majority of the subjects (60%) fell into mild and moderate levels of GAD, and only a small number (12.1%) were in severe level. Likewise, the range of anxiety level experienced by the subjects was from minimal to severe. The findings of this study seem to coincide with what Sellers (2000) and Mohd. Zin & Rafik-Galea (2010) reported that 65% and 74% of the subjects respectively were in the moderate anxiety level and only 18% and 26% respectively fell into high level of anxiety. To pinpoint whether the four groups of anxiety severity are statistically different, one-way ANOVA was run and the results highlighted the significant difference among the means of four groups. To know which mean(s) is different from the rest or which group(s) outperforms the other groups, the post hoc comparison was utilized. However, no significant differences were found among the means of the groups being compared. The results of Scheffe test demonstrated that the groups do not statistically differ in reading comprehension performance. Nonetheless, the mean difference between groups two and four is

Threshold calculated to be M= 2.31 which is larger than any other mean difference between the groups. Therefore, we can conclude that groups two and four are to some extent (but not significantly) different in terms of reading comprehension performance. Put differently, group two (mild anxiety group) has performed better than three other groups in reading comprehension. On the other hand, group four (severe anxiety group) has performed lower than other groups. Accordingly, GAD can be considered facilitative and debilitative for the groups two and four respectively in terms of their performance in reading comprehension. In other words, some apprehension on the task to be done is effective.

Conclusion It is believed that nearly all students experience a range of anxiety in different stressful contexts especially in classroom settings. Identifying the potential sources of anxiety should be the primary concern of language teachers. Some language researchers believe that for some learners, the language classroom is an anxiety-provoking situation. The language learners, teachers and testing methods of the language classroom are the potential sources of language anxiety (Young, 1991). Horwitz et al. (1986) identified three components of foreign language anxiety: communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative social evaluation. In Williams and Andrade’s (2008) survey, students attributed anxiety to the teacher and other people. GAD often develops for no apparent reason. Various factors like genetic ‘make up”, childhood trauma and a major stress in life may trigger the condition. Some people have a tendency to have an anxious personality, which can run in families. Second, language teachers should do their own best in order to control, minimize or even eliminate anxiety provoking situations. Clinicians and psychiatrists put forward some ways in order to alleviate the symptoms of GAD. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is probably the most effective treatment (Borkovec et al., 2004). Cognitive therapy is based on the idea that certain ways of thinking can trigger or fuel certain mental health problems such as anxiety. The aim is then to change the ways of thinking to avoid any harmful, unhelpful and false ideas or thoughts that make a person anxious. Behavioral therapy aims to change any behaviors which are harmful or not helpful. CBT is a mixture of both cognitive and behavioral therapy where one may benefit from changing both thoughts and behaviors. Counseling is another remedy that focuses on problem- solving skills. Sometimes medications like antidepressant medicines and tranquillizers can be used as a last resort in combination with CBT. Third, in classroom contexts, teachers should accept the responsibility of creating stress and anxiety free situations in which students feel secure and

8Volume Number 1, relaxed and involve themselves in classroom activities. What is needed, according to Rogers (1983), is for teachers to become facilitators of learning through the establishment of interpersonal relationships with learners. Giving a nonthreatening environment, a person will form a picture of reality and will grow and learn. Jafarigohar and Behrooznia (2012) concluded that if teachers encourage more cooperative learning atmosphere, students will have more opportunities to interact positively with each other and, as a result, anxiety would be reduced. Nevertheless, Brown (2000) points out that anxiety has an optimal point along its continuum: both too much and too little anxiety may hinder the process of successful second language learning. Consequently, a positive, facilitative anxiety is encouraged that can pave the way in the long run for the maximum performance of the students in foreign language classes. Finally, it is worth noting that GAD-7 self report scale which was utilized by researchers in this study yielded roughly the same results analogous to previously conducted studies using the specific foreign language anxiety questionnaires. Accordingly, GAD-7 has the same screening power as the most commonly used anxiety scales. It can be used not only in clinical contexts but also in educational and research settings.

Limitations This study is restricted in two aspects, at least. First, the sample of population included only the small number of participants, so the results can hardly be generalized to all high school students in Iran. Second, the number of reading passages (6 passages) administered to the students in a limited allotted time made some of them frustrated, exhausted and embarrassed. This hampered their optimal performance and contributed to the additional source of anxiety and strain as well.

References Abu-Rabia, S. (2004). Teachers’ role, learners’ gender differences, and FL anxiety among seventh-grade students studying English as a FL. Educational Psychology, 24(5), 711-721. Alderson, J.C., & Urquhart, A. H. (Eds.). (1984). Reading in a foreign language. London: Longman. Alpert, R., & Haber, R. (1960). Anxiety in academic achievement situations. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61, 207-215. Anani Sarab, M.R., & Nikoopour, J. (2010). English tests for third grade high school students. Tehran: Ostadi Publishing.

Threshold

Borkovec, T. D., Newman, M. G. Q., & Castonguay, L. G. (2004). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for generalized anxiety disorder with integrations from interpersonal and experiential therapies. Journal of lifelong learning in psychiatry, 2(3), 392-401. Borkowski, J.C., & Mann, T. (1968). Effects of anxiety and interference on short term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 78, 352-354. Brantmeier, C. (2005). Anxiety about L2 reading or L2 reading tasks? A study with advanced language learners. The Reading Matrix, 5(2), 67-85. Brown, H.D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Elkhafaifi, H. (2005). Listening comprehension and anxiety in the Arabic language classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 89(2), 206-220. Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition and Emotion, 6(6), 409-434. Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychological and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London: Edward Arnold. Gardner, R. C., Day, J. B., & MacIntyre, P. D. (1992). Integrative motivation, induced anxiety, and language learning in a controlled environment. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14, 197-214. Horwitz, E.K. (1983). Foreign language classroom anxiety scale. Unpublished manuscript. Horwitz, E.K. (2001). Language anxiety and achievement. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 112-126. Horwitz, E.K., Horwitz, M.B., & Cope, J.A. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 70, 125-132. Jafarigohar, M., Behrooznia, S. (2012). The effect of anxiety on reading comprehension among distance EFL learners. International Education Studies, 5(2). Keshavarz, S. (2011). The relationship between anxiety and reading comprehension among Iranian UTM students. Master’s thesis, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Education. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From method to postmethod. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Liu, M. (2006). Anxiety in Chinese EFL students at different proficiency levels. System, 34(3), 301-316. MacIntyre, P. D. (1999). Language anxiety: a review of the research for language teachers. In Young, D. (Ed.) Affect in foreign language and second language learning: a practical guide to creating a low-anxiety classroom atmosphere (pp. 24-45). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

8Volume Number 1,

MacIntyre, P. D., & Garder, R. C. (1994). The subtle effects of language anxiety on cognitive processing in the second language. Language Learning, 44(2), 283- 305. Matsuda, S., & Gobel, P. (2004). Anxiety and predictors of performance in the foreign language classroom. System, 32, 21-36. Mohd. Zin, Z., & Rafik-Galea, S. (2010). Anxiety and academic reading performance among Malay ESL learners. Journal of Pan- Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 14(2), 41-58. Nainian, M. R., Shoeiri, M. R., Sharifi, M., & Hadian, M. (2011). Investigating reliability and validity of GAD. Scientific Research Journal of Shahed University, 3(4). Namrata. (1992). The relationship of personality traits, situational stress and anxiety factors to students achievement. Ph.D., Edu. Univ. of Lucknow. Fifth Survey of Educational Research, II, 1892-1893. Oh, J. (1990). On the relationship between anxiety and reading in English as a foreign language among Korean university students in Korea. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Texas, Austin. Rogers, C. R. (1983). Freedom to learn for the eighties. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill. Saito, Y., Horwitz, E. K., & Garza, T. J. (1999). Foreign language reading anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 83(2), 202-218. Saito, Y., Thomas, G. J., & Horwitz, E. K. (1998). Foreign Language Reading Anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 83(2), 202-218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0026- 7902.00016 Scovel, T. (1991). The effect of affect on foreign language learning: A review of the anxiety research. In E. K. Horwitz & D. J. Young (Eds.), Language anxiety: From theory and research to classroom implications (pp. 15-23). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Sellers, V.D. (2000). Anxiety and reading comprehension in Spanish as a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 33(5), 512-521. Spitzer, R.L., Kroenke, K., Williams, J. B. W., & Lowe, B. (2006). A Brief Measure for Assessing Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The GAD-7. Arch Intern MED, 166. Teebryeki, C.R., & Borkowski, J.G. (1973). Effects of Anxiety on Storage and retrieval Processes in Short-Term Memory. Psychological Reports, 33 (1), 315-320. Trivedi, R.M. (1995). Anxiety Level and Academic Achievement of Under Graduate Students. Experiments in Education, XXIII (3), 47-51. Tsai, C. C. (2013). Exploring the relationships between reading anxiety and reading strategy use among university students in Taiwan. International Journal of English and Education, 2(4).

Threshold

Tsai, Y. C., Li, Y. C. (2012). Test anxiety and foreign language reading anxiety in a reading-proficiency test. Journal of Social Sciences, 8 (1), 95-103. Vasa, R. A., & Pine, D. S. (2004). Neurobiology in anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. In T. R. Morris & J. S. March (Eds.), Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. (pp. 3-26). New York: Guilford Press. Vazalwar, C. (2011). Effect of anxiety on reading comprehension in English. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 1(7). Wells, A. Q., & Carter, K. (2006). Generalized anxiety disorder. In. A. Carr, & Q. M. Mcnulty (Eds.), The handbook of adult clinical psychology (pp. 423-457). London: Rutledge. Williams, K. E., & Andrade, M. R. (2008). Foreign language learning anxiety in Japanese EFL university classes: Causes, coping, and locus of Control. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 5(2), 181-191. Wu, H. J. (2011). Anxiety and reading comprehension performance in English as a foreign language. Asian EFL Journal, 13(2), 273-307. Young, D.J. (Ed.). (1999). Affect in foreign language and second language learning: A practical guide to creating a low-anxiety classroom atmosphere. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

8Volume Number 1,

Appendix

GAD-7 Anxiety

Over the last two weeks, how often have you Not Several More Nearly been bothered by the following problems? at all days than half every the days day 1. Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge 0 1 2 3 2. Not being able to sleep or control worrying 0 1 2 3 3. Worrying too much about different things 0 1 2 3 4. Trouble relaxing 0 1 2 3 5. Being so restless that it is hard to sit still 0 1 2 3 6. Becoming easily annoyed or irritable 0 1 2 3 7. Feeling afraid, as if something awful might happen 0 1 2 3 Column totals ……… + ….… + …… + ……= Total score: …….

Source: Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders Patient Health Questionnaire (PRIME-MD-PHQ). The PHQ was developed by Drs. Robert L. Spitzer, Janet B.W. Williams, Kurt Kroenke, and colleagues.

Threshold

EFL Students’ Attitudes toward Adopting Computer Assisted Language Learning

Amin Raeisi TEFL, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract Nowadays, CALL has been accepted as an intrinsic part of curricula both in EFL and ESL contexts. Although ostensibly most students have the basic knowledge of how to work with computer-related technological tools, it has been perceived, however, that students are bereft of the necessary competencies essential to deal with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) (Castellano, Mynard, & Rubesch, 2011). Hence, this lack of competence might make the use of computers a challenge for learners and educators. The present study provides both qualitative and quantitative survey data on Iranian university students’ attitudes towards CALL. 146 university students participated in the study and 9 M.A. candidates were selected for interviews. It was revealed that learners, despite often being hesitant about unfamiliar technological equipment, have a rather positive attitude towards the use of computer-related technology in the class, are willing to appreciate the pedagogical benefits of CALL and overcome its difficulties. Keywords: Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Students' attitude toward CALL, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Iranian university students

8Volume Number 1,

Introduction There has been an exponentially increasing interest in the application of computers and technology in educational milieus (Albirini, 2006; Bartsch & Cobern, 2003; Connor &Wong, 2004; Lee, 2000; Timucin, 2006). Davies (2010, p. 261) defines CALL as "an approach to language teaching and learning in which computer technology is used as an aid to the presentation, reinforcement, and assessment of material to be learned, usually including a sustainable interactive element". There is no denial that CALL, as a helpful tool for language classes, plays a significant role in language learning and teaching. It has been reported that CALL has a positive impact on learners' performance and attitude. According to Ayres (2002), CALL is pertinent to students' needs as it provides them with useful information and data. His findings suggest that CALL should be adopted more frequently in language courses. This might be ascribed to the fact that CALL milieu provides a less stress-free and more relaxed atmosphere than the usual classroom (Murphy, 1997). Apart from that, more interaction between learners is perceivable in computer-based learning because students rely on themselves; they can use the computers as self-studying tools. Teachers, especially those with more experience on CALL, intent to utilize technology in their own way, with a specific pedagogical or technological appreciation of its utility, whilst students, coming from different technological backgrounds, generations and cultures often seem baffled when encounter a computer for the first time (Castellano, Mynard, & Rubesch, 2011; Williams, 2011). This is a little different from key studies in the recent international context which demonstrate the fact that there are considerable questions about the ability of this so called “digital native” (Prensky, 2001) generation to adapt their undoubted social ICT skills to the educational context (for example see Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010). Prensky’s claims have in fact been questioned as misleading, simple assumptions or crude generalizations (Lockley, 2011). Brown & Czerniewicz (2010) went on to write that Prensky’s work approached ethnocentricity in that he seemed to be considering the whole world and the North American context categorically alike (Lockely & Promnitz-Hayashi, 2011). There is of course some value in looking at the larger international context, and there may be many similarities between countries. Be that as it may, it is important to be more specific and accentuate individual national and even regional contexts where it is apt to do so. This study will zero in on Iran in an attempt to contribute to the scanty amount of literature that seems to have been published to date.

Threshold

Review of the Related Literature The literature is replete with significant amount of research that has evaluated CALL from a variety of facets. Chapelle (2003) distinguishes three types of research in CALL, with focus on software, on the learning task or task pedagogy, and on the learners. Whilst most of the research studies in CALL focus on software design, demonstrating the most successful strategies and possibilities, the others scrutinize the learning tasks identifying how to structure them to provide ideal learning conditions for learners. Only a few studies target learners and their interaction with the computer and presented CALL software and even fewer studies take learner differences such as personal attitudes into account (Vandewaetere & Desmet, 2009). Students' attitudes have accrued particular attention in CALL studies, which have demonstrated that attitudes provide high predictability and a mediating effect (Ma, Andersson, & Streith, 2005). The psychological studies performed by Rogers (1983) and Davis (1989) form the backbone of more recent studies on attitude and perception. Rogers (1983) postulated the idea that attitudes are a significant component in the ‘diffusion of innovations’ and that attitudes and intentions to adopt an innovation will most certainly influence actual usage. If IT be regarded as an innovation, attitudes towards computing would have impact on learning with computers (Davis, 1989; Fisher, 1993). Davis (1989) went on to extend this perspective to technology, stating that internal attitudes and self-efficacy about technologies will determine intention to use. The predictive utility of attitudes is of the essence because most educational systems are experiencing costly initiatives that introduce and implement various educational technologies. A considerable number of research has shown the predictive value of attitudes, demonstrating that any successful transformation in education requires, as a prerequisite, the development of positive attitudes toward the new technology (Albirini, 2006; Cox, Preston, & Cox, 1999; Hardy, 1999; Liaw, 2002; Ma et al., 2005; Migliorino & Maiden, 2004; Yuen & Ma, 2002). As Ajzen (2005) put it, ‘[i]t is usually assumed that people are more likely to act in accordance with their attitudes’ (p. 50). He continued, apart from moderating variables affecting attitudes, strong attitudes are relatively “stable over time, resistant to persuasion, and good predictors of behavior” (p. 58). Particularly, positive beliefs about technology integration are vital for promoting the application of new technologies (Chen, 2008). Yang and Huang (2008) contend that negative attitudes towards the value of technology in improving language education are amongst the most important hindrance. In a similar vein, Chen (2008) went on to mention that positive attitudes among users are the major determinant of computer use in language education.

8Volume Number 1,

Whilst negative attitudes toward computer increase anxiety, positive attitudes are deemed the best argument in favor of the technology use in education; nothing will contribute better to the quality of technology-embedded teaching/learning than the will of users (Liaw, Huang, & Chen, 2007). It has been adequately established that positive attitude is of paramount importance in different contexts. Like so many other countries, an increasing number of educators in Iran have been in quest of working with computers and related technology in their classrooms. Universities and private institutes have also been aspired to show that they have at their disposal state-of-the-art equipment to attract students and satisfy their parents. In addition, attempts have been made to include computers and technology in educational curricula (Atai & Dashtestani, 2011; Aydin, 2012; Karber, 2001; Madden, Ford, Miller, & Levy, 2005; Li & Kikup, 2007; Liaw, 2002; Vekiri & Chronaki, 2008). Though there have been a number of studies conducted in EFL contexts examining the attitudes of students toward the use of CALL (e.g. Ayres, 2002; Stepp-Greany, 2002; Thang & Bidmeshki, 2010; Timucin, 2006), the investigations into CALL and technology is in its nascent stages in Iran. Pereiro and Azzam-Hannachi (2008, p. 132) contended that "ICT is not suitable for all purposes for all learners in all situations, and may require some considerable learner training for effective use"; it is “important to understand the nature of the technology-based activities in which young people engage” (Bennett & Maton, 2010, p. 323) to be able to advance the use of CALL in education. The aim of this article is to look at the Iranian university students’ multifarious engagement with technology and answer. In this regard, the following questions were developed to be answered: What are students' desires and how is it possible for educators to provide them to foster the regularization of CALL in Iranian universities?

Method Participants The participants were 146 BA and MA candidates majoring in English Translation, Literature, and TEFL at several universities (e.g. Shiraz, Kashan, Sabzevar, Shahrekord, and Shahid Beheshti) in Iran. There were 55 males (37.7%) and 91 females (62.3%). Their age range was between 20 and 31. They had been formally taught English as a foreign language (EFL) for some years.

Threshold

Instruments and Procedure A questionnaire was distributed and the participants replied to it through e-mail and in person. The adopted tool for data collection was made from the research findings conducted by Langdon (2011) in order to scrutinize the perceptions of learners on the impact of technology in EFL classrooms. In this study, learners were keeping a technology use log for a week with which they logged every interaction with technology. After receiving the data through the logs, a Langdon individual interview was followed. The questionnaire accrued data on multifarious facets of participants’ technology usage. It required a quantitative reply to data scale based questions and simple yes/no answers; some comments were also amassed qualitatively. A flexible qualitative coding process was adopted for coding that provides the gradual aggregation, bifurcation or addition of the categories depending on the analyzed data (Seliger & Shohamy, 1989). This circumvents the process of leading participants to answer in a way which falls in preselected categories and provides the opportunity for the data to create its own organic meanings. Finally, follow up interviews were conducted with 8 participants (females n=5, males n=3). The interview was semi-structured and although students were asked particular questions regarding their ICT motivators, source of demotivation and CALL aspirations, they were asked to discuss in casual manner.

Results As it is shown in Table 1, computers are used at least every week at university while other types of technology are being used less frequently.79% of students use mobile phones at least once a month. Many of the students use them to check their email accounts, get in contact with classmates or drop emails to their teachers. 57% of the students are using DVDs at least once a month, 64% use voice recorders and 40% use CDs.

8Volume Number 1,

Table 1 Types of technology used at university and the frequency of their use

Frequency Computer/ Mobile I- TV MP3 DVD CD Voice phone/I pod Recorders Laptop phone

Every day 53% 57% 11% 33% 29% 2% 2% 1%

Several times a week 32% 6% 3% 11% 40% 3% 4% 5%

Once a week 14% 3% 4% 18% 8% 12% 13% 17%

Once a month 0 13% 8% 13% 7% 40% 21% 41%

Never 0 3% 76% 25% 16% 43% 60% 36%

As it is shown in Figure 1, 28% of the students would like to use computers on a weekly basis, 57% use them twice a week, and 11% want to use them only once a month. Generally, 93% of the students feel content to use ICT in classrooms. This compares well with the 87% of participants (Figure 2) who enjoy using computers in class, while others are perhaps not enjoying their use, but clearly appreciate their educational necessity and utility (Figure 3).

Figure 1 How often students would like to use computers in class

Threshold

Figure2 Enjoying the use of computers in the classes

1.3

8.7

Figure 3 Difficulties encountered in classes (%89 did not have difficulty using computers in the class)

89%

8Volume Number 1,

Figure 4 Home computer use

3.5

2.5

1.5

0.5

What Students Want to Do in Class As you can see, Table 2 reveals that students have mixed and varied opinions about software and net-based applications they would like to adopt in class. Multimedia applications were the most popular, with music (MP3) and video (MP4) both scoring around 50%. Other educational use Applications, Word, internet searches and PowerPoint all scored in the 30-40 percentile while Web 2 applications such as YouTube, Social networking, Blogs, Twitter and wikis

Threshold scored 49%, 53% and 17% respectively. Other innovative uses of ICT, such as movie making and podcasts, were not received well, with 13% and 8% respectively. This implies that students are equating ICT use and utility mainly with digital media and web-based applications. Surprisingly, given the amount of students who reported using mobile phones in university, only 12% would actually like to use them in for educational purposes, indicating perhaps that they are using mobile phones for social ends, even if they are doing so in class. Takahashi (2011) found similar results.

Table 2 Technological activities that students would like to use in the class

Utility Percentage desiring in class use

Music 48.7%

Videos 52.8%

YouTube 49% use Internet searches 39.3%

Chat, Skype, email to people outside university 42.5% Social networking, Blogs, Twitter 53.6% Word 33.8% Power point 37.8% Games 33% Wikis 17.9% Making movies 13.2% Adaptive learning environments 10.4% Podcasts 8.2% Automated response bots 8.5% Mobile phones as an educational resource 12.5% Other 1%

8Volume Number 1,

Qualitative Data Positive There were 92 answers to the question “what do you enjoy doing on computers and why?”. During classification, three clear categories happened to emerge. 1. 41 (44%) mentioned that they liked using ICT for its general study support or CALL facilities; for example, “I enjoy using computer for Facebook or research something. It is easy to find information and I enjoy chatting with my classmates or teacher”. And “I can learn many things about world from teacher with using computer”. 2. 27 (29%) reported that they liked using computers for the skills that they learned or were able to practice; for instance, “I can improve my computer skills so it's fun for me” and “I can improve my computer skills and English at the same time”. 3. 17 (22%) mentioned specific online programs and applications such as YouTube or blogs as the main reason they liked using computers in class; for example, “E-mail, journal, chat, game. Because, I can get in contact with so many friends and hone my ability”.

The final seven comments gave no specific information beyond the fact that the respondents enjoyed using computers.

Negative Positively from the point of view of this study, few students (n=13, 8.9%) chose to make a negative comment, but three categories emerged:

1. I am not good at computers, indicating that the reason for negativity was firmly to be found with personal shortcomings; this was demonstrated by 9 participants (51% of respondents to this question). For example, “I can't use computer well so if we use it in class I usually fall behind others”. 2. I dislike computers, placing the blame at the door of the technology itself. This was indicated by 4 participants (32%); for example, “if you use computer you feel sleepy and sometimes tired” and “it is boring”.

Threshold

3. It takes a lot of time to use computers and this outweighs any benefit (n= 2, 9%). Students stated “It is hard for me to use computer and it takes a lot of time to type” or “It takes a while to get ready”. Interview Data The follow-up interviews produced some interesting data demonstrating the fact that less linguistically proficient students appeared to have more difficulty using computers in class; this was derived from their previous encounter with the computers. They found the US English keyboards and software difficult to use and the participants took time to become accustomed to them. Despite the problems, they enjoyed using technology in class, particularly activities such as checking unknown words in the dictionary. The more linguistically proficient students appeared to be more comfortable with ICT use. They enjoyed more solitary activities such as internet research and they did not give credentials to using social networking or chat in class as they felt they were activities for outside the classroom. All students interviewed, however, did agree on what they would like to do in class; all of them would like to spend more time on PowerPoint and word-processing. Given the fact that students are required to give presentations in their classes and write essays as coursework, they felt that these skills would be beneficial to them academically. Some of the students mentioned that they record the voice of the professors for further listening.

Discussion The elicited findings indicate the fact that there exists a generally positive feeling towards computers and technology (mobiles included) among the students who took part in this study. Regarding the perceived lack of ICT proficiency prevalent amongst some individuals who participated, it was a little unexpected. The results also appeared to be contradicting Bennett et al. (2008) who reported many ‘digital natives’ in fact were reluctant to use technology for pedagogical purposes. Almost all the students were found to be supportive of computer assisted language learning in class at least on a weekly basis. It appeared that not all the participants enjoyed using this technology and some 11 percent reported problems with the use of computers in class. It should be borne in mind that these findings did not stand against the perceived utility and paramount importance of ICT in language learning and teaching. The large majority, 89% that reported no problems using computers and technological-related tools, seem to be in sharp contrast with the common perceptions of some educators that students ‘can’t do technology’. As it is shown in the figures, only a very small percentage of the

8Volume Number 1, qualitative comments reported that they ‘were no good with computers’ and this must also give weight to the findings of the study by William (2011). It turned out that her questionnaire data was much more positive than anticipated from previous perceptions. It was reported that DVDs and CDs were used by the majority of students on a monthly basis which showed non web-based authentic materials are also being received positively by students. Nevertheless, the internet has not turned into something quite dominating, affecting all aspects of the life of these students yet. Voice recorders were also reported to be used regularly by the students, showing that CALL is allowing students to autonomously reflect on their speaking performances and listen to themselves talk to find the areas they have difficulty with and to perfect their pronunciations. Furthermore, as it was expected, those who had been using voice recorders more frequently were more fluent when they were interviewed. These findings are in line with Castellano et al. (2011). Computers are appreciated and are being utilized most for the way they can back language studies, to go onto the internet and search for information, to foster communication and interaction in English and give access to authentic resources online. They are also appreciated for the ability to improve general ICT skills such as typing. Very few students could actually articulate any negative aspect of using technology in the classroom, and the majority of them admitted it and it seems to be due to the fact that they believed themselves to be ‘not good with computers’. Home ICT use was higher than that reported by Williams (2011). Word and PowerPoint were the most popular uses, but these only accounted for 40% of the participants; social networking was engaged in on home computers, despite the fact that we know this population uses these social media constantly. This probably reflects the fact that participants are characteristic of those who are more comfortable using mobile technology (e.g. tablets). What students actually desired was varied. Multimedia uses of ICT came out with the largest percentages, suggesting that engaging with authentic, but entertaining rather than more serious resources were of the essence in these students’ opinions, particularly the less language proficient students. Internet based resources consistently scored at the 40% level; the potentially more passive ones, YouTube, chat, and web searches were desired by approximately half of participants, particularly the more language proficient students. The more active, communicative applications, blogs, social networking, chat/Skype/email came in slightly lower and were more popular among lower proficiency students.

Threshold

There are signs in all the data that students are not only using the internet as a source of authentic or entertaining material, but also reproducing their English in either a spoken or written form. This sort of computer use is one of the cornerstones of CALL and it is promising to find students appreciating ICT for its CALL possibilities. Amongst more traditional uses of ICT, PowerPoint and Word were most popular among more language proficient students, suggesting that they were thinking more about transferable skills and academic utility; 46% of the qualitative statements also mentioned these programs. In a current research study, Barrs (2011) came to find that 15/20 students had used their Smart phones for CALL purposes including using the camera to record information written on a white/black board, the voice recorder to practice speech performance, flashcards apps and news apps such as BBC and CNN. Four of the remaining 5 who owned Smart phones wanted to find out more about how they could use them for CALL. These results are Smartphone specific and may suggest that this new generation of mobile devices lend themselves more to CALL than the traditional ones.

Conclusion How can teachers and educators make use of this information to make sure that CALL is being used to its best advantage? Ostensibly, there is no particular reason within this research context, to think that students cannot or will not use ICT; hence, if educators are perceiving a hesitation on the part of students, it must be unfamiliarity and not having confidence, augmented by not wanting to ‘show off’. The former tends to be the case in some more deprived provinces of Iran rather than others. Be that as it may, further studies are required in order to be able to generalize these statements. As Kikuchi and Otsuka (2008) noted, when students actually observe each others’ skills, they are surprised by how good they are. This hesitation to outwardly evince knowledge is a characteristic of the Japanese educational context (Aspinall, 2006) and might be applicable to Iranian contexts, too; “in the early stages of learning a subject or skill [students] are also encouraged to be vigilant of what they do not know” and “it is considered immature and bad manners for the learner to ‘show off’ something they have learned, or be ostentatious in any way” (p. 263). This could account for the mismatch in educator perceptions and students’ experiential fact found in this by Lockley (2011) and Williams (2011) supported to some extent in the present study. University incumbents should furthermore be cautious in anticipating that students can ‘transfer’ ICT skills from extensive social media use and

8Volume Number 1, mobile phones to the more formal academic milieu. Based upon “current research [the extent to which skills can be transferred from everyday technology based activities to academic context] is likely to be highly variable” (Bennett et al., 2008, p. 779). Williams (2011) writes “even though these students have grown up in the digital world, and in general may be considered to have knowledge of these different technologies, tudents may have had different levels of interaction with technologies, some more adept than others” (p. 89). As it is common knowledge, a person would not be expected to simply pick up a trumpet and produce beautiful music, even if they are an expert trombone player (Lochey & Williams, 2011). With the same token, educators should appreciate students’ probable problems in dealing with technological devices, especially in language classes which are a source of trepidation for students and the use of computer in this regard could be highly stressful. The questionnaire and the interviews revealed that Iranian University students hold favorable attitudes towards the use of CALL for language learning and teaching. The limitation of this data was that the population of this study was small and the participants were not chosen randomly. Furthermore, a limited number of universities in Iran were studied. Further research is required for generalizing the results of this study. Besides, larger scale studies need to be carried out, ones that make use of inferential statistics such as regression analysis, to provide further theoretical and pedagogical guidance. Future research should also be conducted to place the Iranian context firmly within the global picture. However, despite its limitations, what this data shows is that the surveyed Iranian university students are pro-technology and support its use in class. They are generally willing to see ICT as both an educational tool and a skill to be learned for use in future life; it is an integral and recognized part of their university language education. Whatever the perceived weaknesses in ICT competence, the basic skills and experience are clearly present, and this study showed that students will acclimatize to novel uses when they are confident that other students are at a similar level, when they are given ample time to familiarize themselves, and when they are given enough support. Without this student training and patience on the part of the educator, it is probable that the mismatch between student and educator will go on forever. Universities and individual teachers should support students in their ambitions through incorporating appropriate and well-thought uses of technology into curricula. This will not only provide the possibility for the creation of a supportive and stimulating language learning context, it will also help prepare students for the workplace and the place of technology in their future lives (for instance, as a news reporter, journalist, translator, etc.), in whatever form it appears.

Threshold

References Ajzen, I. (2005). Attitudes, personality and behavior (2nd Ed.). London: Open University Press. Albirini, A. (2006). Cultural perceptions: The missing element in the implementation of ICT in developing countries. International Journal of Education and Development Using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 2(1), 49-65. Aspinall, R. (2006). Using the paradigm of ‘small cultures’ to explain policy failure in the case of foreign language education in Japan. Japan Forum, 18(2), 255-274. Atai, M. R., & Dashtestani, R. (2011). Iranian English for academic purposes (EAP) stakeholders’ attitudes toward using the Internet in EAP courses for civil engineering students: Promises and challenges. Computer Assisted Language Learning. DOI: 10.1080/ 09588221.2011.627872. Aydin, S. (2012). Teachers’ perceptions about the use of computers in EFL teaching and learning: the case of Turkey. Computer Assisted Language Learning.DOI:10.1080/09588221.2012.654495. Ayres, R. (2002). Learner attitudes toward the use of CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 15 (3), 2, 1-249. Barrs, K. (2011). Mobility in learning: The feasibility of encouraging language learning on Smart phones. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 2(3), 228-233. Bartsch, R.A., & Cobern, K.M., (2003). Effectiveness of power point presentations in lectures. Computers & Education, 41(1), 77-86. Bennett, S., & Maton, K. (2010). Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students' technology experiences. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5), 231-331. Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 775- 786. Boulton, A., Chateau, A., Pereiro, M., & Azzam-Hannachi, R. (2008). Learning to learn languages with ICT- but how? CALL-EJ Online, 9(2). Retrieved from http://callej.org/journal/9-2/boulton.html Brown, C., & Czerniewicz, J. (2010). Debunking the ‘digital native’: beyond digital Apartheid, towards digital democracy. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(5), 357-369. Castellano, J., Mynard, J., & Rubesch, T. (2011). Technology use in a self-access center. Language Learning and Technology, 15(5), 12-27. Chen, Y. L. (2008). A Mixed-method study of EFL teachers’ internet use in language instruction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1015-1028. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.07.002

8Volume Number 1,

Connor, M., & Wong, F. H. (2004).Working through PowerPoint: A global prism for local reflections. Business Communication Quarterly, 67, 228-231. Cosgrove, J., Zastrutzki, S., & Shiel, G. (2005). A survey of ICT in post-primary schools. The Irish Journal of Education, 36, 25-48. Cox, M., Preston, C., & Cox, C. (1999). What factors support or prevent teachers from using ICT in the primary classroom. Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference. University of Sussex at Brighton. Davies, G. (2010). Computer-assisted language education. In Berns, M. (Eds.).Concise encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Elsevier Ltd. Davis, F.D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13, 319-340. Diamond, K.K. (1997). Computer assisted language learning: A shortcut to proficiency? ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED419407. Fatemi, A., & Salimi, F. (2011). Exploring the human element of computer-assisted Language learning: An Iranian context. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 26(5), 1-19. Fisher, E. (1993). Access to learning: Problems and policies. In P. Scrimshaw (Ed.), Language, classrooms and computers (pp. 75-90). London: Rutledge. Hardy, J.V. (1999). Teacher attitudes toward and knowledge of computer technology. Computers in the Schools, 14, 119-136. Karber, D. J. (2001). Comparisons and contrasts in traditional versus on-line teaching in management. Higher Education in Europe, 26(4), 533-536. Kennedy, G., Krause, K., Gray, K., Judd, T., Bennett, S., Maton, K., Dalgarno, B., & Bishop, A (2006). Questioning the net generation: A collaborative project in Australian higher education. Proceedings of the 23rd annual ASCILITE conference, Sydney. Retrieved from http://ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p160. pdf/ Kikuchi, K., & Otsuka, T. (2008). Investigating the use of social networking services in Japan EFL classrooms. JALT CALL Journal, 4(1), 40-52. Langdon, C. (2011). Good technology does not necessarily equal good pedagogy –an investigation into the educational efficacy of technology in EFL. Research Institute Language Studies and Language Education, 21, 21-37. Lee, K. (2000). English Teachers’ Barriers to the use of computer-assisted language learning. The Internet TESL Journal, 6 (12). Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Lee-CALL barriers.html Li, N., & Kirkup, G. (2007). Gender and cultural differences in Internet use: A study of China and the UK. Computers and Education, 48(2), 301-317.

Threshold

Liaw, S.S. (2002). An Internet survey for perceptions of computers and the World Wide Web: Relationship, prediction, and difference. Computers in Human Behavior, 18, 17-35. Liaw, S.S., Huang, H.M., & Chen, G.D. (2007). Surveying instructor and learner attitudes toward e-learning. Computers & Education, 49, 1066–1080.Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 2(3), 182-194. Lockley, T. (2011). Pre-university experience of ICT and Self-Access Learning in Japan. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 2(3), 182-194. Ma, W., Andersson, R., & Streith, K.O. (2005). Examining user acceptance of computer technology: An empirical study of student teachers. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 21, 387-395. Madden, A., Ford, N., Miller, D., & Levy, P. (2005). Using the Internet in teaching: the views of practitioners (A survey of the views of secondary school teachers in Sheffield, UK). British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(2), 255-280. Migliorino, N.J., & Maiden, J. (2004). Educator attitudes toward electronic grading software. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 36, 193-212. Mito, A., & Ono, H. (2008).The diffusion of mobile Internet in Japan. The Information Society, 24, 292-303. Murphy, J. (1997). Virtual time computer-mediated distance learning versus the Carnegie Model. In G. Hawisher and C . Selfe (Eds.) Literacy, technology, and society: Confronting the issues (pp. 239-245). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Nasah, A., DaCosta, B., Kinsell, C., & Seok, S. (2010). The digital literacy debate: An investigation of digital propensity, information and communication technology. Educational Technology Research and Development, 58(5), 531-555. Pereiro, M., Azzam-Hannachi, R. (2008). Learning to learn languages with ICT- But how? CALL-EJ Online. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital inmigrantes. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6. Promnitz-Hayashi, L. (2011). A learning success story using Facebook. Studies in Self- Access Learning Journal, 2(4), 309-316. Rogers, E.M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations (3rd Ed.). New York: The Free Press Seliger, H., & Shohamy, E. (1989).Second language research methods. London: Oxford University Press. Stepp-Greany, J. (2002). Student perceptions on language learning in a technological environment: Implications for the new millennium. Language Learning and Technology, 6(1), 165–180. Takahashi, T. (2008). Japanese young people, media and everyday life, towards the internationalizing of media studies. In K. Drotner & S. Livingstone

8Volume Number 1,

(Eds.), International handbook of children, media and culture (pp. 413-430). London: Sage. Takahashi, T. (2011).Japanese youth and mobile media. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Deconstructing digital natives (pp. 67-82). NY and London: Rutledge. Thang, S. M., & Bidmeshki, L. (2010). Investigating the perceptions of UKM Undergraduates towards an English for science and technology online course. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23(1), 1-20. Timucin, M. (2006). Implementing CALL in an EFL context. ELT Journal, 60, 262-271. Vandewaetere, M. & Desmet, P. (2009). Introducing psychometrical validation of questionnaires in CALL research: the case of measuring attitude towards CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(4), 349-380. Vekiri, I., & Chronaki, A. (2008). Gender issues in technology use: Perceived Social support, computer self-efficacy and value beliefs, and computer use beyond school. Computers and Education, 51(3), 1392-1404. Williams, V. (2011). Digital divide among “Digital Natives”. Studies in Humanities and Cultures, 14, 78-91. Yang, F.Y., & Tsai, C.C. (2008).Investigating university student preferences and beliefs about learning in the web-based context. Computers &Education, 50, 1284- 1303. Yuen, A., & Ma, W. (2002). Gender diﬀerences in teacher computer acceptance. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 10, 365-382.

Threshold

Investigating Nation’s Four-Strand Model of Language Acquisition in Interchange Series Course Books

Hamid Rastin TEFL, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract There are a number of theoretical models proposed by scholars in the field of SLA which are claimed to be the most effective ways to acquire a second language. Drawing on these theories, Nation (1996, 2007, 2008) proposes a model which takes into account all of them. He contends that a language course should consist of four strands of meaning-focused-input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning and fluency development each of which should receive an equal amount of time in a language course. In this study, the degree to which this model was observed in Oxford Interchange series was investigated. The results indicated that while meaning-focused input and output did not receive a balanced attention, fluency development was almost balanced and language-focused activities dominated the first two levels of the series. The possible reasons and implications of such findings are discussed at the end of this paper. Keywords: L2 acquisition models, Nation’s four strands, Interchange series

8Volume Number 1,

Introduction Over the past several years a number of theoretical models of Second language acquisition have been proposed. One of them is the comprehension-based approach to language acquisition which has Stephen Krashen as its most well- known proponent. Krashen (1987) has insistently contended that language is best (and even only) acquired through a comprehension-based model. In his input hypotheses, he discusses five principles of acquiring a second language. The core of his model is the input hypothesis in which he argues that “comprehensible input is the only true cause of second language acquisition” (Krashen, 1984, p.61 as cited in Brown, 2007).He defines comprehensible input as the “input containing structures that are a bit beyond learner’s current level of competence” (Krashen, 1987, p.38) and presents this as language at i+1 level of difficulty. He believes that we should not grammatically sequence the input, rather we should expose learners to meaningful and understandable language and the rest is done by the learners themselves (Krashen, 1987). If they receive comprehensible input, they will “acquire” a second language in much the same way they have acquired their first language. In another reference to the first language acquisition phenomenon, he contends that just like children who are silent in their early months after birth, second language learners will also have a silent period and only after they have received enough input, speech will emerge naturally. Therefore he believes that learners should not be forced to speak until they are ready. In this view, Krashen gives little, if any, attention to the role of output in language acquisition, which provides a basis for criticizing his theories. Swain (as cited in Brown, 2007), in her output hypothesis, suggests that output is as important as input and discusses three major functions of output. The first is that learners will notice their linguistic errors by producing the target language. The second is that learners try out the hypotheses they have formed about how the target language works using the feedback they receive from their speaking and writing and the third role of output is its metalinguistic function which means that language is used to reflect on language itself. Swain’s (1985, as cited in Swain, 2008) formal and informal observations of French immersion classrooms in Canada revealed that students' French output was not as much as their English output and that teachers did not either push the students towards producing more grammatically accurate or sociolinguistically appropriate output. This could mean that although naturalistic learners may be fluent, they may not be as much accurate in their production and basically there is less attention to learners’ accuracy in immersion classrooms. Another important hypothesis Krashen (1987) puts forward is the learning/acquisition hypothesis. In this hypothesis he makes a distinction

Threshold between learning and acquisition. He contends that learning is the conscious effort learners make in order to learn the rules of a language and will result in explicit knowledge about language. Acquisition, on the other hand, is the natural way in which children acquire their first language. It is an effortless and subconscious process which will result in subconscious, implicit knowledge. Most researchers now agree that becoming fluent in a second language is mainly a matter of developing implicit knowledge of language (Ellis, 2006) but there’s much controversy when it comes to the role of explicit knowledge in language acquisition. Explicit knowledge is the conscious knowledge of language rules and structures which is not available in fluent meaningful interactions. Implicit knowledge is the unconscious knowledge of language which can be accessed quickly and easily; therefore, it can be utilized in rapid fluent communication (Ellis, 2006). Krashen (1987) believes that instruction (especially explicit grammar teaching, which results in explicit knowledge) is something that should be largely avoided because it hinders fluency. The only use of conscious learning, as he states, is to function as a monitor or editor of the output under certain conditions. However, irrespective of whether explicit knowledge is of value in itself, the more important question is whether it can contribute to the development of implicit knowledge (Ellis, 2006). There are different points of view in this regard which have become known as the interface hypothesis. Scholars’ views can be put on a continuum. At one extreme there is the noninterface hypothesis which reiterates Krashen’s view that explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge are completely different and explicit knowledge cannot be transformed into implicit knowledge under any circumstances. At the other extreme there is the interface position which states that if learners are provided with plentiful communicative practice, explicit knowledge can become implicit. There is also a weak interface position taken by Ellis (2006) which states that explicit knowledge can become implicit knowledge “if the learner is ready to acquire the targeted feature and that this conversion occurs by priming a number of key acquisitional processes in particular noticing and noticing the gap.” (Ellis, 2006, p.97).Ellis (2006) also refers to Genesee’s (1987) study and concludes that today there is increasing evidence that “naturalistic learning in the classroom does not typically result in high levels of grammatical competence” (p.86). Therefore a case can be made for the inclusion of explicit grammar teaching and more generally form-focused instruction in language teaching. In fact, the legitimacy of form-focused instruction is now widely accepted. Informed of all these theories and hypotheses and the practical evidence for them, Nation (1996, 2007, 2008) proposed a model for a well-balanced ESL course design. His basic assumption was that it was not wise to stick to one particular method of teaching and that we need to become aware of different

8Volume Number 1, principles of teaching and learning and apply them to the classroom in a way that is suitable for both learners and teachers (Nation, 1996). Nation’s model for an ESL course has become known as “the four strands” because he argues that a well-balanced language course should consist of four strands that are roughly equal in importance and the time allocated to them (Nation, 2007). These four stands are meaning-focused input, meaning- focused output, language-focused learning and fluency development. The first three strands are those that are emphasized in the literature and were discussed earlier in this paper. The fourth one is added by Nation himself. The following is a description of each strand in more detail.

Nation’s Four Strands Meaning-focused input As Nation (2007) describes, meaning-focused input involves learning through listening and reading, which are the receptive skills. In all the activities that are directed at this strand, the learner’s main focus should be on meaning and understanding of what they listen to or read. Thus in this strand the attention of learners is on the ideas and messages that are conveyed by the language (Nation, 1996). Nation (2007) argues that this strand exists only when a number of conditions are met: (1) learners should be already familiar with most of what they listen to or read. This would mean that their main focus can be on meaning rather than being distracted by overly difficult unfamiliar language. (2) The input must be interesting to learners and they should be interested in understanding it. (3) Only a small number of language features can be unknown to learners. For example up to 95% or even 98% of the vocabulary must be within the learner’s knowledge. (4) The small amount of unknown words can be learned using the context and background knowledge. (5) Basically, learners should be provided with large quantities of input. Nation believes that one way to provide this large amount of input is through an extensive reading program. Other typical activities in this strand include shared reading, listening to stories, watching TV or films and being a listener in a conversation (Nation, 2007).

Meaning-focused output This Strand, as Nation (2007) describes, involves learning through speaking and writing. This is based on the Swain’s Output hypothesis. As it was mentioned

Threshold earlier in this paper, the output hypothesis was a reaction to Krashen’s input hypothesis. Nation (2007, p. 4) refers to the same three functions of output discussed earlier as the rationale for including meaning-focused output in his model. These functions are:

1. the noticing/triggering function, 2. the hypothesis testing function, and 3. the metalinguistic (reflective) function.

The conditions for meaning-focused input also apply to meaning-focused output. Therefore learners talk and write about things that are familiar to them, the main focus and goal is to get their messages across, only a small amount of language or linguistic features are not familiar to them and learners are able to use communication strategies, dictionaries and anything that helps them to compensate for their inadequacies in their productive knowledge (Nation, 2007). Nation (1996) also states that activities fall into this strand that first give learners an opportunity to recall what they have previously learned (including linguistic forms) and the chance to express their meanings and messages in ways that are new to the learners. Some of the typical activities of this strand include role plays, problem solving activities, reading activities, and split information tasks (Nation, 2007). Meaning focused input and meaning-focused output activities are in a way related, because many of the meaning-focused output activities like taking part in conversations would also provide meaning-focused input for both interlocutors. In the same way in writing, a student’s meaning-focused output in the form of a letter becomes another student’s meaning-focused input.

Language-focused learning Nation uses this term to discuss a concept which has been referred to by different names, “focus on form, form-focused instruction, deliberate study and deliberate teaching, learning as opposed to acquisition, intentional learning and so on” (Nation, 2007, p.5). Thus, this strand includes any explicit and deliberate attempt to focus learner’s attention on linguistic features e.g. pronunciation, spelling, grammar, discourse and etc. There are also a number of conditions for this strand:

1. The learners give deliberate attention to language features.

8Volume Number 1,

2. The learners should process the language features in deep and thoughtful ways. 3. There should be opportunities to give spaced, repeated attention to the same features. 4. The features that are focused on should be simple and not dependent on developmental knowledge that the learners do not have. 5. Features that are studied in the language-focused learning strand should also occur often in the other three strands of the course. (Nation, 2007, p.5)

Nation (1996) refers to reviews by Ellis (1990) and Long (1988) as evidence for the effectiveness of language-focused instruction and discusses five ways in which form-focused instruction can benefit learners. The first is that a combination of language-focused teaching and meaning-focused teaching is more useful than either of them alone. Second is that language-focused instruction can contribute to the increasing of the rate of language acquisition. The third contribution of language-focused instruction is to help learners improve their grammar and consequently produce fewer errors. Forth, language-focused teaching can directly contribute to acquisition although this depends on the type of task at hand. Finally, he argues that language-focused instruction can indirectly provide learners with meaning-focused input. However, there are also some limitations. Language-focused instruction cannot change the order in which learners acquire linguistic features because this order is defined by the learner’s internal syllabus which determines when they are developmentally ready to acquire a particular linguistic form (Nation, 1996). Understanding this, Ellis (2006) contends that consciousness raising, as one form of focus on form, cannot contribute to the integration of new linguistic forms into the learners’ existing mental grammar unless they are developmentally ready. There is also this danger that if form-focused instruction is not combined with meaning-focused activities, items learned through language-focused activities may only be available to learners in certain planned uses (e.g. in grammar tests) (Nation, 1996). Typical activities in this strand include “pronunciation practice, using substitution tables and drills, learning vocabulary from word cards, intensive reading, translation, memorizing dialogues and getting feedback about writing” (Nation, 2007, p.6). Also teaching of strategies like guessing from the context falls into this strand.

Threshold

Fluency development This strand involves helping learners develop fluency in all the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. Nation (2007) believes that for learners to become fluent in a second language is as important as the other three strands and that in most language courses fluency does not receive the attention it deserves. Thus, he argues that the same amount of time which is allocated to the meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output and language-focused learning in a second language course should also be given to activities that seek to develop fluency in the four skills of language. Nation (2007) refers to studies of fluency development in first language readers as evidence for its effectiveness and states that studies of second language readers have produced the same positive results. He particularly mentions studies of 4/3/2 technique, in which a learner repeats the same utterances to different listeners, each time making it faster by one minute, as an evidence to suggest that this activity not only improves fluency but also increases grammatical accuracy. According to Nation (2007), there are generally two types of second language fluency developing activities. Some of them are based on repetition as a method of developing fluency like 4/3/2 technique. Others do not require learners to repeat language content like extensive reading or the traditional speed reading Nation (2007) states that fluency developing activities like activities used in the two strands of meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output are also meaning-focused. He mentions a number of typical activities that can develop second language fluency some of which are skimming, scanning, speed reading, repeated reading, and ten-minute writing. He also discusses a number of conditions that are required if the focus of the activities is to be on fluency development. These are:

1. All of what the learners are listening to, reading, speaking or writing is largely familiar to them. That is, there are no unfamiliar language, or largely familiar content or discourse features. 2. The learners’ focus is on receiving or conveying meaning. 3. There is some pressure or encouragement to perform at a faster than usual speed. 4. There is a large amount of input or output. (Nation, 2007, p.6)

However, in the early stages of language learning, the development of fluency means to become fluent with certain useful sentences and phrases (Nation, 2007).

8Volume Number 1,

Distribution of the four strands Nation (2007) argues that ideally each strand should take 25% of class time. One of his justifications for this is that the meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output and fluency development activities all focus on meaning and communicating messages and only incidental learning could occur during these meaning-focused activities. However, in language-focused activities, since the focus is on form, intentional learning takes place. Because intentional learning is usually much greater in quantity than incidental learning, the smaller amount of time given to language-focused activities (one fourth of the total class time) is counterbalanced by the greater amount of learning that occurs during such activities in comparison to meaning-focused activities. However, he states that the equal allocation of time to each of the four strands is arbitrary and depends on the proficiency of the learners. Therefore for beginners, there could be more time spent on language-focused activities and as they become more proficient, meaning-focused activities would take a bigger chunk of classroom time (Nation, 2007).

Method The latest edition (4th edition) of Interchange series (Richards, 2012) was selected for the purpose of this study. This series is one of the most popular ESL Textbooks around the world and can be a good candidate for analysis to see how the theories and models of second language acquisition are reflected in one of the most well-known ESL Textbooks. Since there has been a continuous trend in the field of language pedagogy (and to a lesser extent in ESL/EFL textbooks) to give more attention to the meaning-focused communicative activities, it was expected that the most recent editions of well-known textbooks should at least to some extent reflect this trend. Therefore, the latest edition of Interchange series could help us examine the correspondence between trends in second language pedagogy and ESL/EFL materials development. Two raters examined all the four levels of this series from Intro to level 3. Each level consists of sixteen units of work. After every two units, there is a “progress check” which consists of activities dealing with what learners have learned in the last two units. At the end of each book, there is a “grammar plus” section which is an appendix consisting of activities that only deal with grammar. Since the activities in this section are included as an appendix and not as a main part of the book, they were not included in this study. All the other activities of the four books were examined one by one. The activities which fell into one of the four strands were counted for each unit. It is important to mention here that

100

Threshold some activities did not belong to any of the four strands according to the definitions and conditions described by Nation (2007). These were also counted and put under the label NA (not applicable) in the frequency count tables.

Results and Discussion The frequency count of activities belonging to each of the four strands along with the percentages of activities in each strand for each book of the interchange series is given in following tables. It must be mentioned that percentages have been rounded to their nearest whole numbers.

Table 1 Frequency count of activities in Interchange 4th ed. Intro

The Four Strands Frequency of Activities Percentage Meaning-focused input 14 4% Meaning-focused output 24 6% Language-focused Learning 242 60% Fluency Development 95 24% NA 24 6%

Table 2 Frequency count of activities in Interchange 4th ed. Level 1

The Four Strands Frequency of Activities Percentage Meaning-focused input 28 6% Meaning-focused output 53 11% Language-focused learning 184 40% Fluency development 129 28% NA 72 15%

101

8Volume Number 1,

Table 3 Frequency count of activities in Interchange 4th ed. Level 2

The Four Strands Frequency of Activities Percentage Meaning-focused input 36 7% Meaning-focused output 92 18% Language-focused learning 155 30% Fluency development 113 22% NA 115 23%

Table 4 Frequency count of activities in Interchange 4th ed. Level 3

The Four Strands Frequency of Activities Percentage Meaning-focused input 46 9% Meaning-focused output 128 26% Language-focused learning 132 26% Fluency development 69 14% NA 128 25%

By studying the results presented in the preceding four tables, it becomes apparent that in the interchange series, we cannot find a balanced distribution of activities regarding the four strands. In all the four books, language-focused activities have received the greatest attention and most of the activities fall in this category with the intro book allocating more than half of the book activities to this strand. However from the intro level, which is aimed at beginning students, to the level 3, which is for high-intermediate students, there is a continuous decline in the emphasis put on form-focused activities and finally in the level 3 book, focus on form comes to a balance with 26 percent of the activities aiming at it. This is in line with Nation’s (1996) comments on the distribution of the activities across the four strands. He contends that early in language learning, learners need more guidance and hence more explanation of grammar but as they become more proficient at the intermediate and higher levels, less time is needed for language-focused activities and more time can be given to meaning-focused ones. Another reason for such an emphasis on grammar in interchange series lies in the fact that this series is designed for adult and young adult learners and as

102

Threshold

Celce-Murcia (1991) argues, adult language learners are more likely to benefit from explicit grammar instruction than children do. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study is the little attention which this series gives to meaning-focused input. In each of the four levels of this series, less than 10 percent of the activities are allocated to provide learners with meaning-focused input. Most of the input provided for the learners is in the form of dialogues which either have the purpose of introducing useful expressions to facilitate communication or the presentation of grammatical features. The only major source of meaning-focused input in the series is the readings at the ending of each unit, some of which so short that can hardly qualify for meaning-focused input. Another kind of meaning-focused activities in the interchange series is the listening activities that usually come in the first few pages of each unit. Again, the listening is still somewhat short but the pair work that follows can elicit more meaning-focused output from a learner that becomes another learner’s meaning-focused input. The following is an example of such activities from interchange level 2:

Figure 1 An example of meaning-focused input (Richards, 2012c, p.8)

It is also obvious that when a huge emphasis is given to form-focused activities, this would take away from the share of other strands like meaning-focused input.

103

8Volume Number 1,

Meaning-focused output, however, has a better and more balanced condition. In the level 2 and level 3 of this series, with 18 and 26 percents respectively given to this strand, there’s almost an equal and balanced distribution. This could be justified by the fact that these two levels are for intermediate and high intermediate students who have become more proficient in language and therefore can spend more time on activities that require them to produce language for communicative purposes. But in case of intro level and level 1, which are for beginners and high beginners, most of the learners’ language production is limited to practicing language forms. For example, the following activity which is taken from Interchange Intro (Richards, 2012a, p.9) requires learners to produce plural forms of nouns with an emphasis on correct pronunciation of plural s.

Figure 2 An example of meaning-focused output (Richards, 2012a, p.9)

Obviously these activities cannot qualify for meaning-focused output activities considering the conditions Nation (2007) describes for them, which was mentioned earlier.

104

Threshold

Fluency development strand has the best balance among others. In all the levels of interchange series almost a quarter of activities (if we put NA activities aside) is aimed at developing fluency with what learners have already been introduced to. This has been achieved particularly through the “progress check” section at the end of every two units. This section engages learners with activities that require them to use familiar language elements they have learned throughout the two previous units in order to complete them. Therefore many of the activities in this section have a fluency developing purpose. As mentioned earlier, fluency developing activities are meaning-focused; however, at the early stages of language learning, this could involve becoming fluent with certain expressions and phrases that serve a particular communicative purpose (Nation, 2007). For example in an activity from interchange intro (Richards, 2012a, p.52), after learners have been introduced to Wh-questions and have practiced them in a series of activities, finally they are given an opportunity to have a short conversation with their partners in which they use the formula they have learned to form wh-questions in order to become fluent in asking such questions:

Figure 3 An exapmle of fluency developing activities (Richards, 2012a, p.52)

And finally as it was mentioned, a number of activities in interchange series did not fit into any of the four strands. These are the ones indicated in the frequency tables above as NA. For example, the following is an activity from Interchange

105

8Volume Number 1, level 2 (Richards, 2012c, p.117) which according to Nation’s (1996, 2007) description of the four strands does not belong to any of the strands.

Figure 4 An exapmle of the NA category (Richards, 2012c, p.117)

Conclusion An investigation of the four-strand model of language acquisition proposed by Nation in Oxford Interchange coursebooks indicated that in the latest (4th edition) of this series, there is a huge emphasis on form-focused activities. While this emphasis on grammar can be to some extent justified by the fact that this series is for adults who benefit from explicit grammar teaching much more than children, the little attention which is given to meaning-focused input even at the high- intermediate level is something that our current approach to language teaching does not approve of at all. Of course it can be argued that textbooks alone cannot provide all the necessary meaning-focused input learners need. That is why some authors like Brown (2009) have called for extensive reading programs which should be

106

Threshold encouraged by textbooks. Brown believes that textbooks can encourage extensive reading both directly by for example explicitly recommending it, and indirectly by including activities that are more in line with extensive reading. Thus, one of the implications of such findings is that if textbooks cannot provide enough meaning-focused input, they should at least encourage other ways of receiving input such as extensive reading and extra materials provided with the textbooks including audio and video tapes and CDs. Although Interchange series does not encourage extensive reading in a noticeable way, it is bundled with video and audio files providing more practice and input for the learners. A considerable number of activities especially in level 2 and level 3 of the Interchange series do not fit into any of the four strands. These activities seem to have no specific pedagogical purpose and are only included to bring variety or an opportunity for the teacher to take a break. The implication of this is that the time spent on these activities could be more usefully spent on reading texts or listening to texts for the purpose of understanding the messages. Lack of long readings and listening activities is particularly noticeable in level 2 and level3 of interchange coursebooks. More research and study of other textbooks can contribute to our understanding of the distribution of activities in terms of the four strands in other course books which are for both children and adults. Therefore, we could have a more comprehensive view of how other course books provide opportunities for meaning-focused input and output as well as language-focused and fluency development activities.

References Brown, D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York: Pearson Education. Brown, D. (2009). Why and how textbooks should encourage extensive reading. ELT Journal, 63(3), 238-245. Celce-Murcia, M. (1991). Grammar pedagogy in second and foreign language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 459-480. Ellis, R. (1990). Instructed second language acquisition: Learning in the classroom. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Ellis, R. (2006). Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 83-107. Genesee, F. (1987). Learning through two languages: Studies of immersion and bilingual education (Vol. 163). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.

107

8Volume Number 1,

Krashen, S. D. (1984). Immersion: Why it works and what it has taught us. Language and Society, 12(1), 61-64. Krashen, S. D. (1987). Applications of psycholinguistic research to the classroom. In M. H. Long & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Methodology in TESOL: Book of reading (pp.33-44). New York: Newbury House. Nation, I. S. P. (1996). The four strands of a language course. TESOL in Context, 6(1), 7- 12. Nation, I. S. P. (2007). The four strands. International Journal of Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1(1), 2-13. Nation, I. S. P., & Newton, J. (2008). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. New York: Routledge. Long, M. (1988). Instructed language development. In L. M. Beebe (Ed.), Issues in second language acquisition: Multiple perspectives (pp. 115-141). New York: Newbury House. Richards, J. C. (2012a). Interchange Intro Student's Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Richards, J. C. (2012b). Interchange Level 1 Student's Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Richards, J. C. (2012c). Interchange Level 2 Student's Edition. Cambridge:Cambridge University. Richards, J. C. (2012d). Interchange Level 3 Student's Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. M. Gass & C. G. Madden (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 165-179). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Swain, M. (2008). The output hypothesis: Its history and its future. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 1, 45-50.

108

Threshold

Interview

109

8Volume Number 1,

110

Threshold

An Interview with Dr. Amir Zand-Moghadam on Allameh Tabataba'i University ELT Conferences and English Students

By Ali Derakhshesh

Dr. Amir Zand-Moghadam is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Department of English Language and Literature, Allameh Tabataba'i University. He also serves as Assistant Editor for Issues in Language Teaching Journal. Currently, he is the Head of Office for Developing International Academic Collaborations at Allameh Tabataba'i University.

THRESHOLD: Let me start by thanking you for accepting our invitation to this interview. For the first question, I would like to ask you about your educational background. How did you get interested in TEFL? Where did you do your undergraduate and graduate studies?

111

8Volume Number 1,

Dr. Zand-Moghadam: First of all, I would like to thank you for arranging this interview. To be honest, I didn’t like English that much. At that time, English was taught differently (in a positive sense) at our junior high school; our teacher, who had graduated from Allameh Tabataba’i University, was an experienced teacher who used to teach English communicatively though, unfortunately, I was not interested in learning English. Everything started when one of our relatives recommended Shokouh’s English Institute (SEI) because, in his view, that would help me perform better in Konkoor (University Entrance Exam). So, my father and I went to SEI to register, but we came to know that they offered conversation classes only; I didn’t register. One year later, as my English teacher at school asked me, I registered in SEI and started learning English. The first three terms at SEI were entirely boring, but little by little, I got interested and I passed a total number of 15 terms. Next, I took a TOEFL course and then a four-term FCE preparation course. I believe the most important factor that encouraged me to continue my English education was my teachers’ encouragement at SEI. In fact, we were like friends there and I used to spend most of my time with them. Some of them were university lecturers; they invited me to attend their classes at university, a big opportunity for me to develop my knowledge of English and know more about the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), so I regularly attended their classes at university. I was about to finish the FCE course at SEI when they asked me to take an exam and attend a teacher training course (TTC) at SEI. But, I was a high school student! It would be both difficult and motivating. Thus, I formally started teaching at SEI and taught to kids, teens, and adults, respectively. This made me more interested in teaching English and I decided to choose TEFL as my major at university though many of my friends asked me not to. My major at school was Mathematics and Physics and all my friends and family members expected me to be an engineer, like many of my cousins. At that time, there was no specific test for the applicants who were interested in language education. Honestly, I couldn’t perform well although I could answer all English questions correctly (%100). So, I had to go to Azad University. I studied TEFL at Azad University and I graduated with honors. During my BA, I was studying, learning, and teaching most of the time. Then, I did my best and entered Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) for my MA. Now, as a faculty member of ATU, I can claim that my MA class was one of the best MA classes at ATU. We were all interested students who were enthusiastically studying and doing research in Applied Linguistics. In fact, we were always encouraged and admired by our revered professors, Dr. Parviz Birjandi, Dr. Mansoor Fahim, Dr. Mehdi Nowrouzi Khiabani, Dr. Khatib, and my strict but kind professor, Dr. Fahimeh Marefat. To cut the long story short, most of the students in my MA class at ATU, including me, could enter the PhD level: one of my friends and I were accepted by ATU again, two of my classmates were

112

Threshold admitted to University of Tehran, and one entered Azad University. Now, we are all working as faculty members at different universities across the country.

THRESHOLD: All right! Now let's talk a little bit about the courses that you teach. What courses do you usually teach? Is there a special reason for teaching these courses?

Dr. Zand-Moghadam: I like teaching methodology courses. I mean Language Teaching Methodology. Maybe, the reason is that in such a course the instructor has to familiarize the students with various sciences like Psychology, Sociology,

113

8Volume Number 1,

Philosophy, Education, and Linguistics. I, personally, believe that this course can open up new vistas for students. Of course, I teach Reading Comprehension, Grammar and Writing, Research Methodology, Reading Journalistic English at the graduate level, and Contrastive Analysis, Applied Linguistics, ESP, and Materials Development at the MA level.

THRESHOLD: What are some of your research interests? How did you get interested in them? What is their significance in TEFL?

Dr. Zand-Moghadam: My areas of interest are Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), and Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) although I have also worked on ESP. I got interested in TBLT in Dr. Khatib’s language teaching methodology class during my MA. He encouraged me to read more about it. I also found it appealing and useful to students. I practiced it in my classes and I came to assess its effectiveness in a real classroom context. This made me read more about it and do research on it. As far as ILP is concerned, it was Dr. Tajeddin, in his Discourse class during my PhD, who invoked my interest to work on ILP. In my opinion, discourse and pragmatics best show the dynamicity of language. Now, most of the research papers I write and the theses I supervise are about TBLT and ILP.

THRESHOLD: The gap between the first ELT conference and the second one which was held recently at your university was almost big. As the executive chair of the two conferences, would you explain the reason? Do you have any plans for the third conference?

Dr. Zand-Moghadam: Yes, you are right. The first ELT conference was held in 1388 and the second one in 1392, but there was no specific reason for the gap. As you know, arranging and holding a conference takes a lot of time and energy and needs financial support. But, finally, we could make it in 1392. We are planning to hold the third one. It will be held, hopefully, next year (1394) in Ordibehesht or Khordad.

THRESHOLD: A question that we usually ask at the end of our interviews is: How have you found Allameh Tabataba’i students throughout all these years? Do you think they are getting better or worse year by year? Is there any specific

114

Threshold problem that you think most BA students have? If yes, how do you think they can best handle that problem? Dr. Zand-Moghadam: A good question! Students at ATU are good at English proficiency. I mean, when they enter the university, they do not need to pass any general English course; most of them are English teachers at different institutes as they start their academic education. However, many problems arise as they have to deal with technical/specific courses. Unfortunately, some of them do not have a clear picture of the field; they think studying English at university means learning general English, the same as what they already did at language institutes. But, this is not true. If their major is English literature, they need to focus on literature. If their major is English translation, they have to learn translation techniques. So, after two or three semesters, they get disappointed. Some of them come to know that English language and literature is not their favorite major. Moreover, every semester some students come to me and ask for the future of the field; they are worried about finding a good job after they graduate. As far as I’m concerned, I think something must be done about it. One solution is producing specific programs to introduce our major to the public and would-be students. Yes, to the public. People usually ask me what we study at BA, MA and PhD. They think it is Basic English at BA, Intermediate English at MA, and Advanced English at PhD. Once I was asked if there is any other type of conditional sentence (English grammar) we study at the PhD level. Thus, introducing our major to the public and future university students will help them plan their future and decide whether English education is what they have been looking for. The other solution is revising the current BA syllabus we follow at universities. In my opinion, the syllabi should be specific to universities, i.e., every university should be allowed to select and offer the necessary courses, which may not be offered at other universities, based on the proficiency level of its students. This way, in ATU, for example, some general English courses will not be offered to students due to their high proficiency in English.

THRESHOLD: Thank you very much.

Dr. Zand-Moghadam: Thanks for everything. I wish you and the whole ELT community in Iran the best.

115

8Volume Number 1,

116

Threshold

Army of Letters

117

8Volume Number 1,

118

Threshold

A King Who Did Not Want to Be “Down to Earth”

Once upon a time, there was a king who thought, as kings used to think, that he was God’s gift to mankind. His courtiers flattered him incessantly, and his triumphs over his rivals had gone to his head. All this lent support to his self- congratulatory manners. One day when he went hunting with his entourage, he saw in the woods an old man in rags who was collecting sticks. The king wanted to draw pleasure from teasing the old man, telling him, “You are still working so hard at your advanced age! How tough is your living?” “As the uncrowned king of the forest,” replied the old man. Surprised at the answer, the king decided to put him in his place and said, “Are you the king of the forest? So, show me your power!” Looking bright-eyed, the old man put down his sickle and replied, “I can make Your Majesty dismount from the steed.” The king mocked him in disbelief, “Can you?! Let me see it. If you could do so, I would give you the very horse.” The old man paused for a moment and said, “Everyone is entitled to think Your Majesty is too mighty to be taken off his steed, but, at least, I can make Your Majesty get on the steed.” The king immediately got off the horse and said, “You, demented old man, are too big for your breeches. Now, show me how you can do that, or I’ll have you beheaded.” The old man smiled, “But Your Majesty has dismounted from the steed, as I promised.” The king stared at him in moments with a blank expression on his face, and then involuntarily got on his horse. Taking a short bow, the old sage continued, “And with all due respect, I have managed to make Your Majesty mount the horse, as I also promised.”

Saleh Tabatabai English Language and Literature, BA, Shahid Beheshti University

119

8Volume Number 1,

Join Us!

What good friends we are! Loneliness, Me, And Myself. I’m with loneliness, Loneliness is with me, We’re not alone! Even, When, Loneliness is busy somewhere else, And, I prefer to be with myself, I’m with myself, So, I’m not alone, Because, Myself is with me. We three, Are always with each other, Happy of not being alone, Smiling to the life, And, Appreciating its loveliness! Join us, And, Be happy!

Ataollah Hassani History, Associate Professor, Shahid Beheshti University (July 9, 2014)

120

Threshold

Sauntering Shoes

Where have my shoes been? This morning _ suddenly_ no kidding! Something captured my attention! My eyes, my ears and my feet together: My shoes. My dirty, dusty, filthy shoes. My grimy, grubby, grungy shoes. Let me create a word at this very moment please: Dilthy shoes! What's wrong with those? Hurry! Where were you all night? I saw undone laces, loose laces. Half worn-out soles, not souls: soles I mean. Sorry! Two tongues just sticking out of them. How dare you wry at me! "They are solely some simple shoes silly" I tell myself. No, they are not just shoes. Don't get the laces wrong. When I bent down tightening those untamable laces, I saw a sunny smile of a little girl, or a crow, My face was her only sunshine that day. When I was polishing their noses, I saw a steadfast guy Wiping the tears off a face,

121

8Volume Number 1,

Even that heavy bag would not shake his hands. But she did. When I was paying for my intractable shoes, A father slipped his little son's tiny left hand into his pocket. I read the son's beyond-this-world kind of look. And that on the father's face. And my shoes remember this scene: A son making his father rich. A boy saying " Dad, Dad, it's empty…your pocket". Shoelaces twisted again as they twisted my mind. My shoes still remain the strange entities as they were before. And dirty too. But some dazzling baffling images are still flickering. Before me, my eyes, my ears and my feet together: I was a sun shinning bright to HER. I was an intruder to THEM. I was an alien to HIM. Look at those shoes! Where the hell are you going this time? Do not leave me beyond. For your lace's sake.

Masood Farvahar Kalkhoran English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

122

Threshold

In Memoriam

Pain, pain, pain, pain, through his fondly warm vein, firmly dwelt in the brain. Bored with the chill in the rain, the Kind man gave in to his pain.

Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong! The bell sang again a song; The dawn cried in bitter tongue: Alas, alas, he was gone; To our wonder, it was done; Friends parted one by one.

A stream, a stream, a stream, a stream! With floods of tears, men looked grim, mourning his loss in high esteem. Not yet his life was full to the brim, but Fate, how soon, snatched the cream.

Saleh Tabatabai English Language and Literature, BA, Shahid Beheshti University

123

8Volume Number 1,

Perplext in Faith ايمان وشک ايمان و شک

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. سرگشته در ايمان ولی خالص بهکر دار آمد او؛ دار آمد او؛ چون ساز کرد آهنگ خود، هم ساز شد فرجام او . . افزون بَوَد ايمان در اين شک های صادق، بی گمان، گمان، های صادق، بی از نيمی از آن گفتهها در دين و کيش مردمان . .

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the specters of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length جنگيد با شک و گمان و از آن ستيزه جان گرفت، چشم بصيرت را نبست با داوری های شگفت، های شگفت، اشباح خوفانگيز را از بام انديشه به زير آورد و آمد اين چنين چون شهسواران دلير . .

To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone, ايمان او شد استوار آنک به .نيروی دليل .نيروی دليل شبهای ديجورشi4گذشت در پيشگاه آن جليل، آن ايزدی کو آفريد هم صبح گه هم شام را، گه هم شام را، اما نبوده او مقيم تنها به آن روشنسر .ا .ا

124

Threshold

[But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinaï's peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold, Altho' the trumpet blew so loud.] بلکه توانی جُستنش هم در شب و هم در ظُلَمii،9 آن سان که موسی جُست او هر شب به سينا دم به دم، دم، آن دم که قوم گمرهش از زر بتی برساختند، هر چند غريد آسمان از آنچه درانداختند. iii1

Inclusive Stanzas from Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” Translated by

Saleh Tabatabai English Language and Literature, BA, Shahid Beheshti University

------. ديجور: تاريک

2 . ظُلَم: ظلمت ها

در اينجا تنيسون مطالب دو باب از سِفر خروج کتاب مقدس را در هم آميخته است: در باب نوزدهم از سِفر . 3 خروج ماجرای مالقات بنیاسرائيل با خداوند بر پای کوه سينا آمده است: »و واقع شد که در روز سيّم بهوقت طلوع فجر که رعد و برق و ابر غليظی بر کوه پديد آمد و آواز کرنايی بسيار بلند که تمامی قوم در اردوگاه از شنيدن آن بر خود لرزيدند. و موسی قوم را برای مالقات خداوند از اردوگاه بيرون آورد، و در پايين کوه «.دندايستا ، اما در باب سیودوم از سِفر خروج، ماجرای بنیاسرائيل پس از تأخير موسی در بازگشت از کوه سينا و ساختن گوسالۀ زرين بهدست هارون که در غيبت موسی رهبری قوم را برعهده داشت آمده است: »و چون قوم ديدند که موسی در بازگشت از کوه تأخير کرد، نزد هارون جمع شدند و او را گفتند که برخيز برایمان خدايان بساز...«. چنانکه پيداست، در تلميح تنيسون اين دو ماجرا با هم ترکيب شده .اند

125

8Volume Number 1,

راهی به سوی پیراستن جان از اين آلودگیها: قطعه ای مذهبی ای مذهبی قطعه

اصول تربيتی اسالمی، در پی تزکيه آدمی، يعنی پيراستن جان او از اين آلودگيهاست، پيراستنی که در جهت سازندگی باشد، البته مبارزه با آفت کار آسانی نيست، مخصوصا اگر ريشه دوانده و به صورت عادت درآمده باشد. اما در انسان، اين موجود مرموز که سرشار از نيروست، تغيير عادت هم امری محال نيست، بلکه ممکن و عملی است، منتها بايد همه نيروها را در او بسيج و همه شرايط محيطی را برايش آماده کرد . . قبل از هر چيز بايد از خود انسان و از جان و درونش مدد گرفت. برای اصالح نفس و بارآوردن آن دو چيز اهميت دارد: يکی بينش صحيح، بينشی که خواست او را دگرگون کند، و ديگر اراده قوی و آهنين. بايد به اراده آدمی پرداخت و در او جوششی درونی به وجود آورد، تا بتواند تصميم بگيرد و دگرگونيها را به وجود آورد. اگر اراده قوی با بينش صحيح همراه باشد، حرکت اصالحی آغاز .ميشود .ميشود :به گفته قرآن :به گفته قرآن »... خداوند وضع مردم را تغيير نميدهد تا خود در آنچه در خويشتن دارند تغيير ....دهند « ) –سوره رعد آيه 44(

به همين جهت اسالم به خودآگاهی و اراده نيرومند نقش مهمی در کار اصالح نفس ميدهد : : حضرت صادق ع) ( :فرمود

»تو خود طبيب خويشتنی، دردت را ميشناسی و درمانت را هم، اکنون ببين تا چه حد حاضری برای خود به پا خيزی و به خود برسی «.

:و نيز فرمود :و نيز فرمود »آنکس که چه در هنگام شوق، چه در هنگام ترس، چه در حال هوس، چه در حال خشم، چه در حال خشنودی خويشتندار باشد، خدا بدنش را بر آتش دوزخ حرام «.ميکند

انسان خويشتندار که در هر حال بتواند درست فکر کند و درست تصميم بگيرد و در برابر احساس برافروخته، ميل و شهوت زودگذر يا عادتی که در او ريشه کرده تسليم نشود، ميتواند از آفتها محفوظ بماند و از آتش برهد . . اسالم نميگويد صرفا تلقين کنيد يا چشم و گوش بسته کسی را به کار خيری واداريد، ميگويد کاری کنيد که خودآگاهی انسان جرقه زند، از درون بجوشد و تصميم بگيرد. کاری کنيد که زنگارها زدوده شود، جهل و زبونی باقی نماند، سرمايه درونی بشکفد و به خود» « انسان استقالل و شخصيتی داده شود که بتواند خوب فکر کند و خوب تصميم بگيرد . .

126

Threshold

حضرت صادق ع) ( :فرمود :فرمود »هرکس که نه از خود واعظی برای خويش دارد، نه از همنشين ارشادکننده ای برخوردار است، دشمن بر گردنش سوار خواهد شد «.

پس آزادی و عزت آدمی در گرو خود» انتقاد از « و داشتن اندرزگر درونی است . . لوامه»قرآن به نفس « يعنی آن انتقادگر درونی که اگر کارش را خوب انجام دهد، راه خودسازی را برای انسان هموار ميکند، سوگند ياد ميکند و ميگويد:

لا اقسم بيوم القيامه. و ال اقسم باالنفس اللوامه . . ر»سوگند به وز رستاخيز. و سوگند به نفس انتقادگر «. «. ) –سوره قيامت 4آيه های و (9

آيات ديگر قرآن که در زمينه خودسازی آمده نيز نشان ميدهد که از نظر اين کتاب الهی، انتقاد از خود، يکی از پايههای اساسی خودسازی است . . اسالم ميخواهد احساسات و عواطف انسان در اختيار او باشد و در .خدمت او .خدمت او در اين روايت دقت کنيد:

»قلب خود را به صورت همدم نکوکار و فرزند با وفايی درآور و علم و آگاهيت را به صورت پدری که قلب از آن پيروی کند، و آلودگيهای نفسانی را دشمنی بشمار که با آن مبارزه ميکنی.« )حضرت صادق («ع» («ع»

127

8Volume Number 1,

A Way to the Purification of the Soul from the Impurities: A Religious Excerpt

The Principles of Islamic education follow man purification, i.e., the purification of his soul from the impurities. A purification towards construction; of course struggling with a pest is not a simple work; especially if it is deeply rooted and has become a habit. But in man, this weird creature which is full of forces, changing the habit is not an impossible affair; but, it is possible and feasible; though, all of the forces should be mobilized in him and all of the environmental conditions should be prepared for him. Before everything, it must be asked for succor from man himself, his soul, and his inside. Two things are important in self-improvement and its upbringing: one is the correct insight to transform his request; and the other is a strong and iron will. The man`s will must be attended to, and an inside boiling should be created in him; so that he can decide and he can create transformations. If the strong will is accompanied by the correct insight, a reformatory movement would start. According to the Quran:

… God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves … (The Thunder Surah – The Verse 11)

Thus, Islam gives an important role to the consciousness and the strong will in the self-improvement affair. Imam Sadeq (peace be upon him) said:

You yourself are your physician; you know your pain and also your treatment. Now look to what extent you are ready to raise up for yourself, and to do yourself well.

128

Threshold

And he also said:

He whoever that is self-possessed, either at the time of ecstasy, at the time of fear, at the time of caprice, at the time of wrath, or at the time of gratification, God would forbid his body to the Fire of the Hell.

A self-possessed man who can think correctly and decide correctly in any circumstances, and would not surrender to the flushed feeling, to the transient tendency and lust, or to a deeply rooted habit in him, can be protected from the pests and rescued from the Fire. Islam does not say that just inculcate or cause someone to the good work with the closed eyes and ears; it says that do something that man`s consciousness sparks, boils inside, and decides; do something that rusts would be cleared, there would be no ignorance and despicable action, the internal asset would be flourished, and the man “himself” would be attained independence and personality that can think well and decide well. Imam Sadeq (peace be upon him) said:

He whoever that has no preacher from himself for himself, and has no companion guidance, the enemy would dominate him totally.

So man`s freedom and honor is upon the “self-criticism” and having an inside guide. Quran swears by the “reproachful soul”, i.e., that inside critic that if it does its work well, would smooth the way of self-making for man, and says:

No! I swear by the Day of Resurrection. No! I swear by the reproachful soul. (The Resurrection Surah – The Verses 1 & 2)

Other verses of Quran regarding the self-making show that according to this Divine Book, self-criticism is one of the basic foundations of the self-making.

129

8Volume Number 1,

Islam wants to have the man`s emotions and affections at its authority, and not in its service. Consider this narration:

Treat your heart as the benefactor companion, and a faithful child; and treat your science and awareness as a father that the heart follows it; and figure sensual impurities as an enemy that you fight with it. (Imam Sadeq “peace be upon him”)

Translated by Mojgan Salmani Translation Studies, MA, Allamahe Tabataba’i University

130

Threshold

Translation Challenge

131

8Volume Number 1,

132

Threshold

Profile

Mohammad-Taqí Bahār was born on November 6, 1884 in the Sarshoor District of Mashhad, the capital city of the Khorasan Province in the north-east of Iran. Bahār began his primary education when he was 3, with his father, Mohammad Kāzem Sabouri, as his tutor. Mohammad Kāzem Sabouri was the Poet Laureate of the shrine in Mashhad. Bahār composed his first poem at age 8, at which time he also chose the name Bahār, as his pseudonym. At 14, Bahār was fluent in Arabic, and later he mastered to speak and write in French. At 18, he lost his father and started to work as a Muslim preacher and clergy. It was during this time that he composed his first ode. At the onset of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran (1906–1911), Bahār laid down his position of Poet Laureateship and joined the revolutionary movement for establishing the parliamentary system in Iran. Bahār became an active member of the Mashhad Society for Prosperity that campaigned for establishment of Parliament of Iran. He published Khorāsān newspaper in collaboration with Hossein Ardebili, Nou-bahār and Tāzeh-bahār, both in collaboration with Haj Sheikh Ahmad Bahar, who operated a printing company in Mashahad. Bahār published numerous articles in his newspapers in which he passionately exhorted his readers to stand up and help bring about the establishment of a functioning parliament. He equally forcefully advocated

133

8Volume Number 1, creation of new and reformed public institutions, a new social and political order, and new forms of expression. After the triumph of the Constitutional Revolution, Bahār was repeatedly elected as Member of Parliament. Following establishment of the University of Tehran in 1934, Bahār became Professor of Persian Literature there. In the course of his tenure as professor, he dedicated most of his time to writing and editing books on Persian literature and history. Notable amongst numerous works written and edited by Bahār are:  Tārikh-e Sistān (The History of Sistan)  Tārikh-e Mokh'tasar-e Ahzāb-e Siāssi (A Concise History of the Political Fractions)  Sabk Shenāsi (Literary Schools)  Moj'malal ol-Tavārikh o val Qesās (Concise Histories and Tales)  Javāme' ol-Hekāyāt (An Anthology of Allegorical Tales),  Selected Verses (In two volumes)

134

Threshold

سنگ مزار

اينکه خاک سيهش بالين است اختر چرخ ادب، پروين است گر چه جز تلخی ز ايام نديد هر چه خواهی، سخنش شيرين است صاحب آن همه گفتار، امروز سائل فاتحه و ياسين است دوستان به که ز وی ياد کنند دل بی دوست دلی غمگين است بيند اين بستر و عبرت گيرد هر که را چشم حقيقت بين است هر که باشی و ز هر جا برسی آخرين منزل هستی، اين است آدمی هر چه توانگر باشد چون بدين نقطه رسد، مسکين است اندر آنجا که قضا حمله کند اندر آنجا که چاره تسليم و ادب تمکين است زادن و کشتن و پنهان کردن دهر را رسم و ره ديرين است خرم آن کس که در اين محنت گاه خاطری را سبب تسکين است

پروین اعتصامی

135

8Volume Number 1,

Tombstone

That who finds solace on the grim ground Is the astral literati, Parvin. She faces nothing but agony Yet, her words are sweet and pleasant Today, the master of those soothing words Is in need of prayers and orisons May it be that she is remembered by her coterie In that sorrowful is a lonely soul. Seeing her fate The one with a truth-seeking eye is enlightened. Whoever and wherever you are This is the final abode of all. Man, mighty or not Is hapless in his ultimate home Where fate reigns And words recede with humility Bearing, killing and deceiving These are the world’s immemorial rituals. Thus, blessed is the one who, in this sorrowful life Seeks solace in the comfort of her dear ones.

Mahshad Jalalpourroodsari English Literature, PhD Student, Macquarie University

136

Threshold

Tombstone

This whose bed is dark earth is Parvin, the literary star. Life had nothing but bitterness for her, sweet are her words, though. Today, the owner of all those words begs for requiem. May friends remember her, a friendless man is a dejected one. Seeing this bed, the wise take an example. Being whoever or coming from wherever, here is the last life phase. No matter how much human is rich, arriving to this place, they are poor. When fate befalls there is no way but to give up and respectfully succumb. Giving birth, killing and hiding are the ancient ways of the world. Happy the one who soothes a soul in this pain-stricken lodge.

Nahid Jamshidi Rad English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

137

8Volume Number 1,

Headstone

The one whose comfort is the sulky dirt is the stellar literati, Parvin. Although she gained nothing but suffering, her words are couched in unimaginable light and sweetness. Today, the retainer of all of those sweet words is in desperate penury of prayers and orisons. May it be she is remembered dearly by the friendly coteries, since squalid it will be a friendless soul. The one with assumptive perspective will be edified by observing this penultimate comfort. Wherever you are and accede, the ultimate settlement of the ephemeral vale will be this. Man, with all of his opulence, will be considered penurious in this ultimacy. When faith debunks you, deference and docility will be considered rectification. Bearing, killing and hypocrisy are vale’s immemorial ordinance. Therefore, in such a baling abode, auspicious will be the one who succors a fellow companion.

Hossein Mohseni English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

138

Threshold

Tombstone

That who identifies peace on the dirt is the literary star, Parvin. She faces bitterness, yet, her words are melodious and of light. Today, the goddess of those soothing words is in dire need of prayers. May it be that she is remembered by her counterparts, since sorrowful is the one who has a lonely soul. Seeing her fate The one with open eyes will be enlightened. Whoever and wherever you are, this is the final resting place of all. Man, mighty or not is penniless in the ultimate abode, Where fate commands, words are humiliated. Bearing, killing and deceiving, these are sublunary ghastly rituals. Therefore, the blessed one in this sorrowful life seeks peace in the comfort of her dear ones.

Nasrin Bedrood Persian Literature, AA, University of Yazd

139

8Volume Number 1,

Next Issue Translation Challenge از من گرفت گیتی يارم را

از من گرفت گيتی يارم را وز چنگ من ربود نگارم را ويرانه ساخت يکسره کاخم را آشفته کرد يکسره کارم را ز اشک روان و خاک به سر کردن در پيش ديده کند مزارم را يک سو سرشک و يکسو داغ دل پر باغ الله ساخت کنارم را گر باغ الله داد به من، پس چون از من گرفت الله عذارم را؟ در خاک کرد عشق و شبابم را بر باد داد صبر و قرارم را بر گور مرده ريخت شرابم را در کام سگ فکند شکارم را جام میام فکند ز کف و آن گاه اندر سرم شکست خمارم را بس زار ناله کردم و پاسخ داد با زهر خند، نالهٔ زارم را گفتم بهار عشق دميد اما گيتی خزان نمود بهارم را گيتی گنه نکرد و گنه دل کرد کاين گونه کرد سنگين بارم را باری، بر آن سرم که از اين سينه بيرون کنم دل بزه کارم را - محمدتقی بهار

140

Threshold

Views and Reviews

141

8Volume Number 1,

142

Threshold

A Review of Faust’s Adaptation in Tehran

Nahid Jamshidi Rad English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

143

8Volume Number 1,

Hamid Reza Na’eemi’s Faust is a free adaptation of the classic work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe’s Faust deals with a scientist's desire for conquering all the realms of science and knowledge. He has spent all his life on this quest, and at the end gets frustrated, as he finds out that man is not capable of achieving such a grand plan since man has not the power to penetrate into the universe. Then, Lucifer appears and promises to fulfill his desire only if he delivers his soul to him. Faust haunted by the temptation for power through knowledge and being disappointed with ways of God - he is master of religious knowledge as well as all known sciences of his time - succumbs to Lucifer and finds what he desires: knowledge, wealth, and of course power. Yet he pays a heavy price, his soul. However, Na’eemi’s work being inspired by the theme of signing pact with Lucifer to achieve absolute power has its own way of presenting Faust. Let’s forget about Goeth’s classic work and pretend that Na’eemi’s work is an original work, which is in the sense that his version of Faust - performed by Reza Behboodi - is not a simple replica but a new character tailored for the new time, Na’eemi’s time which is far from the romantic age of Goethe. Na’eemi’s version of Faust at his first appearance is seen as a modern man; apart from his clothing which is quite modern to make the audience believe him as the symbol or the representative of their own desires and concerns, his soliloquy on his frustration with his efforts to gain knowledge and then power, wealth and all pleasure of the world remind us of our ideals. He has lost his faith in knowledge and finds life meaningless: “now that life has no meaning and the end of life is death so death is the life itself”. Faust as a thinker has desired to achieve power to change the world through gaining knowledge. However, after committing himself to learning and practicing sciences all through his life, he finds nothing. He has made him the slave of sciences and at the end he stays empty-handed. The audience see him as townspeople crowd around Faust and tease him and they would not stop making fun of him, but when he introduces him as Dr. Faust, who has studied all the knowledge of the time and reminds them that as a young man he and his father helped the people with medicine during a time of plague. People do not care about his studies and efforts. They seem to have pity on this ragged man. In fact, his knowledge not only has not brought any power but no respect for him. The only result of all his efforts is living a lonely, poor, wretched life empty of any pleasure or respect. Faust once desiring for all knowledge of the world ends with deep despair so that he attempts to commit suicide. He explains the reason for his desperate disappointment as “when you are deprived of hope in God then you have no choice but to kill yourself” and “if you have not the chance to have a glorious life let have a glorious death”. He claims to be deprived of God’s grace while it is his own revolutionary and frenzied quest for knowledge that has led 144

Threshold him to losing faith in God. Faust, unlike his status as a great thinker and scientist, behaves like an ordinary, a common man. One who tries to find some excuses outside his own deeds for his doom. He is desperate that he cannot think properly, and it is this deep frustration that he hopelessly gives up to the Devil’s temptation. Mephistopheles emerges and acts as a savior who offers him something other than death. Faust makes a pact with Mephistopheles to let him have his soul in return of the power he offers him. Faust does this simply without being cut between choosing God or his antagonist because he has already lost hope in God. He tells Mephistopheles that: “I’m always a slave. What’s the difference to be your slave or someone else's?!” However, with the new opportunity - having Mephisto at his command - he can change his life. He thinks that money and the power associated to it can change everything: “money can transform anything to its opposite” “I want money and wealth, a kind of money which is really worth. The more money has power and value, the more I will have power and value.” This way Faust prefers Mephisto over God and Mephisto willingly commits to the desperate Faust as an attendant in this mortal world to fulfill his wishes! In fact, before the appearance of Mephistopheles, Faust has already made his decision when in his talk with the merry dancers celebrating Easter he questions the holy verse in the Bible: “in the Bible it is said 'in the beginning there was word' but it would be better if it was deed!?”. He rejects the idea of a passive God. To him, if there must be a God, he must act and his creation must have begun with “deed” rather than “word”. Faust is pragmatic and favors action. After being disappointed with God, he accepts the hand of Mephistopheles in spite of God’s agent; the Joker in white - she is also passive; she has no voice, no active presence; she acts only to respond to Faust’s bad deeds or bad decisions. But the Devil, Mephistopheles is active and loudly propagandizes his ideals. Mephisto played lively by the strong actor and university instructor, Mas’ood Delkhah, appears as riding a bicycle. He is in a black suit with a merry ironic manner. Unlike God’s agent - the silent Joker in white - he is very active and appropriately talkative. He is capable of convincing others and elaborating on his ideas. He is much more attractive than the passive silent Joker! He does not leave Faust by himself to make a decision. He actively tries to pave the way for Faust to make his decision. Hence, Faust despite all his knowledge and dumb objection of Joker/God, embraces the Devil, the friendly Mephistopheles. Faust with Mephistopheles as his companion and attendant walks around a God-fearing community to try his new life. First, he goes to a bar and finds out people - the happy dancers - now respect him since he is wealthy and a powerful man. He enjoys the situation just like an ordinary well-to-do man not an all- 145

8Volume Number 1, knowing/powerful man! It seems that all the power that Mephistopheles provides him with gives him nothing more than mundane pleasure, something that he could achieve without signing the pact. Yet, Faust, who has never had the time to touch this side of life, happily enjoys it and is thankful to Mephisto. Then, on his way, he comes across Margarete - the once prostitute and now the repentant and pious beauty. Faust falls in love with her and demands her. Mephisto warns him that Margarete is a religious girl and would not accept his love unless under marriage. Margarete is the symbol of the traditional man, the one who values ethics above everything, and Faust is the modern one who sacrifices his conscience and ethics (Margarete) for achieving his ideal of the modern world. Faust, who truly loves her, wants to marry her, but Mephistopheles reminds him that marriage is an institution that enslaves him and hobbles him from following his grand mission to change the world. Faust, who is caught between his love for Margarete and his desire for achieving absolute power, avoids marrying her, and when Margarete asks him if he believes in God, he balks at giving a direct answer and tells her that God is one side of “the balance” and at the other side “the Devil, man and nature” stand. This way, he introduces man and here Faust himself as the other side of balance. He puts himself at the place of God’s rival or to be more correct, God’s antagonist! One may think that Faust is a new Prometheus, who fights for humanity, but in the course of the play, Faust shows that he is far simpler and smaller than such a mythic figure. He is not a hero but an ordinary man who begins with grand desires unable to fulfill them even by signing a pact with the Devil himself! Faust cannot leave Margarete, so he asks Mephistopheles for help. Mephisto promises to let him have her. Mephisto taking advantage of Margarete’s love for Faust and his seductive ways leads Faust to her room. The result of this love affair is Magarete’s getting pregnant with Faust’s child, and her brother Valentine being ashamed of her sister’s licentious way of life comes to take revenge on Faust, who has brought this disgrace on the family. Faust accidentally kills him in a conflict, and Margarete is condemned to death because of her love affair with him. Faust feeling sinful for killing her brother and causing her doom, asks Mephistopheles to save her and free her from prison. However, when they get into prison, they find her devolved into insanity, and she does not recognize Faust, instead mistakes him for her executioner. Faust pleads her to escape with him, but her own sense of guilt and shame prevents her from escaping. As Margarete surrenders her soul to the judgment of God/community, Mephistopheles enters to tell Faust that they must leave or they would be caught by the authorities and suffer the same fate of execution. Faust and Mephistopheles flee from Margarete’s cell as she cries out his name “Faust…”. 146

Threshold

The first phase of Faust’s life and play ends with the tragic death of the innocent Margarete being scarified for Faust’s grand wishes! In the second phase, Faust, who is now frustrated at losing his love cannot accept Mephistopheles’s offer to have Helen of Troy, the symbol of absolute beauty and pleasure. Faust wants to follow his ideal of changing the world through the power of money and science. Mephisto, loyal to his promise to help him with his mission, takes him to a travel through time and lets him watch the result of his practice. There is progress, industrialism, and technology, yet people are not happy: We see Faust’s workers; the proletariat objecting to his imperialism, they demand for better work conditions, insurance, higher wage, etc. Faust, who thought through science and money he would have the power to make the world a better place for people, gets absolutely frustrated. He loses all his hope in humanity and once more falls in the nihilism that in the early scenes he was entrapped in. Faust, who desired to change the world, sees that no matter how much man is powerful, he is subject to weaknesses of his own nature. As he was not able to reach a balance in his own nature, he failed to create balance, harmony, and thus happiness in the world. Now he is all lost and Mephisto comes to claim his soul. Faust has no choice - and desires for no one - but to succumb to his fate!

147

8Volume Number 1,

148

Threshold

Kafka’s Metamorphosis: Borrowing, Reinterpretation, or a New Creation of Greek Myths?

Niloufar Hematyar English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

Metamorphosis in Greek means "change of shape". It is a key element in Greek Mythology. To speak of metamorphosis in mythological terms is usually to refer to a feature of the mythic narrative in which a character undergoes a major, and usually irrevocable, change. As Forbes Irving (2011) said:

The transformation of people into animals, plants, and stones is one of the most common and characteristic themes of Greek mythology, embodying as well some of the most mysterious and fantastic episodes in a mythology that is sometimes considered to be relatively realistic and lacking in fantasy. Curiously in the plant metamorphosis myths, nymphs and maidens were usually transformed into trees while youths became flowers.

The Metamorphosis by Kafka is a story about Gregor Samsa, who awakes one morning to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect. In contrast to most of the Greek myths, it begins, with what should be its climax, the protagonist’s transformation. No buildup, no tension: he is now a bug. It is interesting to note that, although Kafka’s story has different themes, it deals with one of the most common themes of Greek mythology: the transformation of a human being into an animal. This leads to the question: Is the reason for this transformation the same as those of the Greek myths? In this essay, the researcher intends to compare and contrast different themes in Kafka’s Metamorphosis and metamorphoses in Greek mythology to see if Kafka’s myth is a borrowing or a totally new creation. In Metamorphosis, the protagonist shows a gradual transformation inside; he goes through a lot of changes. If human beings are traditionally distinguished from animals by their capacity for thought, language, and social feeling, how do we categorize Gregor, who seems to exhibit all of these human capacities but resides in the body of an insect? The Metamorphosis shows Gregor 149

8Volume Number 1, questioning his own humanity as he grows more accustomed to the life of a bug. But it also casts doubt on the humanity of the other characters by showing how they too mimic animal behavior. One of the themes of this story is the economic effects on human relationships. Gregor is enslaved by his family because he is the one who makes money. Thus, with the possible exception of his sister, the family seems to treat him not as a member but as a source of income. When Gregor is no longer able to work after his metamorphosis, he is treated with revulsion and neglected. The theme of family and the duties of family members to each other drive the interactions between Gregor and the others. His thoughts are almost entirely of the need to support his parents and sending his sister to the Conservatory. Though Gregor hates his job, he follows the call of duty to his family and goes far beyond simple duty. The family, on the other hand, takes care of Gregor after his metamorphosis only so far as duty seems to necessitate. Before his metamorphosis, Gregor is alienated from his job, his humanity, his family, and even his body, as we see from the fact that he barely notices his transformation. In fact, even his consideration for his family seems to be something alien to him, as he barely notices it when he loses this consideration at the end. Gregor is trapped in his job by his duty to his family, but he dreams of the day when he can finally pay off their debts and quit his job. His need for freedom from the restrictive demands of work is expressed in his metamorphosis, by means of which he escapes. This escape, however, fails to bring Gregor freedom, for he is now imprisoned by his family in his room. Thus, when Gregor works, he is enslaved by his job and, when he doesn't work, he is enslaved by his family. The only means of escape turns out to be death. Guilt is Gregor's most powerful emotion. When he is transformed into an insect, Gregor is made unable to work by circumstances beyond his control. Despite the fact that his metamorphosis is not his fault, however, he is racked by guilt every time that the family mentions money or that he thinks about the pain that he has inflicted on them by losing the ability to support them. Alone in his room, Gregor tries to rebuild the self-identity that he had lost by living entirely for others and ignoring his own needs. Gregor's search for his identity seems hopeless, however, because he never had an identity to start with. He finds his humanity only at the end, when his sister's playing reminds him of his love for his family. This love, coupled with his freedom, is the final ingredient he needs to establish his identity. Having analyzed this aspect, I would now like to study the metamorphosis in mythology as manifestation of man’s needs and dreams. 150

Threshold

Another article which tackles the same subject is written by Somaye Nouri Zenoz with the title of “Metamorphosis: Manifest of man’s needs and dream”. As R.I Gordon (1991) mentioned the appearance of so many metamorphoses within classical mythology can be defined in close relation with the emergence of myths themselves (p. 350). As noted by Rosenberg (1992), myths symbolize human experience and embody the spiritual values of a culture while they usually originate in an ancient oral tradition. Some explain origins, natural phenomena and death; others describe the nature and function of divinities while still others provide models of virtuous behavior by relating the adventures of heroes or the misfortunes of arrogant humans (p. 14). Thus, myths cannot be considered as arbitrary inventions but stand for accounts of real lives which formed the cultures and their presence in all cultures proves the idea. According to Zenoz (2011), a certain transformation such as turning into an animal or a tree cannot be always considered a rewarding one; it can also serve as a change for worse when the gods used it as a punishment. For instance, Hamilton (1940) narrates the story of ‘Philemon and Baucis’ who change into oak and lime tree after having reached extreme old age for offering hospitality to Zeus and Hermes when they had come disguised as mortals. This is a rewarding one while we also witness the metamorphosis of ‘Hierax’ who was changed into a hawk as punishment for informing Argus that the god was stealing Io; however, there is the myth of ‘Daedalion’ who was also transformed into a hawk not as punishment of course but as a favor of Apollo while leaping from a cliff, crazed by the death of his daughter, Chione (p. 111). Even some punishments have been effected upon innocent people doing no wrong. Sample of this can be the myth of ‘Cadmus and Harmonia’; when loaded with grief and the infirmity of old age, they were innocently changed into serpents (p. 256). The colorful motif of metamorphosis, which is noticed quite a lot in mythology of various cultures and particularly that of Greek, counts for the better depiction of what men had actually experienced. They probably killed a fellowman of themselves for satisfaction of the supposed gods .Also quite tangible that one chased a young maiden in an attempt to satisfy the innate sexual needs and ended the girl’s life in his savage rape; however, he would narrate the interesting story of Acis changed into a river while fleeing from Galata’s mad pursuit (Hamilton, 1940, p. 85). It’s worthy to mention that the act of chase, for the purpose of hunt, is one of the most repeated images throughout mythology and particularly in the processes of many metamorphic myths which certainly draws the attention to the primitive and natural manners man followed in his attempt to survive. Metamorphic instances which can be associated with the idea of human sacrifice can be those of ‘Hyacinthus’, ‘Adonis’ and ‘Narcissus’; when

151

8Volume Number 1,

Hyacinthus was accidentally killed by Apollo with a discus, the god changed his blood into the flower of Hyacinth. Furthermore, when Adonis was slain by a boar, Venus- his desperate lover- changed his blood into an anemone and Narcissus was also changed into the Narcissus flower, pining away for the love of his image reflected from the water (Hamilton, 1940, p. 88). Among the myths of chase and transformation, those of ‘Alpheus and Arethusa’ and ‘Daphne’ can be named. Hamilton (1940) relates the tale of ‘Alpheus and Arethusa’ in which Arethusa was a huntress with whom Alpheus fell in love and pursued. Unwilling to marry, she fled away to the island Ortygia and there turned from a woman to a spring (p. 116). Daphne also changed into a laurel tree while fleeing from Apollo who chases her out of love. Mythology is abundant with instances of metamorphoses of the cruel beloveds refusing their true lovers into plants or animals; also those mocking the lovers get hard punishments and turn into lifeless stones or objects. In this regard, Bush relates the story of Glaucus and Scylla when Scylla, bathing in her favorite pool, is seen, loved and pursued by Glaucus who tells how he was changed into a sea-god and urges his suit. But Scylla flees away and Glaucus in anger betakes himself to Circe, begging that the nymph may be made his partner. Circe’s obliging offer of herself as a substitute being rejected, she mixes a grisly juice which, when dropped in Scylla’s pool, transforms the damsel into the traditional monster. Glaucus wept there and Scylla remained to wreak her spite on passing mariners (p. 83). Another relevant myth can be that of ‘Anaxarete’ who mocked Iphis who loved her and was turned into a stone. It’s interesting to mention some myths which according to what have been said, imply man’s desire to suppress and annihilate his enemies. Weigel relates the tale of the hunter ‘Actaeon’ who as punishment for seeing the bathe of Diana, was changed into a stag by the goddess (p. 65). Rosenberg (1992) brings the myth of ‘Lycaon’ who was turned into a wolf. Jupiter changed Lycaon as punishment for offering the god, who was sitting at the table, human flesh to eat (p. 23). Hamilton narrates a handful of such myths of which those of ‘Battus’, ‘Midas’ and ‘Tithonus’ can be named. In line with the discussed inclination of man to create strong gods helping him with the needs, it was extremely dangerous to commit any act of disrespect towards the gods since they were strikingly cruel against the impious or antagonizing characters. This was where the idea of metamorphosis could be utilized by the powerful gods to transform the aggressive ones into the lowest, weakest and most infamous of creatures such as serpents, beetles, geckos, snakes or the lifeless and powerless stones, rocks and mountains. The story of ‘Alcyone’ can be mentioned as a sample of disrespect towards gods who turned her into a halcyon. She claimed her husband to be Zeus and was punished for that. So we

152

Threshold can say that the major Greek and Roman epics all contained the theme of hubris which is a fatal flaw and leads to a character’s downfall. Love is another major theme in classical myth’s metamorphoses. It is most often described as the true driving force behind the transformations in metamorphoses. Love was more often viewed as a dangerous, destabilizing force than a positive one. Love has power over everyone, mortals and gods alike. No one can avoid its effects, or resist the danger and misery to which love often drives us. Even The God of Death, Pluto, is moved by love. Love overwhelms reason and morality: a person in love might be desperately drawn to a brother, a father, or even a bull. The transformations in metamorphoses often follow from the pursuits or the effects spurred on by love. Perhaps the most famous of these transformations is the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree when Apollo pursues her. Love creates changes in lover and loved alike. The next metamorphoses’ theme is amor. According to Judith A. Rosner- Siegel (1982), although sexual love is the most frequent manifestation of this theme, amor should not be limited to sexual relationships alone. Rather, it often refers to love of family and friends, love of glory and honor, love of evil. Amor sometimes regarded as improper or unacceptable. For example, a sexual relationship is sought by one party but rejected by the other. It is often in the eyes of the object of the pursuit that the amor seems improper, and he or she will sometimes express horror at the prospect of being caught. This type of amor may be seen in the myths of Apollo and Daphne, Jove and Io, Syrinx and Pan, Polyphemus and Galatea,Circe and Glaucus. Secondly, two lovers may be reciprocally involved, while their relationship is, nevertheless, frowned upon by their families and their societies, or is questioned by one of the pair. The famous tale of Pyramus and Thisbe fits into this category. Thirdly, a relationship which is objectionable according to Roman law, religion, or social acceptability incest, adultery, homosexuality and the like may be involved. The stories of Scylla and Nisus, Phaedra and Hippolytus, Narcissus, Mars and Venus, Ganymede, Apollo and Hyacinthus, and others, should be considered under this heading. A final example of improper amor can often be found in the pursuit of honor and glory. This pursuit can be improper if an unattainable goal is sought, an unanswerable question asked, a superior rivaled. Under this rubric fall such stories as that of Meleager and his pursuit of the Calydonian boar, Phaethon and his desire to prove his ancestry by driving the Sun’s chariot, Arachne and her attempt to surpass Athene’s art, Niobe and her pride and love for her children and her rivalry with Leda , Midas and his love for gold. More than one type of amor may sometimes be found in a single story. So, for example, Meleager pursues not only the boar but also Atalanta; his mother, Althaea, loves her son and her brothers, and is forced to choose between them. Finally, and most importantly, the themes of metamorphosis and amor are often intertwined as love or passion is itself

153

8Volume Number 1, transformed into another and sometimes more destructive emotion. This changed emotion, in turn, is often directly responsible for the failure and downfall of the characters involved and that failure often materializes as changes of various kinds (Rosner-Siegel,1982, pp. 232-233). The loss of speech, a frequent byproduct of metamorphosis, stands for the loss of identity and life. To speak is to be alive and to create one’s reality. When characters are transformed and can no longer speak, they are often doomed to death. On a literal level, characters like Callisto and Actaeon are susceptible to disasters that could have been averted through speech. Callisto cannot pray to the gods for help, and Actaeon cannot call off his hunting dogs. On a metaphorical level, the loss of speech erases one’s identity and makes death inevitable. When characters can no longer express themselves, they no longer have a way of existing in the world. Only those characters who find an alternate way of communicating have any hope of survival. Philomela may lose her voice, but she saves herself, at least for a time, by devising a new way to speak. Those who speak live and those who do not die. The same thing happens to Gregor, he is not able to talk after his metamorphosis. Now I would like to come back to Kafka’s story. Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find that he has been turned into an enormous cockroach. His parents are shocked and horrified but ultimately accept the situation and indeed are filled not so much with incredulity as with bewildered wonder as to why they in particular should be called upon to bear such a burden. Such, we may imagine, were the feelings of Io's father confronting his heifer daughter. The story proceeds to describe the further adjustments of all parties Gregor's pathetic attempts to communicate, his gradual adoption of an animal's outlook and forgetting of human traits, his final death in heartbreak as his family renounces him completely. And on the other side, the family's inner conflict between love of the former son and the present vermin, their assuming of the economic burdens which had been Gregor's, their guilty relief when Gregor finally dies. This tale is not a use of Greek myth as such, but it deals with one of the most common themes of Greek mythology, the transformation of a human being into an animal. It is not mere story, for clearly Kafka's concern here is to tell us something about Man and not merely of Gregor Samsa and his family. Yet neither is it allegory, for no person or event in the story symbolizes any one thing. Like all true myths it is suggestive of meanings on several levels; what the author is seeking to convey is the quality of a complex of experience, something which would be lost if abstracted into flat statement. Kafka uses this story to express the same fundamental meanings which we find in similar Greek myths, that the basic human insights or feelings which were contained in the Greek myths are the same as those which led Kafka to choose this means of presenting one facet of the human condition as he saw it. 154

Threshold

What underlying reasons can we find for the persistence of these animal transformation myths? According to Hazel E. Barnes (1995) the hypothesis that it all stems from an earlier period of animal worship does not seem to her to account for its later popularity. Karl Jung's theory of universal symbols in a racial collective Unconscious rests as yet on insufficient evidence. Moreover, even if we were to accept this view, or if we were to agree with Fromm that myths hold meaningful symbols for the race as dreams do for the individual, there would still remain for us the question as to why these tales of metamorphoses into animals are meaningful and what they symbolize. She suggests three probable causes: (1) they stem from that combination of curiosity and guilt with which men regard animals. (2) Our awareness of the similarity between human and animal drives leads us to consider that there is something of the animal in us. These myths are just the playing up of this aspect in our nature. They derive perhaps from the guilty feeling that one's life falls below the human standard. (3) Our ignorance of animal psychology and our realization of occasional comprehension on the animal's part inevitably makes us wonder what animals would express if they could, if they had language. Even more, it suggests the horrible frustration of being unable to communicate what one knows and wishes to express (Barnes, 1995, p. 125). If now we return to Kafka's story, what do we find? As Barnes (1995) mentioned first as underlying motive for such myths our curiosity and our repressed guilt toward animals. Both are expressed by Gregor himself, who in his new form can understand what goes on though he cannot make his own thoughts known. This, we are told, is what it might be like to be an animal. As times goes by, Gregor receives from his family the same care-never understanding, alternately kind and cruel that he himself would bestow if in human form. The second motive was our guilty recognition of the animal nature in us. On the basis of our knowledge of Kafka's general position, it seems clear that Gregor's metamorphosis into a cockroach comes as a kind of self-revelation of his inner state and of his fundamental guilt. The guilt is what I would call existential; i.e., it is not due to any actual evil which Gregor has committed. On the contrary, we are told that he had been an unusually devoted son. He had worked industriously at a hateful job for the sake of paying his father's debts. What little free time he had he spent at home. He was secretly saving up all extra money in the hope of providing musical training for his sister. His guilt lies merely in his being human a form of original sin. There is, to be sure, the suggestion that unknown even to himself he felt that he should be punished because he unconsciously was trying to replace his father as head of the household. But even this is scarcely specific; it is rather the inevitable guilt incurred by anyone who seeks self-realization, that necessary conflict between generations which Erich Fromm has so emphasized in his analysis of the Oedipus myth and complex. Primarily Gregor's guilt is metaphysical. As the Orphics would say, he is guilty as all men are guilty 155

8Volume Number 1, because he partakes of the old Titan nature. It even seems that like the Orphics, but from a different point of view, Kafka is emphasizing our psychic dependence on the body. For he is concerned to show how Gregor's psychological reactions are inevitably influenced by the new form which he has assumed. Gregor becomes an insect because he has been living at the insect level (pp. 125-126). Finally there is no question about the fact that Metamorphosis is a study in the difficulties of human communication. This works in two ways. On the one hand, Gregor is guilty in that before the transformation he had made no attempt to communicate with his family save on the superficial level of everyday contact. He knew them in externality as father, mother, and sister but not as personalities. And again he had made no attempt to communicate with anything above the human level. But a more terrifying symbol lies in the study of Gregor after the change. As a cockroach he wants to express his more than cockroach reactions but is always misunderstood. When he tries to show his appreciation of his sister's music by going to her side, the family thinks he is making an attack. When he tries to speak, they are horrified at his senseless clamor. This, I believe, is Kafka's commentary on the impossibility of perfect communication and understanding between human beings. It is something which is felt by everyone at times but which is here carried to the ultimate extreme. Thus the human in animal form is chosen as the ultimate in horror since here the need for communication is the greatest and possibilities are non-existent. The same thing has happened here as in so many of the Greek stories of the torments in Hades. Every man has some experience of hope deferred, of frustration, of the meaninglessness of his activities. The horror of the fates of Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the daughters of Danaus lies in the exaggeration of the experience to the point where only this exists, suspended to eternity. In The Metamorphosis Kafka has developed to the extreme limit an aspect of experience which is always with us but which normally we never know in so isolated or intense a form. According to Barnes (1995) a comparison with Apuleius' The Golden Ass is, of course, inevitable. Lucius was turned into an ass owing to a mistake made by a maid trying to copy her mistress' art of magic. We are not meant, however, to think that there is nothing here but accident. The allegory is that of the soul's adventures as -a prisoner in the animal body it seeks for mystic salvation, symbolized by the wreath of roses and actually accomplished by the mysteries of Isis. Here as with Kafka the guilt is existential; for while some of the episodes of Lucius' life both as man and as ass are reprehensible, he never shows any repentance for them. His error lies rather in having neglected to search for salvation or, at worst, having attempted to substitute magic for it (pp. 126). Yet in spite of their differences in temperament and historical position, both Kafka and Apuleius are dealing with the same themes. Lucius and Gregor both experience an awakening to their inner guilt, and they indicate to us man's 156

Threshold ability to sink to the animal level. Each author uses an animal to symbolize not only man's fall but the impossibility for the person who feels himself to be in this state ever to re veal his suffering. It becomes apparent in this discussion that the reason for Gregor’s transformation is different from those of Greek myths, in Greek myths the transformation is the result of different things such as: love, amor, reward, punishment, satisfaction, hubris and wrath. But Kafka’s transformation is the result of his inner guilt. He was alienated from his job, humanity, family and even his body. Kafka's myth is particularly significant for the very fact that it is not a borrowing or a reinterpretation. Kafka has attempted to create a new story in order to portray man's situation, but significantly this modern tale not only deals with the same emotional problems as the Greek myths but even uses the same symbol. Changes are many and important: the feeling of isolation; the lack of either specific guilt behind the punishment (as contrasted with Actaeon, for example) or of ultimate reward (even Io was eventually honored) or ultimate salvation (which the Orphics promised). Yet the fundamental problems are the same: the loss of speech, a frequent by product of metamorphosis, stands for the loss of identity and life (Gregor as well as Caliisto and Acaeon) an underlying attitude toward the inter-relation of animal and human worlds, the conflict of mind and body, the eternal longing for perfect communication, and despair at the impossibility of ever attaining it. But we shouldn’t forget that there is no magic in Kafka’s story.

References Barnes, E. H. (1995). Myth and human experience. The Classical Journal, 51(3), 121- 127. Gordon, R.L. (1991). Mythical metamorphosis. The Classical Review, 44, (2), 349-351. Hamilton, E. (1940). Mythology. Boston: Little Brown and Company. Irving, P.M.C. (1992). Metamorphosis in Greek myths. London: Oxford University Press. Kafka, F. (2004). Metamorphosis. New York: Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc. Rosenberg, D. (1992). World mythology. Illinois: National Textbook Company. Rosner-Siegel, J. A. (1982). Amor, metamorphosis and magic: Ovid’s Medea. The Classical Journal, 77(3), 231-243. Zenoz, S. N. (2011). Metamorphosis: Manifest of man’s needs and dreams. Retrieved from http://www.voicesofunreason.com/

157

8Volume Number 1,

158

Threshold

A Comparative Study of Joyce Carol Oates’s Short Stories

Hossein Mohseni English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novel “Them” (1969) won the National Book Award and her novels “Black Water” (1992), “What I Lived For” (1994), and “Blonde” (2000) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. As of 2008, Oates is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University, where she has taught since 1978. Joyce Carol Oates has obtained her worldwide acclamation by her unique short stories and flash fictions. Now considering the history of the genre of short story, we may understand that this genre is created by some of its great masters in order to communicate something complex and often controversial, in which no necessary conclusions, moral or message are included but that described episode itself. We could probably paraphrase Gertrude Stein and her famous reference to this issue in the following way: A story is a story is a story. Even common readers may often experience that the text itself is wiser than the author himself/ herself (Lee, 2005, pp. 10-12). Last year, we, as MA students of Shahid Beheshti University, had a course about short stories, and with thoughtful and generous guidance of Dr. Alireza Jafari, we have been acquainted with a number of great short stories and flash fictions, including a number of works by Joyce Carol Oates. While I was writing this paper, I read three pieces of her short stories, including “The Vigil”, “Curly Red” and “The Metamorphosis”. Since we were supposed to write a response essay after reading each of these short stories, I found a number of common denominator between the issues I had come up with in these essays, and this paper is an attempt to represent these issues in a nutshell so that we could have a better understanding of the literature of Oates’ short stories. 159

8Volume Number 1,

Inexpensive Protagonists In all of the three pieces of short stories, the protagonists are of common people, producing a bourgeois impression on readers; as a result, despite of their fastidious and nervousness about the things happening around them, the issue of selection between options has no great range. If there is a pleasant remembrance of past things, it is without musicality and smile. Since in her works, characters are too busy learning to live, humor will be considered an entity which is going to be inserted later; a kind of “later” which is not going to come (Miller, 2000, pp. 115-118). It is like a sarcasm that is nearer to tears than to laughter, which is the result of this kind of delay in appearance of joy humor in general (McFarlane, 1966, pp. 54-61). In “The Vigil”, the idea of inexpensiveness of the protagonist has been implied by the choice of the name of the protagonist which is “R-“. It shows the insignificance of individuality in the subsequent events which is going to constitute the plot of the short story. In “The Metamorphosis”, the scene which shows Matthews’ departure in the ambulance implicates the same sensation; the idea that human agency has been dead a long time ago and it is the very relationship he has had with other institutions that constitute the plot of the story. While he becomes sick, he always thinks about his position in work and his promotion. The presence of such meek bureaucracy affirms Foucault’s claim saying that human agency as an individual entity is a myth, since it has been written collectively in power relations of this world (Mills, 2001, pp. 104-110). In all of these selected stories, especially in “Curly Red”, we could see this lack of humor. Coming from a middle class and ordinary background, Lily Rose remembers even her pleasant memories not with musicality, smiles and joys, but with indifference. It is as if they are too busy living their routine life that they have forgotten to remember even the most distinguished entities with unique and distinguishable regards. The idea of this lack for humor or any distinguished attitude in the stories could express the interpretation of delay, the interval of spacing and temporalzing that puts off until later what is presently denied, the possible that is presently impossible and will remain impossible and delayed (Derrida, 2000, p. 385).

Victimized Protagonists All of the protagonists of these selected short stories are victims of lost faith. The reason why Lily has made such a blatant accusation against her brothers out of the true facts she has gathered involuntarily, Matthew undergoes a complex process of transformation as soon as he becomes conscious of his foreign and 160

Threshold alienated condition and R- becomes a night vigilant is not because of their love of truth, justice or anything similar to these mundane institutions. Sometimes, we do not want the truth; we want something more. We just want our lost faith to be rewarded back to us. The reason why we could consider these characters victims of lost faith (or better said the victims o the promise of the faith) is that the ways they have embark to find this lost faith leads them to a world which is like a maze; a place which devours them deeper to their desperateness, loneliness and silence. In case of Lily in “Curly Red”, the outcome of her vigilant confession against her brother is a world like a hospice. In case of Matthew in “The Metamorphosis”, the outcome of this self conscious state is this strange dream about sleep and in case of R- in “The Vigil”, the outcome of his effort to restore the lost with hunting is a continuous state of inaction as a vigil in the night. All of these comments and examples imply one thing: Since the idea of getting out of this weariness by restoring the lost faith has been defined in language, which is fragmented, alienated, porous and with lots of ruptures, the very path the characters chose, has been defined in a circle which leads them ultimately to the status quo in which they are already (Lacan, 2000, pp. 61-86). Even the state of having faith or not could not be defined in a hierarchical form. It means it is not something which if we possess, we are on top of this chain and if not, we are at the bottom. It is actually administered in an economy of power and that is why the very road to redemption is a return to our damnation, since it has been defined in this circle, doomed to function towards pre destined damnation in name of becoming redeemed out of the same damnation (Mills, 2001, pp. 35-40).

The Issue of Homelessness Like insane people, the protagonists do not know where to run and where their safe haven or home will be. This idea of homelessness has been amplified especially in “The Vigil” and in “Curly Red”. In the former, “R-“did not know the meaning of home anymore, though living in a luxurious apartment in the suburban area of the city with lots of lustful accessories available for him. In the latter, Lily has been taken away by the authorities since her dreadful confession to one of the mansions of her relatives and since then, home becomes something mythical entities, the consequences of the loss of which are being married twice, being divorced twice, without having any children. Even in “The Metamorphosis” the idea of separating that single room with the rest of the environment of the home could be an affirmation of this claim.

161

8Volume Number 1,

The Issue of Illusion The only thing that matters in this weary world is that it has been defined as a great hospice; we are all in it together. None of the rest of one’s life figures here. We are condemned to remain on enormous stage of life in puzzlement rather than having a critique or judgment or any scrip about this world (Oppenheim, 2004, pp. 194-196). As Percy Bysshe Shelly (ca. 1792- 1822) once said “Oh! Lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed” In all of these selected short fictions, the protagonists do not have any control on the things happening around them. Even in “Curly Red”, the little girl Lily does not decide to disclose this secret on her own. It happens out of her desperateness in the infirmary. It is because of his fact that the narrator of the short story, who is Lily herself, once informs us: “Your mother oughtn’t to have let you out of the house this morning.” There are a number of interesting examples in “The Vigil” that confirms this state of inaction, our irrational rationale of arriving at the conceptual knowledge and the sense that we have been written already in the hidden transcripts of relativity:

How when I know, I know? I don’t. I act. Spoken by R- as an actor might speak lines from a script he had never seen before and would not read through to the end. R- was behaving in a way he seemed to know was the way to behave, like an actor stumbling through his role yet not believing in it (p. 39).

Thus, the idea of having this hegemonic control on everything we are concerned with in this world is an illusion (Sinfield, 1997, p. 249) and as soon as we arrive to this delusional conclusion, our very nature will be shattered and we will not survive. As Jane Wagner once said: “The ability to delude yourself maybe an important survival tool.” In “The Metamorphosis”, as soon as Matthew becomes conscious of his doomed position in the power relations, he turns to an invalid entity. In “Curly Red” we have also the shattering of Lily’s dream. She thinks that the most severe problems could be resolved around the father- figure of her childhood life, who has been shattered also into an invalid; a kind of figure, while in his apex of authority, could not have a partial damage control of his familial relationships after Lily’s dreadful confession (Homer, 2005, pp. 51- 53). It is only in “The Vigil” that “R-“ could survive, since he maintained the illusion, knowing that the idea of becoming conscious about taking an action will be the end of the illusion

162

Threshold

(in his case, The Vigil). He says at the ending of the story: “Has no happened yet. The vigil is not over. Not yet. I am the happiest I have been in my life.”

Issue of Transformation Apart from “The Metamorphosis”, in “The Vigil” and “Curly Red” a transformation has happened and it is interesting that all of these transformations are of metaphorical nature rather than being of a physical one, depicting as a result a limited application of the elements of fantasy in all of Oates’ fictions The turning points are ample within these fictions. For example in “Curly Red”, when Lily has been admitted to the infirmary, we know beforehand that something awful is going to happen and a new Lily is to be born. In “The Vigil”, it is after this part when he embarks to be a different R-, when he wants to be a hunter rather than a silent observer: “R-‘s mouth had gone dry, his heart beginning to pound. It was a good sensation. Have to want to hunt, to kill.” And in “The Metamorphosis”, it is the dream which could be read the emblem of a revolt inside Matthew (while thinking at the same time that he carried it up here with him, to bed- the odor of gasoline, exhaust fumes and the close smooth stench of oil), whose external manifestation is the cracks in the wall, showing the manipulative transformation within Matthew’s world view of what is real and what is illusion. Let me finish this reading by one of the remarkable notions of George Bernard Shaw in his “The Womanly Woman” (pp. 54- 61). In his opinion, there are Philistine parrots who agree with their owners that it is better to be in a cage than out, so long as there is plenty of hempseed and Indian corn there. There may even be idealist parrots who persuade themselves that the mission of a parrot is to minister to the happiness of a private family and it is in the sacrifice of its liberty and faith to this pursuit that a true parrot finds the supreme satisfaction of its soul, they consider this imprisonment the will of God. There are rationalist parrots as well that thinks it will be a cruel kindness to let a parrot out to fall a prey to wild creatures. Still if we believe in restoring the leap of faith, the faith most of us have lost long time ago, we will have sympathy with the one parrot that insists on being let out as the first condition of making itself agreeable. A selfish bird, you may say; one that puts its own gratification before that of the family which is so fond of it; and once the thing is done, such creature has unparroted itself and

163

8Volume Number 1, become a creature which is neither the home loving angel it used to be nor an independent, free and happy bird she thinks she could be. So is Lily that selfish bird who insists on letting her out on the first occasion, regardless of the utilitarianism and interests of her family? At the time of narrating the story, is Lily transformed into that rationalist parrot, believing that it was a cruel kindness to let a parrot out to fall a prey to wild creatures? How about Matthew? Is he that theological parrot who seeks God’s satisfaction by living a life of toil and dissatisfaction? And could we consider R- who maintains his delusional vigilant as that kind of parrot that believes it is better to be in a cage than out, so long as there is plenty of hempseed and Indian corn there? In other words, it is better to grasp to this illusion rather than having nothing to cling upon? I do not know about the certainties of these observations; however, all of these characters are like these hypothetical parrots of George Bernard Shaw, whose conditions have been defined not by themselves or by readers, but by their relativity to one another. This relative circle will produce the episteme, upon which we could have a particularly stimulated study of diverse ideologies within these so called parrots (characters). Furthermore, technically point of view we could reach to this conclusion that while reading short stories, we are dealing with a series of prismatic shapes; Having enduring mystical thematic concepts boxed within a framework, we could perceive that the very boxing-in will not signify containment so much as cheerfully acknowledging the futility of fully encompassing longing, hope and tragedy. As a result, in reading, knowingness and intimacy with various concepts within a fiction, it is these futile impulses within the fiction that make it most like life, creating the ultimate awareness that there is always incompletion and fragmentation (Lee, 2005, p. 15).

References Derrida, J. (2000). Difference. Literary theory: An anthology. London: Blackwell Publishing, 278-300. Homer, S. (2005). Jacques Lacan. London: Rutledge Publishing. Lacan, J. (2000). Modern criticism and theory: A reader. New York: Longman. Lee, M. A. (2005). Writers on writing: The art of the short story. London: Greenwood Publishing. McFarlane, J. W. (1966). Discussions of Henrik Ibsen. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company. Miller, J. H. (2002). On literature. London: Rutledge Publishing. 164

Threshold

Mills, S. (2001). Michel Foucault. London: Rutledge. Oppenheim, L. (2004). Palgrave advances in Samuel Beckett studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shaw, G. B. (1989). The womanly woman: Major critical essay. London: Penguin Publishing. Sinfield, A. (1997). Twentieth century literary theory: A reader. London: Macmillan Press.

165

8Volume Number 1,

166

Threshold

English: Its Past, Present and Future

Saleh Tabatabai English Language and Literature, BA, Shahid Beheshti University

Introduction Etymologically, “popular” and “population” are both derived from the same word, populus for people in Latin. This may suggest that more popularity lies in greater number of population. Although Chinese is the language of more than one billion people in China alone, the English language, which is spoken by far less people, is internationally the most popular language of the world. The reasons behind the international popularity of English can be sought by looking through both its historical background and its intrinsic qualities. The current prevalence and importance of English may make it reasonable to ask whether we can visualize the future position it will occupy in the 21st century. Some writers have long questioned the monopolistic status of a single language in the 21st century and predicted that rival languages will probably share English in popularity. Thus, one may wonder what will become of English in the future, and which languages may come to rival English in its global supremacy, pushing it aside nearly in the same way as Latin (as an international lingua franca) was abandoned 300 years ago. This article is going to review the reasons behind the international popularity of English in the world and to cast some light on the likely future of English.

The Assets of English from the Past In the number of its speakers and in its uses for international communication, English is one of the most important languages of the world (See fig. 1). As a first language spoken by about 400 million people and as a second language spoken by a further 350 million people, English is the most popular among the Western languages (Baker & Jones, 1998, p. 3).

167

8Volume Number 1,

Figure 1: The Current World Language Hierarchy Source: Gradoll, David. The Future of English, p. 13

Moving back to the past of English, we can search for the origins of its prevalence. The development of England as a great maritime power, the expansion of the British Empire, and the growth of commerce and industry, each in their way, contributed to the prevalence of the English language. Besides, such intrinsic qualities of English as its inflectional simplicity and cosmopolitan vocabulary have had something to do with its power of adaptability and assimilation, thus its popularity. So we can enumerate these factors as

 Historical Backgrounds  Cosmopolitan Vocabulary  Simplicity and Flexibility of Structure

168

Threshold

Historical Backgrounds Everyone here knows enough about the story of the British expansionism in last two centuries. The British Empire included many colonies from the Indian subcontinent to West Africa. Thus, English played a crucial role as a lingua franca in countries where their diverse populations would otherwise be unable to communicate (Kirkpatrick, 2007, p. 155). This is especially true in the former colonies of England whose colonial languages have stayed inevitable even after their independence. As the colonies gained independence, English, either as the primary language or a second language in the schools and courts, continued to be used alongside their vernaculars. References in scholarly and popular works to “Indian English,” “Malaysian English,” “West African English,” and other regional varieties shows the fact that the political and cultural history of English is not simply the history of British Isles and of North America but a truly international history of divergent societies which made changes in the language, responding to their own special needs.

Cosmopolitan Vocabulary A few minutes spent in the examination of any good etymological dictionary will show that English has borrowed from Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Chinese, the languages of Java, Australia, Tahiti, Polynesia, West Africa, and from one of the aboriginal languages of Brazil. In this way, English vocabulary contains borrowings not only from these languages but from major Western languages. In the course of centuries of this practice, English has built up an unusual capacity for assimilating outside elements (Finegan, 2009, p. 62). English-speaking people do not feel that there is anything “foreign” about these borrowed words. Let’s look at some of them: o Brandy, landscape, measles, and wagon from Dutch; o Balcony, opera, piano, umbrella, and volcano from Italian; o Alligator, cargo, cork, mosquito, sherry, tornado, and vanilla from Spanish; o Acme, acrobat, anthology, barometer, catastrophe, chronology, elastic, magic, tactic, tantalize, and a host of others, directly or indirectly, from Greek; o Steppe, vodka, troika, and glasnost from Russian;

169

8Volume Number 1, o Caravan, dervish, divan, khaki, mogul, shawl, sherbet, jasmine, paradise, check, chess, lemon, turban, borax and possibly spinach from Persian (Farsi).

Figure 2: Cosmopolitan Nature of English Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg

Besides, more than half of English vocabulary is derived from Latin. Some of these borrowings have been direct, a great many through French, and some through the other Romance languages. As a result, English shares a great number of words with these languages of Europe that are derived from Latin, notably French, Italian and Spanish (See fig. 2). All of these mean that English presents a somewhat familiar appearance to anyone who speaks those languages. It has assimilated those heterogeneous elements so successfully that only the professional students of language are aware of their origin. The cosmopolitan vocabulary is an undoubted asset of English.

Simplicity and Flexibility of Structure In comparison with most Indo-European languages, English was traditionally described as a less inflected language. Inflection is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case. Modern English is considered a weakly inflected language, since its nouns have only vestiges of 170

Threshold inflection (plurals, the pronouns), and its regular verbs have only four forms: an inflected form for the past (looked), an inflected form for the third-person- singular present indicative (looks), an inflected form for the present participle (looking), and an uninflected form (look) for everything else (Finegan, 2009, p. 61). Languages that have some degree of overt inflection are inflected languages. They can be highly inflected, such as Latin (overtly), or weakly inflected, such as English (covertly), depending on the presence or absence of overt inflection. According to Edward Finegan (2009), “Another suggested reason for the spread of English is the simplicity of its common words. In the 100-million-word British National Corpus all of the fifty most frequent words in both speech and writing are monosyllabic. Of the fifty next most frequent written words, none contains more than two syllables.”(p. 62). Moreover, there is enormous tolerance of error in speaking English; even if you speak incorrectly, no one will make a bid for it unless you are a BBC speaker or the like (See fig. 3).

Figure 3: the cartoon humorously illustrates error tolerance in spoken English

Such intrinsic qualities of English as its cosmopolitan vocabulary and inflectional simplicity have had contributed to its power of adaptability and absorption into the cultural traditions of other Western languages, and therefore its popularity.

171

8Volume Number 1,

The flexibility of spoken English has rendered it both easy to be used by non- native speakers.

The Contemporary Status of English Now we are going to take a good look at the English language in the contemporary world. What accounts for its great popularity in modern science and education? Let’s examine some of the suggested answers to the question.

Computer Age Begins with English Epoch-making developments which occurred after the end of the Second World War were the great increase in scientific and technical research and the invention of the computer. The USA, by virtue of the fact that its scientific infrastructures was undamaged by the war, assumed the leadership in science and technology. At the dawn of the computer age, much of the science and technology research was conducted in English and most of the information in the great information networks was written in English. This vast use of English in science and technology had a great impact on its popularity in scientific literature. The internationalization of English was speeded up by increasing importance of computer sciences in which most of programming languages have had English- based codes. Look at this list of earliest high-level programming languages (3GL) which all are English-based: FORTRAN was originally developed by IBM at their campus in south San Jose, California in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications. ALGOL was originally devised in the mid 1950s and greatly influenced many other languages. COBOL was created by a committee of researchers from private industry, universities, and government during the second half of 1950s.

Supremacy in Scientific and Educational Literature The real powerhouse of the scientific-educational sphere is still English. According to Ulrich Ammon (1990), “English has constantly made gains as a language of science over the past fifty years.” (p. 256). He added that “English is the sole working language of the European Science Foundation (which coordinates research projects in EU countries); the leading European scientific journals now tend to prefer English as their language of publication; and it is the most widely taught language in the member countries of the European Union.”(p.

172

Threshold

256). For example, according to Kaplan (2001, p.11), the International Federation on Documentation (FID), a world institution which keeps track of information distribution, announces that virtually 85% of all the scientific and technological information in the world today is written and/or abstracted in English. Even research and development (R&D) foundations in non-English states are affected, since it is indispensable to be able to search scientific literature in English (Kaplan, 2001, p. 12). We can conclude this part with this statement that English has become the undisputed language of science and technology.

The Prospective Future of English Although the current position of English looks quite firm, no one can be sure this will definitely continue in the future; one may wonder whether its supremacy will continue to rise or not. The extent and importance of English today may make it reasonable to ask whether we can speculate the future position it will occupy in the 21st century. As a matter of fact, the forecasting is not as simple as it may seem. As to the monopolistic status of a single language in science and education it should be pointed out that the emergence of rival languages will probably bring the prospect of English into eclipse. Moreover, the current position of English in science and technology is subject to change.

Emergence of Rival Languages There is no reason to believe that any other language will appear within the next 50 years to replace English as a global lingua franca. The position of English has arisen from a particular history which no other language can repeat in the 21st century. However, David Graddol, in his book, The Future of English (1997), has argued that “no single language will occupy the monopolistic position in the 21st century which English has almost achieved by the end of the 20th century.” (p. 58). For example, he has predicted in one scenario that economic activity and telecommunications traffic between Asian countries will greatly increase; as a result, Mandarin becomes regionally more important, beginning as a lingua franca within Greater China (for communication between the regions of Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Taiwan) and building on increased business communication between overseas Chinese in South East Asia (Graddol, 1997, p. 58). Drawing upon economic and demographic reasons, he has foretold that the changing status of languages will create a new language hierarchy in the world (See fig. 4).

173

8Volume Number 1,

Figure 4: The Future World Language Hierarchy Source: Source: Gradoll, David. The Future of English, p. 59

The figure shows how this new hierarchy might look in the middle of the 21st century, taking into account economic and demographic developments. In comparison with the present-day hierarchy (See fig. 1), there are more languages in the top layer. Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish and even Arabic may join English. French, German and Japanese are likely to decline in status. But the biggest difference between the current hierarchy and that of future will result from the loss of a lot of the world’s languages.

English’s Future Position in Science and Technology We explained that leading-edge technology, particularly computer and information technology, has been English-based in several aspects. However, some writers have predicted that as software and technology become more sophisticated, they support other languages much better. Desktop publishing and laser printing are now capable of handling hundreds of lesser used languages and a wide range of scripts. Computer operating systems and software are now routinely versioned for lots of languages. In many cases the user can further

174

Threshold customize the product. It won’t be so true that English-speakers still enjoy the latest technology. Regarding scientific literature, it is predicted that a multilingual culture will emerge. The increasing rate of the production of science in Eastern developed and developing countries will continue. This will contribute, in all likelihood, to vast publications in languages other than English.

Epilogue An old saying that dates back at least to the 17th century goes “an Englishman's home is his castle”. By expanding his “castle” and disseminating his language, the Englishman still felt at home in his empire that extended from the Indian subcontinent to West Africa, and the English language became one of the most important and strongest languages of the world. Before he had to return to his native home on the British Isles in the second half of 20th century, enormous mass of scientific literature in English had established it as the language of modern science and technology. Thus, the English language has still held its sway over much of the realm of science and technology. A significant question, however, strikes us: will English remain unsurpassed, or will the heydays of the English language finally come to an end?

Definitions Cosmopolitan vocabulary: borrowing of words from many different languages. FID: The International Federation on Documentation, a world institution which keeps track of information distribution. Inflection: The modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case. Lingua franca: A language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues. This can also be referred to as working language or bridge language. R & D: Research and Development; according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, it refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications”.

175

8Volume Number 1,

References Ammon, U. (1990). Post-imperial English status change in former British and American colonies. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Baker, C. & S. Jones (1998). Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes, implications for international communication and English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finegan, E. (2009). The world's major languages. New York: Routledge. Kaplan, R. B. (2001). The dominance of English as a language of science: Effects on other languages and language communities. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gradoll, D. (1997). The future of English, a guide for forecasting of the popularity of the English language in the 21st century. London: the British Council.

176

Threshold

Threshelf

177

8Volume Number 1,

178

Threshold

Literary Theory: The Basics

By Hans Bertens / 264 Pages / Publisher: Routledge / ISBN-10: 0415396719 / ISBN-13: 978-0415396714 / Paperback / Publication Date: November 2007 / Price: $ 34.46 The premise of Literary Theory: The Basics is that literary theory and literary practice – the practice of interpretation – cannot indeed very well be separated. One of its aims, then, is to show how theory and practice are inevitably connected and have always been connected. Although the emphasis is on the 1970s and after, the first three chapters focus on the most important views of literature and of the individual literary work of the earlier part of the twentieth century. This is not a merely historical exercise. A good understanding of for instance the New Criticism that dominated literary criticism in the United States from the mid-1930s until 1970 is indispensable for students of literature. Knowing about the New Criticism will make it a lot easier to understand other, later, modes of reading. More importantly, the New Criticism has by no means disappeared. In many places, and especially in secondary education, it is still alive and kicking. Likewise, an understanding of what is called structuralism makes the complexities of so-called post structuralist theory a good deal less daunting and has the added value of offering an instrument that is helpful in thinking about culture in general. This book, then is both an introduction to literary theory and a history of theory. But it is a history in which what has become historical is simultaneously still actual: in the field of literary studies a whole range of approaches and theoretical perspectives – those focused on meaning and those focused on form, those that are political and those that are (seemingly) a-political, the old and the new – operate next to each other in relatively peaceful coexistence. (Source: Amazon.com) 179

8Volume Number 1,

Literary Theory

By David Carter / 160 Pages / Publisher: Pocket Essentials / ISBN-10: 1904048668 / ISBN-13: 978-1904048664 / Paperback / Publication Date: June 2006 / Price: $ 1.98 Most books providing introductions to "Literary Theory" are long-winded tomes, guiding dogged readers through the twists and turns of critical analysis and logic. This small volume goes to the heart of the key concepts of Literary Theory, explaining them in clear everyday language. It provides witty and memorable comments and quotations, and enables the student of literature to raise the most pertinent and challenging questions, which even university professors have difficulty answering. (Source: Amazon.com)

180

Threshold

Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader

By David Lodge and Nigel Wood / 864 Pages / Publisher: Routledge / ISBN- 10: 0582784549 / ISBN-13: 978-0582784543 / Paperback / Publication Date: March, 2008 / Price: $ 48.63 This third edition of Modern Criticism and Theory represents a major expansion on its previous incarnations with some twenty five new pieces or essays included. This expansion has two principal purposes. Firstly, in keeping with the collection’s aim to reflect contemporary preoccupations, the reader has expanded forward to include such newly emergent considerations as ecocriticism and post- theory. Secondly, with the aim of presenting as broad an account of modern theory as possible, the reader expands backwards take in exemplary pieces by formative writers and thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as Freud and Virginia Woolf. The purpose of the collection remains that of introducing the reader to the guiding concepts of contemporary literary and cultural debate. It does so by presenting substantial extracts from seminal thinkers and surrounding them with the contextual materials necessary to a full understanding. Each selection has a head note, which gives biographical details of the author and provides suggestions for further reading, and footnotes that help explain difficult references. The collection is ordered both historically and thematically and readers are encouraged to draw for themselves connections between essays and theories. (Source: Amazon.com)

181

8Volume Number 1,

What English Language Teachers Need to Know Volume III: Designing Curriculum

By MaryAnn Christison and Denise E. Murray (Authors) / 278 pages / Publisher: Routledge/ ISBN-10: 0415662559/ ISBN-13: 978-0415662550/ Paperback / Publication Date: February 28, 2014 / Price: $ 44.60

What English Teachers Need to Know, a set of companion texts designed for pre- service teachers and teachers new to the field of ELT, addresses the key question: What do English language teachers need to know and be able to do in order for their students to learn English? These texts work for teachers across different contexts (countries where English is the dominant language, one of the official languages, or taught as a foreign language); different levels (elementary/primary, secondary, college or university, or adult education); and different learning purposes (general English, workplace English, English for academic purposes, or English for specific purposes).Volume I, on understanding learning, provides the background information that teachers need to know and be able to use in their classroom. Volume II, on facilitating learning, covers the three main facets of teaching: planning, instructing, and assessing. Volume III, on designing curriculum, covers the contexts for, processes in, and types of ELT curricula— linguistic based, content-based, learner-centered, and learning-centered. Throughout the three volumes, the focus is on outcomes, that is, student learning. Features of the book include:

 Situated in current research in the field of English language teaching and other disciplines that inform it;  Sample data, including classroom vignettes;  Three kinds of activities/tasks: Reflect, Explore, and Expand.

(Source: amazon.com)

182

Threshold

Language Education and Applied Linguistics: Bridging the Two Fields

By Howard Nicholas and Donna Starks (Authors) / 208 pages / Publisher: Routledge / ISBN-10: 0415534461 / ISBN-13: 978-0415534468/ Paperback / Publication Date: February 21, 2014 / Price: $ 43.43

Language Education and Applied Linguistics: bridging the two fields provides a starting point for students and researchers in both Language and Education who wish to interpret and use insights from the field of Applied Linguistics, and for Applied Linguists who wish to engage in dialogue with language educators and researchers in education. Providing a framework for understanding the resources individuals use to communicate, this accessible and innovative text will enable teachers and learners to understand and discuss features and tools used in communication. This framework enables:  Learners to explore their current language abilities and their desired future communicative abilities, empowering them to engage with their own language learning needs.  Language educators to explore central concerns in multiliteracy, digital literacies, plurilingualism and plurilingual development.  Applied Linguistics students to understand theories of applied linguistics and language education.  Sociolinguists to bring their research into education.

Language Education and Applied Linguistics can be used by students, teachers, researchers and teacher educators to explore multilingual contexts and communicative purposes in language classrooms and applied linguistics.

(Source: amazon.com)

183

8Volume Number 1,

Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education: Vygotskian Praxis and the Research/Practice Divide

By James P. Lantolf and Matthew E. Poehner (Authors) / 268 pages / Publisher: Routledge / ISBN-10: 0415894182 / ISBN-13: 978-0415894180/ Paperback / Publication Date: February 23, 2014 / Price: $ 44.55

Explicating clearly and concisely the full implication of a praxis-oriented language pedagogy, this book argues for an approach to language teaching grounded in a significant scientific theory of human learning—a stance that rejects the consumer approach to theory and the dichotomy between theory and practice that dominates SLA and language teaching. This approach is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, according to which the two activities are inherently connected so that each is necessarily rooted in the other; practice is the research laboratory where the theory is tested. From the perspective of language education, this is what is meant by the ‘pedagogical imperative.’ Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education:

 Elaborates a new approach to dealing with the relationship between theory and practice—an approach grounded in praxis—the dialectical unity of theory and practice.  Presents an analysis of empirical research illustrating praxis-based principles in real language classrooms.  Brings together cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory—the former provides the theoretical knowledge of language required of praxis and the latter furnishes the theoretical principles of learning and development also called for in a praxis approach.

(Source: amazon.com)

184

Threshold

Persian A b s t r a c t s Abstracts

185

8Volume Number 1,

186

Threshold

مطالعه فراملی و پسا استعماری داستان کیم اسکات به نام سرزمین راستین راستی ن

وحيد احمدی وحيد احمدی کارشنای ارشد، مطالعات امريکا، دانشگاه يوهانس گوتنبرگ

چکیده چکیده در اين تحقيق، ادبيات فرامليتی با نگاه پسا استعماری در داستان کيم اسکات به نام سرزمين راستين بررسی می گردد. ادعای مطالعه حاضر بر اين است که کيم اسکات در صدد مستقل سازی ذهن و هويت بومی بوده است. با چنين کاری، شخصيت های اصلی داستان اسکات خود مختار می شوند و هويت خود ر با درک واقعی فرهنگشان به صورت مستقل رقم می زنند. با زير سوال رفتن دوگانگی های ايجاد شده توسط استعمار، احيای فرهنگی کليد می خورد. برای قرار دادن يافته های تحقيق در چارچوب نظری، ديدگاه تيانگو در مورد تاثير زبان روی فرهنگ بومی مطرح می گردد. با کمک اين نظريه، تالش اسکات در قرار دادن فرهنگ بومی استراليا در زندگی روزمره استراليايی ها با تمسک به ساختارهای زبانی مورد خوانش قرار می گيرد. بعالوه اينکه، توجه خاصی به مقوله هويت و ارتباطش با ادبيات ساختارشکن اسکات مبذول می گردد. کلمات کلیدی: کيم اسکات، سرزمين راستين، مستقل سازی، هويت، ساختار شکنی، تيانگو، استراليا، بومی بومی

187

8Volume Number 1,

سلطه پذیری ناخودآگاه در برابر ابزارهای ایدیولوژیکی حکومت و فقدان عاملیت: خوانشی آلتوسری از داستان کوتاه کشی"قرعه " اثر شرلی جکسن شرلی جک سن

سامان زليخايی سامان زليخايی دانشجوی یکارشناس ارشد ادبيات انگليسی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی

چکیده اين مقاله به بررسی و تحليل فرآيندی میپردازد که از طريق آن جمعی از اهالی يک روستا بوسيلهی ابزار ايديولوژيکی حکومت به نام قرعه کشی فراخوانده میشوند. آنان تنها منوط به قربانی نمودن يک انسان، به قدرت نيروهای ناشناخته درايجاد حاصلخيزی و محصول دهی ايمان دارند. بر اساس نظريههای آلتوسر ابزارهای ايديولوژيکی حکومت روش های تبديل افراد به عامل –نقش پذير عامل –نقش پذير نقش پذير در برابر ايديولوژيکی حاکم – میباشند. برگزاری قرعه کشی برای انتخاب سپربال يک ابزار ايديولوژيکی حکومت از نوع فرهنگی ان قلمداد می شود که موجب تداوم سلطه و چيرگی وضعيت موجود می گردد. مبنای کار ابزارهای ايديولوژيکی حکومت اساسا از طريق ايديولوژی و در درجهی دوم اعمال زور و فشار می باشد. قرعه کشی و ساز و کارهای آن اعمال و فعاليت های ملموس هستند. چنين جوانب ملموسی اشاره به مفهوم مادی بودن ايديولوژی دارد. ابزارهای ايديولوژيکی حکومت خود را در اعمال و آيينی به منظر ظهور می رسانند که دارای بار ايديولوژيکی هستند. فرآيند بازشناخت ايديولوژيکی که رابطه ما با واقعيت را نشان می دهد در فرهنگ واژگانی آلتوسر فراخوانی تعريف شده است. متعاقبا پروسه تبديل شدن به عامل نقش پذير در ايديولوژی حاکم و کنترل کننده منجر به محدود شدن عامليت می شود. به همين دليل اهالی روستا اين سنت را کورکورانه دنبال می کنند، علی رغم اين که آثاری از مخالفت در ميان جوان" توده " مشاهده می شود.

کلمات کلیدی: سنت، سپربال، ايديولوژی، ابزار ايديولوژيکی حکومت، ماديت، فراخوانی، شرلی جکسون

188

Threshold

دیگر کافیست! کل روز مال تو بود: بررسی ایده کارناوال میخایل باختین در شعر اپیتاالمیون ادموند اسپنسر

علی نظيف پور کارشناس ارشد زبان و ادبيات انگليسی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی

چکیده چکیده شعر اپيتاالميون ادموند اسپنسر را می توان نمونه بارزی از ايده کارناوال باختين مالحظه نمود که به صورت مقدس و انديشناکی در اين شعر طرح شده است. باختين معتقد است که در کارناوال ساختار طبقاتی اجتماعی کامال به هم می خورد و عوام با تمسک به شادی، خنده و آشفتگی محض از محدوديت های اجتماعی رهايی می يابند. اين شرايط حالت شاد"نسبيت " و "واقع گرايی بی تناسب" را ايجاد می نمايد. با توجه به مفاهيم بيان شده مزتبط با ايده کارناوال، مشخص می گردد که اسپنسر در شعر اپيتاالميون ديدگاهی دوگانه داشته است و نتيجتا در توصيف طبيعت ايرلند، فاکتورهای بی تناسب کارناوال را در توصيفاتش رعايت کرده است. آغاز شعر کامال شخصی و خوش است و ناگهان شعر به قسمتی کامال مذهبی و عاری از کارناوال می رسد. در قسمت آخر، شعر با سکوتی شخصی و به دور از کارناوال پايان می يابد و دلواپسی و انديشناک بودن جای کارناوال را می گيرد. در اين قسمت، طبقه اجتماعی سنتی احيا می شود و نظم جای بی تناسبی و شادی محض کارناوال را می گيرد . . یدیکلمات کل : باختين، اسپنسر، اپيتاالميون، کارناوال

189

8Volume Number 1,

نقش اختالل اضطراب فراگیر در عملکرد درک مطلب خواندن

محمد محمدی محمد محمدی عضو هيئت علمی دانشگاه اروميه

مهدی داداشی مهدی داداشی دانشجوی دکترای آموزش زبان انگليسی، دانشگاه اروميه اروميه

ابراهيم زنگ انی انی کارشناسی ارشد آموزش زبان انگلي سی، دانشگاه اروميه

چکیده مقالۀ ارائه شده در اينجا به بررسی نقش اختالل اضطراب فراگير در عملکرد درک مطلب خواندن میپردازد. صد و چهل و يک دانش آموز دبيرستانی پسر در زنجان به عنوان آزمودنی های اين مطالعه انتخاب شدند. مقياس خودارزيابی اختالل اضطراب فراگير و يک آزمون درک مطلب خواندن اجرا شدند. نتايج تحليل های آماری داده ها نشان داد که بين عملکرد درک مطلب خواندن و اختالل اضطراب فراگير يک ارتباط منفی معنادار وجود دارد. نتايج بدست آمده همچنين حاکی از آن است که اختالل اضطراب فراگيرعملکرد دانش آموزان را در درک مطلب خواندن تا اندازه ای تحت تاثير قرار می دهد. کلیدیکلمات : اختالل اضطراب فراگير، درک مطلب خواندن، عملکرد

190

Threshold

نگرش زبان آموزان ایرانی نسبت به استفاده از کامپیوتر در کالس های زبان های زبان کال س

امين رئيسی امين رئيسی کارشناسی ارشد آموزش زبان انگليسی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی

چکیده امروزه CALL )زبان آموزی به کمک کامپيوتر(، به عنوان يکی از مهمترين بخش های اصلی برنامه ی درسی در کالس های آموزش زبان تلقی می شود. اگر چه به نظر می رسد که زبان آموزان توانايی های اوليه ی استفاده از کامپيوتر را دارند، بعضی از زبان آموزان در به کارگيری ابزارهای اوليه مربوط به کامپيوتر و ارتباطات دارای مشکالتی هستند ,Castellano, Mynard, & Rubesch). (2011 بنابراين، اين عدم توانايی می تواند زبان آموزان را با چالش هايی مواجه کند. اين تحقيق اطالعات کمی وکيفی درمورد نگرش دانشجويان ايرانی در مورد به کارگيری کامپيوتر)CALL( درکالس های درسی را فراهم می آورد. 41 دانشجو در مقطع کارشناسی و کارشناسی ارشد دراين تحقيق شرکت نمودند که 9 نفر از دانشجويان ارشد درپايان مورد مصاحبه قرار گرفتند. براساس اين تحقيق، زبان آموزان اگرچه ممکن است هر از چندگاهی با مشکالتی در مورد به کارگيری کامپيوتر مواجه شوند، نگرش تقريباً مثبتی نسبت به استفاده از کامپيوتر در کالس های درسی دارند، مزايای آموزشی تربيتی آن را درک می کنند و با مشکالت احتمالی کنار می آيند . کلیدیکلمات : زبان آموزی به کمک کامپيوتر (CALL)، نگرش دانشجويان نسبت به CALL، تکنولوژی وفناوری ارتباطات، دانشجويان ايرانی

191

8Volume Number 1,

بررسی مدل چهارگانه فراگیری زبان Nation در کتابهای آموزش زبان Interchange

حميد راستين حميد راستين کارشناسی ارشد آموزش زبان انگليسی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی

چکیده چکیده تاکنون محققان در حوزه فراگيری زبان دوم )SLA( چند مدل نظری را ارائه کرده اند و هرکدام مدعی هستند که بهترين راه يادگيری را به ما نشان می دهند. Nation )991 ، 2002، 2002( با در نظر گرفتن اين مدل های نظری، مدلی را ارائه می دهد که تمام آنها را در خود گنجانده است. او مدعی است که دوره آموزش زبان بايد از چهار رشته يا شاخه ی داده ورودی معنا محور، داده خروجی معنا محور، يادگيری زبان محور، و ايجاد و رشد سالست تشکيل شود و به هر کدام در دوره آموزشی بايد زمان برابری اختصاص داده شود. در اين تحقيق، ميزان تحقق اين مدل در کتاب های سری Oxford Interchange مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. نتايج بيانگر آن بود که ميزان توجه به شاخه داده ورودی معنا محور و داده خروجی معنا محور متعادل نبود، شاخه ايجاد و رشد سالست تقريبا توجه متناسبی را دريافت کرده بود، و فعاليت های مربوط به يادگيری زبان محور در دو سطح اول سری Interchange ) مقدماتی و يک( بخش اعظم فعاليت های کتاب را به خود اختصاص داده بودند. داليل و عوامل محتمل در به دست آوردن چنين نتايجی در انتهای مقاله مطرح شده و مورد بررسی قرار گرفته اند. کلمات کلیدی: مدل های فراگيری زبان دوم، مدل چهارگانه Nation، کتابهای سری Interchange

192

Threshold

فهرست فارسی مطالب فارسی ف هر س ت

سخن سردبیر

ادبیات انگلیسی

:پرونده تد هيوز/ حسين محسنی - مطالعه فراملی و پسا استعماری داستان کيم اسکات به نام سرزمين راستين / وحيد احمدی وحيد احمدی - سلطه پذيری ناخودآگاه در برابر ابزارهای ايديولوژيکی حکومت و فقدان عامليت: خوانشی آلتوسری از داستان کوتاه "قرعه کشی" اثر شرلی جکسن / سامان زليخايی - ديگر کافيست! کل روز مال تو بود: بررسی ايده کارناوال ميخايل باختين در شعر اپيتاالميون ادموند اسپنسر / علی نظيف پور

آموزش زبان انگلیسی

پرونده: راندلف کوئرک / مريم عباسی مريم عبا سی - نقش اختالل اضطراب فراگير در عملکرد درک مطلب خواندن / محمد محمدی، مهدی داداشی، ابراهيم زنگانی - نگرش زبان آموزان ايرانی نسبت به استفاده از کامپيوتر در کالس های زبان / امين رئيسی - بررسی مدل چهارگانه فراگيری زبان Nation در کتابهای آموزش زبان Interchange / حميد راستين

کنکاش کنکا ش

مصاحبه با دکتر امير زند مقدم / علی درخشش علی درخ شش

ارتش حروف

داستان کوتاه: پادشاهی که نمی خواست از خود فروتنی نشان دهد / صالح طباطبايی شعر: به ما ملحق شو / عطاء اله حسنی شعر: کفش های پرسهزن / مسعود فروهر کلخوران شعر: به يادگار / صالح طباطبايی ترجمه: ايمان و شک / صالح طباطبايی ترجمه: راهی به سوی پيراستن جان از اين آلودگی ها: قطعهای مذهبی / مژگان سلمانی

193

8Volume Number 1,

چالش ترجمه چالش ت رجمه

پرونده: محمد تقی بهار / مهشاد جالل پور رودسری پور رودسری مهشاد جا لل / ناهيد جمشيدی راد / حسين محسنی حسين محسنی / نسرين بدرود نسرين بدرود چالش ترجمۀ ۀشمار بعد

نگاه و نظرگاه نگاه و نظرگاه

- نمايشنامه: مروری بر اجرای فاست در تهران / ناهيد جمشيدی راد - رمان کوتاه: مسخ کافکا: استقراض، تفسير مجدد يا بازآفرينی اساطير يونانی / نيلوفر همتيار - نويسندۀ داستان کوتاه: مطالعۀ تطبيقی داستانهای کوتاه جويس کارل اوتس / حسين محسنی - زبان: انگليسی: گذشته، حال و آينده / صالح طباطبايی

قفسه کتاب قفسه کتاب

چکیده فارسی مقاالت مقاالت چکیده فارسی

194

Kakhe Simin Institute

Vacancy Announcement

Applications are invited from qualified language teachers.

Number 1 – Bahar 5 Alley – Bakhshayesh Street – Sarve Gharbi Boulevard – Saadatabad – Tehran

(021) 22116675

(021) 22071711

www.siminkakh.com

Threshold

صاحب امتیاز گروه زبان و ادبيات انگليسی دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی

مدير مسئول دکتر ساسان بالغی زاده

سردبیر مهرداد يوسفپوری نعيم )دانشجوی دکتری آموزش (زبان انگليسی (زبان انگليسی

هیات تحريريه آموزش زبان انگليسی: )مريم عباسی کارشناس ارشد آموزش زبان انگليسی ( ( ادبيات انگليسی: حسين محسنی )کارشناس ارشد ادبيات انگليسی ( (

طراحی جلد AA Brothers Studio

طراحی سايت مريم مرندی مريم مرندی

با سپاس ويژه از غي اثالدين عليزاده و صادق حيدربکيان

همکاران اين شماره وحيد احمدی نسرين بدرود مهشاد جالل پور رودسری ناهيد جمشيدی راد عطا ا. حسنی مهدی داداشی علی درخشش حميد راستين امين رئيسی سامان زليخايی ابراهيم زنگانی مژگان سلمانی صالح طباطبايی مريم عباسی مسعود فروهر کلخوران حسين محسنی محمد محمدی علی نظيف پور نيلوفر همت يار يار نيلوفر هم ت

هیات مشاور هیات مشاور دکتر جالل سخنور، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر سيد ابوالقاسم فاطمی جهرمی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر کيان سهيل، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر شيده احمدزاده هروی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر اميرعلی نجوميان، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر محمدرضا عنانی سراب، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر سارا کاترين ايلخانی، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر عليرضا جعفری، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی دکتر سوفيا کوتالکی، دانشگاه علوم قرآن و حديث دکتر بهروز محمودی بختياری، دانشگاه تهران دکتر حسين مالنظر، دانشگاه عالمه طباطبايی

چاپ انتشارات دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی انجمن علمی گروه زبان و ادبيات انگليسی - تحت حمايت معاونت امور دانشجويی و فرهنگی )با نظارت کميته ناظر بر نشريات دانشجويی ( ( نمايه شده در پايگاه مجالت تخصصی نورمگز

قیمت 1000 تومان تومان مجلهنشانی : تهران، اوين، دانشگاه شهيد بهشتی، دانشکده ادبيات و علوم انسانی، گروه زبان و ادبيات انگليسی تلفن: -97709793 094 ايميل: [email protected]