Journal of Basra researches for Human Sciences

This paper discusses Critical Discourse Analysis and Political Discourse with special reference to two Iraqi political speeches (the Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and the Presiden Barham Salih). The study focuses on exploring different ideologies, perspectives and attitudes through the use of Teun Van Dijk’ Socio-Cognitive Model (2005). It aims to examine Iraqi politicians’ speeches in order to find out how the politicians try to justify their ideas and convince their audience. The paper hypothesizes that there is an essential consideration of political discourse in reflecting and manipulating the community. Analyzing the speeches linguistically shows how Iraqi politicians differ in conveying or expressing their ideologies. The study approves its exposure of attitudes and ideologies through examining the applicability of Van Dijk’s model to Iraqi politicians. The outcome of the analysis demonstrates that Allawi makes use of a larger number of discursive devices while Salih’s usage is less frequent. Hence, the study approves its hypotheses and objectives.

The present study investigates indirect speech acts in The Simpsons TV animated series. Five episodes, in which social, political, and some other various issues are dealt with, are chosen for the analysis. The conversations made by the characters are analyzed according to Searle’s speech act theory. This is followed by an interpretation of the indirect speech acts experienced by the utterances. The study also investigates how the Gricean maxims are violated in all of the utterances of indirect speech acts by the characters, and how this type of utterances is used to make the speech more polite. Among the most important findings of the study is that there are hidden political, social, and other messages in The Simpsons.

The current study investigates epistemic modality as a linguistic phenomenon in Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Blomm'd. It is the first of the collection of four elegies poems entitled Memories of President Lincoln appeared in Walt Whitman's masterpiece Leaves of Grass in which he commiserates the president Lincoln after his death in 1865. This poem falls in sixteen stanzas of two hundreds and six lines. It is investigated in terms of Thomas Willett's (1988) taxonomy of epistemic modality and evidentiality in which he proposes that epistemic modality involves evidentiality. The study shows how a certain source of evidence in terms of certain type of conceived truthfulness affects the degree of assertion of the epistemic coding of the interlocurers.

This study aims at investigating the literary competence at the University level. The theoretical part of the study presents the concept of linguistic competence, then communicative competence down to literary competence and its role in understanding and comprehending the literary work. The practical part deals with the research methodology. The study in its last chapter ends up with some conclusions which indicate that there are statistically significant differences in the favor of the sample represented by university of Basra, college of Arts and college of Education in the level of literary competence.

The present research is entitled Language Chunking and Its Possible Value in Developing Iraqi EFL Learners’ Fluency at the University Level. It aims at proving that language chunking is a suitable strategy and has a possible value in enhancing the Iraqi EFL learner’s fluency at the university level. This hypothesis is investigated by applying a certain selected test conducted on the fourth-year students at the level of the University of Basra to develop their ability of L.Ch. to make them easier to recognize and synthesize language chunks. Besides, this study tries to raise the students’ awareness of lexical chunks and help to chunk language successfully. Also, it attempts to encourage students to consider L.Ch. as a central methodology linked together with the lexical view of language.
The problem of this research study is based on the relationship between language chunks and fluency and how these chunks influence the spoken language at the university level. This possible language value is somewhat ignored in the academic studies related to this level. So, the researcher finds it important to shed light on this area. Concerning the hypotheses, it is hypothesized that language chunking is a strategy of enhancing the fluency of EFL learners. Moreover, students at university level are not aware about using lexical chunks.
Consequently, the procedures followed to solve the problems are listed as follows; a. 70 fourth-year students have been chosen for the current research study at the University of Basrah ,Department of English, b. These students have been tested by using a lexical chunks to find out to what extent do they know how to use them, c. To analyse the results, statistical system (SPSS) has been used in the study, d. Finally, the results have been read and interpreted from a critical prospective that recommends on the ability of students in using lexical chunks. All in all, the research study ends up with certain conclusions given at the end of this research.

The current study is mainly intended to shed light on Legal Discourse in general, and the evidential Sources in prosecutors and defense attorneys' opening statements in particular. Accordingly, a corpus of fourteen opening statements, is chosen to be analyzed according to Alexandra Aikhenvald's (2018) categorization for Evidentiality in the English language. Data analysis has shown that the reportative term of evidentiality has reoccured more than the directive and the inferential terms of evidentiality. And thus it has the greatest frequency. For that, it was used (233) times in the fourteen opening statements represented by prosecutors and defense attorneys. This result proves that attorneys tend to use quoted words in their statements to increase its level of reliability and fixedness. And consequently captivate the attention of the jurors and manipulate their decisions. Moreover, the study also shows that the frequency of the Reportative term of evidentiality in the defense attorney’s statements is greater than in the prosecution statements.

A semantic theoretical framework, devised by Winifred Crombie is adopted to investigate, analyze and interpret Doris Lessing's “Tragedy of Zimbabwe” in the current study. The aim of this study is to inspect how semantic structuring relationships can help to unearth embedded belief systems, philosophies and attitudes. Crombie’s theoretical framework is basically intended to detect the political ideologies that operate in the text. The analysis proves that the essay is loaded with ideological references and cues that are designed by the author to fathom out and comment on political reality in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. Lessing frequently resorts to contrasts, comparisons, result-conclusion and conditionals to emphasize the ideological conflicts, racial hostilities and political chaos. Through Semantic Relational Structuring, the author offers her own views and personal assessment of the African version of Marxist politics.

The study is an attempt to help students to find an adequate way for analyzing narrative through investigating internal components of the structure of fictions. The study sets out to apply procedures derived from linguistics in the analysis of short story and novels. The goal is to find an easy and applicable approach to the teaching of literature for undergraduates within the context of English language teaching as a foreign language. The procedures adopted is derived from structural and formal models: Bremond's sequences, Barthes's functions and Greimas's Actantial model.
The work adopted in this study is a classic regency novel: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Besides being a genius work, the choice of Pride Prejudice due to it is one of the literary subjects within the curriculum of Juniors in The Open Educational college. The researcher finds it is convenient for undergraduates to experience the literary analysis depending on scientific procedures help them to discover the internal structures of literary texts through using some stylistic tools enable them to establish an interpretive operations in reading literature to be, in turn, a reliable and valid instruments for interpreting any discourse rather than literary texts.