journal of Language Studies

The structure of literature generally relies on artistic visions based on analysis, inference, and comparison. Through these aspects, the features of its setting are determined, especially its monitoring of the act of self-crisis, noting that creativity, in its most important part, is born from the womb of suffering. The literature of alienation is considered the most important creative production dating back to many eras, especially the eras of pain and suffering, whether related to the creator, or resulting from a common ordeal that afflicted the society. At that time, the talents of the literary figures produced a bitter realistic artistic expression to put in the hands of the reader their literary outcomes. The Arab and even international literary production is full of many masterpieces of the literature of alienation. Such texts need a meticulous reading of the textual signs in search of hidden inferences. This search evokes the semiotic approach that, in turn, evokes the pillars of the analytical process, namely, the sender, the message, the addressee, and the intermediate channel linking them and the communicative position. Therefore, it is the descriptive labeling that will decide the essence of what the semiotic approach is (the textual outlining and the reading outlining), revealing boundary indicators that are closely related to each other. This approach was embodied in the poem (Blabbing Dreams) by the poet Samer Al-Shaibani, selected as a model for this research. The research was based on a theoretical framework which presents a brief overview of the literature of alienation, the concept of semiotics, and textual inferences that evoke the interpretations of indicators. The procedural approach looks into the semiotics of the threshold, as well as the sign contributions that underlined the linguistic indicators to decipher the semantic compactness in the texture coherence to prove the meaning and announce its birth.

This paper is a survey on the novel, “the last pomegranate of the world” by Bakhtiar Ali, based on Critical Discourse Strategies according to Furlough’s the three-layered schema. CDA researchers, do not only focus on formal and semantic aspects of the text but also pay attention to cultural, social and political points, affecting it. Thus, this methodology matches more with surveys on novels the focus of which are social, political cultural, and historical issues. Norman Furlough’s theoretical background is a huge contribution to this field that analyzes texts in three levels of description, interpretation, and explanation. In this paper, “the last pomegranate of the world”, the historical-political novel by Bakhtiar Ali based on this approach has been analyzed in order to shed a light on the writer’s point of view to the creation of the novel’s story and its elements. Moreover, the relationship between the story and the discourse on which the story has been based is analyzed. The three-layered Furlough’s schema focuses on the text, discourse acts, and social acts. So, it has been chosen for this survey. The methodology of the survey would be descriptive-analytical and uses corpus data which is the novel, “the last pomegranate of the world” by Bakhtiar Ali. Finally, the most important theme of the story is opposition to war and a criticism to power, which is affected by special discourse in which text is formed.

Pre-structural critical approaches sought to exclude the text from their fields of study, contenting themselves with making it a document that serves its historical, social, psychological and other goals. After that, the pioneers of structuralism focused in their beginnings on the inside of the text, trying to realize how the linguistic structures are interconnected, ignoring the internal structure of the text. Goldmanian structuralism presented itself as an alternative to formal structuralism. Goldman was inspired by sociological and philosophical ideas and reformulated them in line with his dialectical Marxist thought. Formative structuralism is based on revealing the relationship between the mentality of a particular social group and the overall structure of the literary work.
In this research, we will try, based on the formative structuralism approach, in two main chapters, to answer what the concepts of formative structuralism are, and how and when did formative structuralism appear. As for the second chapter, the Goldmanian formative constructivism approach was applied in the story (Collect Hailstones) by (Mohsen Ahmed Omar). Analysis and interpretation of the parts of the story according to the Goldmannian method.

The title of the research is (Mental processes and understanding of text structure) Mental processes are the events that go on in the brain from the time stimuli enter until the moment decisions are made and reactions to stimuli.
We understand linguistic expressions in some way every day without realizing how this process is done. In understanding the text, the reader seeks to understand the intention of the sender, and this process is done in the mind. It depends on the individual's ability and scientific background
Every individual is governed by the mind and our thoughts are evaluated by the mind, and the mind controls our decisions, so understanding this process expands our horizons of thinking and saves us from many problems.
In this article, it is assumed that the area responsible for understanding plays a role in understanding, so our understandings will be different in the text. The second part is about the brain and understanding the text in a practical way with the conclusion and summary of the discussion in Arabic and English.

This study، titled "The Art of Monologue" is published in The Short Novel of Mullazm Tahsin and Other Things by Farhad Pirbal. It is clear that the art of monologue between narrative theories in modern and modern literature is unique، because it has direct contact with other elements within the novel، especially the characters. Although this art existed in other classical narrative genres، it only included a simple and more external form of the characters، so along with the appearance of theories. Psychologists and psychoanalysis (Freud، Jung and Adler... He has been involved in literary studies in general and novels in particular. The art of monologue is separated by the use of cross-sections and personal pronouns according to the type of monologue that changes، sometimes it wants the writer to express a monologue in a way that the writer makes a sound، and he speaks in his face، because many writers think that it is a disorder of the monologue. Among them is Adon، so monologue is a very important technology، and for today the novel is very important by the novelists، because the individual can go deep inside the character، the thought، the mind، the heart، the mind، the heart، he is the one who hears the word، and he hears it. It has expanded into novels. In this study، it is briefly mentioned that some of the important opinions of foreign and Kurdish scholars and writers about monologues and genres in novels، so it is important for us to understand how Kurdish literature and our novelists felt the importance and necessity of this technical art of narration، as well as how Farhad Pirbal embodied and reflected it in his short novel (Molazm Tahsin and Other Things).

This study is an attempt to investigate the attitude of EFL university students towards the application of Cognitive Grammar (henceforth CG) in the Kurdish context to teaching selected grammar topics, namely English tenses, passivization and modal auxiliary verbs. CG is an approach within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (henceforth CL) to the meaning of grammatical structures and has two crucial guiding principles: the symbolic commitment and usage-based commitment. The study has used an attitude questionnaire as its data collection tool. Its participants were comprised of (27) EFL university students who had taken part in a 12-week course of Cognitive Grammar treatment focusing on the aforementioned grammatical phenomena. The data was analyzed descriptively through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences SPSS by finding the mean score, standard deviation and percentages of the respondents’ answers to the statements of the questionnaire. It was found that the participants generally had a positive attitude towards the application of CG to teaching the above-mentioned topics. The overall mean score of the questionnaire was (3.7680) which shows the students’ high agreement with the questionnaire’s items. It was also found that the approach had increased the students’ learning motivation and had a positive effect on the affective, behavioural and cognitive aspects of their attitude. The study has ended with some recommendations for further studies before being able to generalize the findings of the current study.

This study aims to examine foreign English language teachers' e-readiness to integrate technology in teaching English as a foreign language. Further, the study will examine the demographic and tech-savvy background of the teachers to determine the effect of these two variables on the technology readiness level. This research utilized a quantitative method design. The collected data were examined to answer a couple of research questions: Firstly, are EFL teachers ready to integrate technology into the classroom? Secondly, what is the effect of demography and tech-savvy background on the e-readiness of teachers? A 24item, 5-point Likert-type scale was administered to 50 teachers from Salahaddin University Colleges of Education and Basic Education in the academic year (2022-2023), who were randomly selected to participate in an online questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the reliability of the questionnaire items. The results showed that most EFL teachers at salahaddin University are ready to integrate and use technologies in their teaching classes. However, they see that they need more training courses on how to integrate it into their classes. Further, there was not any significant difference between the e-readiness of gender (male and female), age, and degree of teachers with overall readiness of teachers but there was a significant difference between overall technology readiness and Academic rank, teaching experience, and the number of received training courses on integrating technology into the classroom.

Simultaneous interpreting is regarded as a complex task as it entails comprehension of the source language, storage at the short-term memory and reproduction of the message according to target language norms. During SI, many concurrent cognitive processes take place to reflect the complex and demanding characteristics of the task. Due to this complexity, SI cause various problems for interpreters in all discourse levels which require online strategies to overcome these problems. The interpretation of collocations as being language-specific elements is considered among the major problems interpreters encounter during the interpreting task. The study aims at identifying the strategies applied by professional and student interpreters as well as studying the effect of directionality during rendering collocations in English-Arabic-English SI tasks. The study hypothesizes that collocations do not need much cognitive efforts if the interpreter is well acquainted with a great deal of them. Otherwise, s/he is very likely to face some difficulties and problems in translating them. The study is qualitatively analyzed according to Seleskovitch (1968) model which considers the transference of meaning is the interpreter’s main concern rather than transferring the linguistic elements between SL and TL. It also used Lörscher’s (1991) model to identify the strategies and the percentage of each strategy that was applied by the participants. The analysis showed that professionals were able to provide adequate renderings for collocations as they are ready made chunks that do not require great processing effort. Moreover, they used their experience and knowledge to apply the strategy of inference which was mainly used to derive the meaning of the collocation from the context while studentsresorted to literal translation and omitting the collocations which have negative effects on the their performance and consequently led to distort the process of interpreting.

The paper attempts to portray a critical stylistic analysis of gender identity crisis as an ideology. Ginder identity crisis means a sense of conflict inside an individual as a result of mismatch between his/her biological sex and his/her gender identity. Selected passages from David Ebershoff' The Danish Girl (2000), are the data of the analysis. The novel talks about (Einar) who becomes unaware about his real gender. This sense of Einar occurs when his wife (Greta) asks him repeatedly to put on Anna's dress, a famous opera singer, whom Greta used to paint. The selected data presents Einar's suffering when he starts to believe that he has feminine features inside his body. The aim is to examine critically the language and to investigate the conceptual meaning of the terms in use. Further, the aim is to reveal the implicit meaning of the linguistic expressions that the writer has selected to reflect ginder identity crisis in (Einar). In such analysis, a tool which is taken from Jeffries' approach (2010) named "Implying and Assuming" is used. The stylistic features and technical terminology are presented in relation to the textual practices of implying and assuming. The results may provide social and psychological impacts on the novel's readers.

Unfolding meanings, aims, purposes, and other targets through the dissection of the language is possible but not trouble-free since the procedure needs an obvious awareness of the structure of the language and a deep insight into the text. This paper tries to analyze "The School", a short story by Donald Barthelme, stylistically by using the transitivity system, which is based on Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), to reach the meanings which lie behind the words. The transitivity system is devised by Michael Halliday (1925-2018 -the British linguist), which consists of several process types. This system can externalize the meanings of the text through its clauses. Thus, the task of the present paper, as it is stated formerly, is to analyze the clauses in the chosen text adapting Halliday's transitivity system to obtain meanings related to the nature of the story. And analyzing the clauses of Barthelme's story, the nature of the story and the meanings are revealed as the study's major findings.

Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical series Persepolis is a set of comics written originally in the French language; and it recounts her life journey from childhood to early adulthood in Iran and Austria during and after the Islamic Revolution. The narrative is written in the form of graphic novel which is a sort of comics that combines both words and images. The Islamic Revolution was a critical moment in the history of Iran, overwhelmed every Iranian citizen, and ended up transforming the country from monarchal to Islamic governance. In the light of this upheaval, Marjane Satrapi visualizes her childhood and maturity through her graphic novel Persepolis. She utilizes the story to be her platform to open up about her challenges to break constraints that are imposed upon her as a woman in this newly shaped society and to call for reform and mercy for war victims. The current study aims at studying the figure of Marjane, the heroine of the story, her perceptions of certain events, her reactions in various moments and how she manages to save herself from all the obstacles that surround her . It will analyze the hidden lessons delivered by this narrative in the light of visual and verbal frames. The researcher attempts to answer how one may act in such hostile environment? what are the significance of writing autobiographical novel in the light of historical context? And how the form of graphic novel helps the author to deliver her message?

This paper about Neil LaBute's play, Some Girl(S) tries to reveal the repressive aspect of the male characters' adherence to established gender norms by examining the performance of Some Girl(S). To uncover why the male characters in LaBute's works attempt to conceal their emotional selves, the author analyses them through the lens of Judith Butler and other gender theorists. In general, LaBute criticises conventional performance for stimulating change as a response to the prevalence of dangerous males and the generally negative ramifications of their positions. This change is needed because dangerous males dominate conventional performance. To illustrate this issue, LaBute draws on a substantial repertoire of different methods.

This research examines the effect of speaking rate on the voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonants in Bahdini Kurdish. 30 native speakers are chosen to take part in this study. VOT values are measured for all 10 Kurdish stop consonants produced by participants in carrier words in initial prevocalic onset position. The duration of the carrier word is also measured by using the Web MAUS service (Munich Automatic Segmentation), which is used for word duration measurements. Word duration measurements are compared to the VOT measurements to check whether they are both correlated or not based on laryngeal state and place of stop articulation (POA).
Results reveal that there is an effect of speaking rate on VOT based on the three-way laryngeal contrast between the categories of voiced, voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated stops in Bahdini Kurdish. VOT increases as word durations increase, which is inversely related to speaking rate. This means that VOT increases as speaking rate decreases. There is a systematic correlation between VOT and word duration based on different laryngeal states of voiced, voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated stop categories. However, Place of Articulation (POA) does not show such an effect.

Natural phonology is a linguistic theory developed by David Stampe and Patricia Donegan that seeks to explain the phonological patterns observed in human languages. The phonological processes are seen as natural and regular reactions to the limitations of the human vocal and auditory system. A natural class refers to a combination of segments which tend to behave similarly because they have features in common.
The problem of this study is that NP heavily depends on theoretical arguments and introspection rather than empirical data. Only limited rules can categorize the natural classes and apply to features. This research aims at identifying the gist of the theory of natural phonology, clarifying its principles and processes.

This study hypothesizes that there are no regular processes and there are phonological variation across languages. The model adopted of this study is Donegan and Stampe 1979.
This study concludes that NP supposes that the samples of speech are governed by innate and universal set of phonological processes.

According to grammarians In (إنْ) and Itha (إذا) are conditionals and sometimes they may be used interchangeably. However, when they are mentioned in the Holy Qur’an, they have their own specific use. This paper attempts to investigate their meanings in the source language as well as investigate their translations and find out any differences or similarities. The translations that are adopted in this research are as follows: Pickthall, Al-Hilali & Khan, and Shakir.
Keywords: Linguistic analysis, إن (In) and إذا (Itha), sacred text translation, conditional sentences.

The REACT methodology has been used to teach literary works in English. Students should be able to apply new knowledge and abilities to real-world circumstances, discuss and exchange information (work in pairs) in order to address problematic issues as a result of teaching. This methodology is intended to aid students in evaluating their prior knowledge and, as a result, improve their ability to comprehend the text at hand.
Learning about English through literature is a common goal of English language education. It gives students a better understanding of the societal and political context of the target language society, as well as how a particular community communicates.
This study highlights the significance of employing the REACT approach while educating students about literature. In other words, there are two parts to it: information on the REACT paradigm, and information on literature. In the end, the researcher reaches some findings.
Keywords: REACT Model, Teaching, Literature, Activity, Learning.

This paper studies Sight Translation (SiT) and how this type of translation is conducted to render a written text into a spoken message in the target language. It also highlights the most frequent strategies and skills that students need to perform SiT successfully. This paper focuses on the most significant stages of SiT, which are conducted sequentially. This paper reviews categories of SiT that can be seen in different contexts. This descriptive study presents details to illustrate the significant effectiveness of these strategies and how the students can employ their skills to overcome SiT problems. This paper explains this challenging task and the basic perspectives that are needed by the students to improve their performance in SiT.
Keywords: Sight Translation, SiT Stages, SiT Strategies, SiT categories, SiT Skills

Maya Angelou was a renowned American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist who had the talent of capturing the essence of the human spirit through her powerful words. Her poetry touched people’s minds and hearts offering a voice to those who had been silenced and shedding light on the realities of racism, injustice, and the struggles faced by marginalized communities. Social segregation, identity exploring, and the image of the body are some of the main themes portrayed in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and many other poems. Maya Angelou's impact as a poet is undeniable, as she used her words to inspire and empower individuals to overcome adversity and fight for equality.
Maya Angelou's metaphorical expressions allowed readers to perceive the world differently, encouraging introspection and fostering a deeper understanding of human experience. The aim of this study is to show how Angelou's metaphorical language in her poems helped to create vivid imagery and convey complex emotions through analyzing layers of meaning and metaphors which serve as a bridge between abstract concepts and tangible experiences, to allow readers to connect with her poetry on a deeply personal level.
Keywords:: Social segregation, Identity exploring, Racism, Injustice

Globally, pandemics and epidemics have been largely argued in literature. The calamity of COVID-19 has largely paralyzed individuals and societies. The research deals with fictional responses of individuals who are infected by coronavirus and the impact of the virus on the way of coping with each other and with the surrounding. The research deals with two English novels; Burntcoat (2021) by Sarah Hall and The Fell (2021) by Sarah Moss. These novels are chosen for the critical analysis due to the variety of themes. The texts chosen depict experiences of the victim characters during quarantine. The objectives of the research are to identify the characters that experienced the pandemic, analyzing their unconscious behavior. This will be done according to the Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Also, to examine the responses of the infected characters to the calamity based on Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory. And to show the impact of coronavirus on the selected characters in coping with others relaying on Judith Herman’s PTSD. The aim is to explore themes of isolation, dislocation, unconsciousness, and hysteria. This will be discussed within the limits of the main concepts of the psychoanalytic theory.
Keywords: Psychoanalytic, epidemic, pandemics, quarantine, unconsciousness, PTSD.

This study aims at finding out the effect of Direct Reading Thinking Activity(DRTA) on EFL students' achievement in reading comprehension (RC). To achieve the aim of the study, a quasi-experimental nonrandomized control group, pretest-posttest design is employed. Two groups are randomly selected from the fifth preparatory grade in AL-Dour Preparatory School for Boys for the academic year (2021-2022) to represent the sample of the study which conclude (75) students. The two groups (each group consists of 30 students) are submitted to the same pretest in RC to ensure equivalence among groups. Then the first group is taught according to(DRTA) strategy, whereas the first group is taught according to (DRTA) strategy and the second is taught according to the conventional method. After achieving the validity of the test, a pilot study is conducted to (50) students of the fifth preparatory stage /AL-Kastal Preparatory School for Boys. Then the two groups are subjected to the same achievement post-test in RC. The data are analyzed statistically by using ANOVA. The results suggest that there are statistically significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in achievement post-tests of RC, in favor of the experimental group. The results also show that the second group taught according to (DRTA) strategy is better than the first group taught according to conventional method.
Keywords: Direct Reading Thinking Activity Strategy, reading comprehension.

A variation of feminism known as postcolonial feminism emerged in opposition to feminism that exclusively addressed women's experiences in Western societies. In order to demonstrate how racism and the lasting political, economic, and cultural repercussions of colonialism affect non-white and non-Western women in the postcolonial globe, postcolonial feminism examines these issues. African feminism is a subset of feminism developed by African women that is focused on the issues and concerns of women in continental Africa (African women residing on the African continent). These feminism movements do not all represent the realities of African women because Africa is not a homogeneous continent. Some feminists are particularly focused on particular subgroups of African women, including movements with a national foundation, such as feminism in Sweden, feminism in India, feminism in Mexico, feminism in Japan, feminism in Germany, feminism in South Africa, etc. The concept of feminism for many African writers in the post-colonial era in the Third World has been the subject of widespread controversy, as it is seen as a feminist movement in line with and for African women in the diaspora instead of African women in the African continent. In this study, we present the perspectives of three African writers interested in the feminist movement about their vision of the concepts and role of the feminist movement in the post-colonial era in the Third World by shedding light on African feminist movements and the challenges they face. The study presents the vision of three African writers for the women's movement in the Third World in general and the African continent in particular in the post-colonial period through the emergence and development of the African feminist movement, and the three writers selected in this study are activists of the feminist movement inside Africa through their literary activity. Delusion:
Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Assia Djebar and Robert C.J.Young.
Keywords: African, perspective, postcolonial, feminism, and racism

The current study is a serious attempt to carry out a comprehensive survey of the research subject heading The Role of Synonyms and Antonyms in Speaking and Writing which is certainly of great importance as the case with the other semantic themes. This research paper discusses a vital area in the English study of semantics.
Synonyms are completely different words in s spelling; but they are all alike (or nearly alike) in meaning, whereas an antonym is a word that indicates a meaning as opposed to the meaning of a given word. So the two words are named antonyms to each other.
It is anticipated that the present study will be useful for the learners of English in their study, especially, when they communicate or write.
Keywords: synonym, antonym, opposite, alike, types of synonyms, overuse

This study investigates the theme of bullying and its influence on Children's personality development as used in R.J. Palacio's bestselling novel "Wonder". Palacio is a well-known novelist with a keen interest in children's literature, especially those addressing congenital deformities and their psychological and social issues. This research utilises a social and psychological reading of the "Wonder" novel, discusses Palacio’s attempts to portray the suffering of individuals with congenital deformities due to bullying, and challenges the societal view of performance self-realization through the concept of Olweus. The "Wonder" novel is a mirror for these children, reflecting the psychological crises they go through in society and at the same time presenting a picture of how to deal with them in a systematic way, enabling them to become influential members of society. The purpose of this study is to motivate tolerance of oneself and others. Additionally, it argues bullying through the lens of Olweus and the various forms of discrimination that the protagonist experiences. Additionally, it employs qualitative methods of analysis to focus on Palacio's recommendations for dealing with bullying and learning to accept oneself in society. As a result, it summarizes the key points made throughout the article and examines how this social and psychological critique of those with special needs has affected and constrained how we read the novel "Wonder."

Keywords: self-realization, Bullying, reflection, Children's personality, and wonder

Exile literature addresses the experience of those who leave their country due to political, social, or personal conflicts. Writers express feelings of uprooting and nostalgia through genres such as poetry, narrative, and essays, while also addressing political and social issues related to oppression and freedom. Poets Rafael Alberti and Maḥmūd Darwīš lived through exile and resistance: Alberti fought against the Francoist dictatorship, and Darwīš resisted the Zionist occupation. Both used various literary styles and symbols to denounce injustices and convey hope. Their legacy inspires the fight against injustice and keeping the memory of exile and resistance alive.
Keywords: poetry, literature of exile, political literature, Rafael Alberti, Mahmoud Darwish.

Comparative literature, as a field of interpretive study, allows us to understand literary works across cultural boundaries and connect them to each other across time and space, specifically between Latin America and Arab countries. Spain plays an important role as a cultural mediator between these two cultures, both in terms of history and its current role as a country in the European community. There is a great similarity between Arab and Latin societies as a result of the common circumstances they experienced, and these circumstances are clearly reflected in the literature that emerged from them. Therefore, we find that this literature in all its forms deals with political and social issues in the same style and themes. It is clear that there is a great convergence between them, and through our study and selection of these two literary works, we will clarify this convergence by analyzing the environment and the elements used in each of the works.
Keywords: Comparative literature; literary analysis; Luvina The tigers on the tenth day; Literary critic