Lexicalization vs. Vocalization: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Emphasis in English and Persian

Language is a system of verbal elements that makes communication of meaningspossible in the manners the users intend by employing certain linguistic deviceswhich are partly language-specific. Once communicating cross-linguistically, thereis always a risk of negative transfer of techniques or processes from the firstlanguage (L1) to the foreign language (L2). The current study investigates the“emphasis” issue and how it is encoded and performed as a speech act in Persianand English. The investigation, based on a descriptive method, begins by verifyingoverstated and understated utterances in English and Persian individually and thenproceeds to evaluate the 2 bodies of data against each other. As observed in the caseof Iranian learners of English, the process of emphasizing through phonologicaldevices is heavily transferred. English mainly applies lexicalization, whereasvocalization is the preferred process in Persian. The tenets of this study may be ofinsight for theories of SLA. They also promise to ease English learning tasks byreducing students' negative transfer from their mother tongue.