the power of media lies in its persuasive function, which gives media a potential to maneuver on the mind of audience (van dijk 1996). this potential is realized via different linguistic resources, one important group of which is metadiscoursal resources. the major aim of this study was to explore how and in what distribution these resources are employed by writers with different cultural backg...

This paper describes the development and validation of a new model and questionnaire to measure Iranian English as a foreign language learners’ attitudes towards the use of native versus non-native English language norms. Based on a comprehensive review of the related literature and interviews with domain experts, five factors were identified. A draft version of a questionnaire based on those f...

The computer-assisted learning of spoken language is closely tied to automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology which, as is well known, is challenging with non-native speech. By focusing on specific phonological differences between the target and source languages of non-native speakers, pronunciation assessment can be made more reliable. The four-way contrast of Hindi stops, where voicing a...

While many websites aim at a large and linguistically diversified audience, they present their information mostly in the languages of larger speakers groups. Little is known about the effect on accessibility. We investigated the influence of a site’s language offer on website access and search behaviour with two studies, and studied the interaction of language offers and domain knowledge. To ac...

During their first year, infants attune to the faces and language(s) that are frequent in environment. The present study investigates impact of language familiarity on how French-learning 9- 12-month-olds recognize own-race faces. In Experiment 1, were familiarized with talking face a Caucasian bilingual German-French speaker reciting nursery rhyme French (native condition) or German (non-nativ...

Studies of second language speech perception can highlight the role of prior knowledge in native language processing. The current study compared native and non-native identification of plosives in words spliced from natural utterances when presented in noise, with and without the context of the preceding word. Both listener groups performed at the same level in the absence of context at high no...

the present study aims at exploring kinship terms and the different ways in which they are used to refer to and address relatives and non-relatives in hawrami, an iranian language spoken in paveh, a border city in kermanshah province. the relevant linguistic and cultural data are obtained primarily by one of the researchers as a native speaker of the dialect and through field works and intervie...

This paper reports on a multilingual investigation into the effects of different masker types on native and non-native perception in a VCV consonant recognition task. Native listeners outperformed 7 other language groups, but all groups showed a similar ranking of maskers. Strong first language (L1) interference was observed, both from the sound system and from the L1 orthography. Universal aco...

Perception of American Sign Language (ASL) handshape and place of articulation parameters was investigated in three groups of signers: deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers who acquired ASL between the ages of 10 and 18, and hearing non-native signers who acquired ASL as a second language between the ages of 10 and 26. Participants were asked to identify and discriminate dynamic syntheti...