non-verbal communication (nvc) plays a major role in various aspects of human life (andersen, 2004; cameron, 2001; johnstone, 2008). children learning their first language come to realize non-verbal communication as their socialization process takes place (fletcher & german, 1990; ingram, 1996; owens, 2001). however, most efl learners may have little exposure to these non-verbal aspects of ...

due to the significance of multiculturalism in politics, and the central role linguistic devices play in organizing the political discourse, this text-based qualitative study was carried out to compare political interviews in the iranian and english contexts to find out the probable similarities and differences in the use of discourse markers (dms) between the two cultures. to this end, three s...

this paper highlights the folk perception of impoliteness among ghanaians in view of watts’ (2003) notion of first order impoliteness. the study showed that impoliteness is not just an opposite of politeness, but the manifestation of non-cooperation, disapproval, and mutual antipathy through certain communicative behaviours that signal disrespect. these communicative behaviours include ‘interru...

in a speech community, people utilize their communicative competence which they have acquired from their society as part of their distinctive sociolinguistic identity. they negotiate and share meanings, because they have commonsense knowledge about the world, and have universal practical reasoning. their commonsense knowledge is embodied in their language. thus, not only does social life depend...

Textbooks considered as one of the most important genres of academic writings would guarantee effective teaching and learning in EFL/ESL courses. Since textbooks are gaining more and more importance, the knowledge of their rhetorical organization that provides learners and teachers with efficient use of their content seems necessary. This article describes the rhetorical organization of the tex...

The theory of ecological constructionism specifies the interaction framework that integrates information systems with the individual’s psychological operations that conform to group practices in communication and information exchange. Social and communicative interactions always involve these three psycho-biological systems of the individual: sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective. The model do...

Conversations are a useful means of structuring communicative interactions among agents. The value of a conversationbased approach is largely determined by the conversational model it uses. Finite State Machines, used heavily to date for this purpose, are not su cient for complex agent interactions requiring a notion of concurrency. We propose the use of Colored Petri Nets as a model underlying...

The wide distribution of rage in animals suggests that rage should have an adaptive significance. In the present work, the function of rage is explored under an evolutionary perspective. I try to assess the selective advantage conferred to the individual presenting rage compared to one that does not. In this work, I considered animals under the 'strategist' perspective rather than the 'stimulus...