ORCID Profile
0000-0002-6229-0897
Current Organisation
Deakin University
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2014
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-04-2015
DOI: 10.1111/JCAL.12100
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 04-10-2023
Abstract: This paper investigates participants’ reflections on power relations embedded in the cultural-pragmatics of unsourced evidentials in Persian texts. Using Fairclough’s (2013) critical discourse analysis, we adopted Hanks’ (2018) ethnography of referential practices and Foucault’s (1980) power dynamics to analyse 16 Persian texts through follow up interviews and focus group discussions on two opposing pairs of texts – one pair on Iranian national identity versus Persian literature, and another on Iranian politics versus religion. Our analysis revealed that unsourced evidentials appear in Persian predominantly due to censorship and sometimes due to deliberate use by authors (e.g., for winning an argument). Text consumers often overlook unsourced evidentials while reflecting on politico-religious referents, such as inequalities and bigotry. This has roots in Persian literature, religion, and politics of power embedded in the culture, and the participants’ attention to inequalities and discriminations has roots in referential practices in current Iranian discourse.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2018
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-03-2023
Publisher: National Inquiry Services Center (NISC)
Date: 03-07-2022
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 17-09-2020
Abstract: This study investigates the impact of cultural and politico-religious dominance on the practice of critical reading (CR) of texts by a group of Iranian postgraduate students in Australia. Four postgraduate students were interviewed in idually four times (each time for reading one text) for critical understanding of two pairs of Persian texts, each with opposing viewpoints, on current socio-political and nationalistic debates of Iran. They were then involved in a focus group discussion for further critique of each other’s viewpoints. Findings indicate two major Persian constructs that influence CR: hefz-e zaaher ‘keeping up appearances’ and ta’sob/gheyrat, approximating to ‘one’s honor combined with prejudice and bigotry’. Findings also reveal that participants’ CR is contributed by heavy emotional attachment to nationalistic views engendered by Persian poetry. Chafe (1982) , too, found that emotional attachment in appraising text was true with American English speakers. Finally, the focus group discussion had a slight impact on encouraging CR. Overall, it seems that participants’ repositioned journeys in Australia have influenced their perspective.
Publisher: National Inquiry Services Center (NISC)
Date: 02-01-2019
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 15-10-2022
DOI: 10.1177/13621688221126724
Abstract: While previous research has suggested there are dominantly two reading practices in critical literacy, namely, reading with and against texts, this study introduces the approach of ambivalence as a third way of reading texts critically. For the purpose of this study – establishing ambivalence as a reading practice in critical literacy – four international postgraduates at an Australian University volunteered to participate in a collective case study. They read four national and politico-religious texts and showed their agreement, disagreement, and ambivalence about the texts. They also partook in in idual interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs). The data obtained from 16 rounds of reading texts, 40 interviews, and four FGDs were analysed using Foucault’s conceptualization of discourse, power relations, subjectivities, and technologies of the self. The findings advocate that the participants read texts ambivalently in three directions: spontaneously when reading texts, after the initial agreement with texts, and after an earlier disagreement with them. The conclusive data discuss that: (1) participants’ state of perception, which is ambivalence, is associated with their identities and subjectivities and is in the range of active critical engagement with the texts rather than indifference or passivity (2) ambivalence is informed by participants’ technologies of the self as well as FGDs and reading opposing texts, which buttressed their arguments by attaching their interpretations to existing or non-existent topics in the texts and (3) ambivalence is tied with participants’ understanding of truth, which helped them not only critique texts but also modify their presuppositions and earlier interpretations of texts. Relevant pedagogical implications including a concrete question set and the adoption of a new technical term, ambivalent reading, are proposed.
No related grants have been discovered for Amin Zaini.