Starting from March 2020 and in order to preserve regularity in publication, the journal publishes articles upon readiness instead of per issue.
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Volume 4, Issue 3, 2017
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Volume 4, Issue 4, 2017
TAYR Quarterly Volume 5 Issue 2, March 2018
Table of Contents:
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Emerging Forms of Communication in Contemporary Advertising Discourse ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….......10
By Dr. Mouna Frikha Ellouch
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The Syntax of Sentential Negation in Tunisian Arabic Proverbs ........42
By Rima Ben Ayeche
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Hybridity in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians: the Ethical Turn ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….55
By Dr. Kamel Abdaoui
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In Response to Hendrickson’s (1978) Third Question: Which Learner Errors Should Be Corrected? ………………………….....……………………………………………….76
By Emna Maazoun Zayani
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The impact of implementing vocabulary learning strategy training on Tunisian EFL learners’ vocabulary knowledge ………………………………………………..….95
By Oumayma Ben Kridis
TAYR Quarterly Volume 5 Issue 1, December 2018
Table of Contents
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Reflecting on Teacher Evaluation: How Students’ Growth Measures Enhance Teacher Growth and development …………………… ……………… …..10
By Noura Eloun
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From Scissors and Paste to Tailor-made: a Practical Adaptation of the English Language Course Designed for Pre-service Teachers in Tunisia.........................26
By Amel Meziane and Walid Hmeissia
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Assessing an EFL Master’s Programme: Tertiary Learners’ Perspectives: The Case of Biskra University, Algeria..............................................................44
By Meddour Mustapha and Laala Youssef
TAYR Quarterly Volume 4 Issue 2, December 2017
Editor-In-Chief: Dr. Mimoun Melliti
Table of Contents
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Fe/Male Quest for Voice in Maxine Hong Kingston’s the Woman Warrior and China Men…………………………………………………………………………………………..10
By Dr. Faten Houioui
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“It’s very dark, the darkest dark you can imagine,” Thus Spoke Dionysus: Art and ‘Psychic Infection’ in Carole Maso’sThe Art Lover…………………...........................................................................................……38
By Insaf Khmiri
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Irony and Subverting the American Dream in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night ……………………………………..........................………………… ……………..…………….................................................................…53
By Olfa Gandouz
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TAYR Quarterly Volume 4 Issue 1, March 2017
Guest Editor: Prof. Chokri Smaoui
Editor-In-Chief: Dr. Mimoun Melliti
Table of Contents
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An evaluation of published papers and final Master’s degree dissertations
By Athina BOUKHELOUF; Khadidja-Samira ZITOUNI; Djelloul NEDJAI (Doctoral students, Batna -2 University, Algeria); Pr. Mohammed-Salah NEDJAI (Head of the Scientific Board, Faculty of Foreign Languages; Former Rector of Batna University, Algeria) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………10
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A pragmatic perspective on the U.S. print media coverage of the tunisian revolution: The construction of evaluation through reference
By Boutheina Hammami…………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………22
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Identification of Japanese religious immigration in contemporary canadian minorities’ literature
By Sawssen Ahmadi …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…48
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Ditransitive voice in medical and sociological academic articles
By Sabiha Choura …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………65
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Modality as a convincing Strategy for Political Power Abuse: Tony Blair’s speech on the Iraqi crisis as a case study
By Sihem Aouididi…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..86
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Re-thinking Religious Text Translation: A Conceptual Framework for an Interdisciplinary Translation of the Qur’an
By Mhammed Krifa……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………119
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TAYR Quarterly Volume 3 Issue 3 and 4, January 2017
Guest Editor: Prof. Mohamed Salah Nedjay
Editor-In-Chief: Dr. Mimoun Melliti
Table of Contents
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The impact of some Naffati pupils’ basic personality traits on school performance.
By Nessim Bouzayani…………..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………10
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Awareness of the Influence of the Mythical Dimension in Exegetical works and its Impact on the Translation of the Qur'an: A Case Study of Laleh Bakhtiar's and Edip Yuksel's Translation.
By Mhammed Krifa……………………………………………………………..…………………………………………………..…………….50
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CVC syllables in Tunisian Arabic
By Mounir Jouini ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……….67
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Celebrating the Female Cultural Other in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
By Ahlem Louati ...................................................................................................................................................................................83
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“Olfactory Silence” in William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha: A Language of (Be)longing and Resistance
By Mourad Romdhani……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………95
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Subverting licenced liberty in Harold Pinter’s caretaker
By Zied Khammari…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….115
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TAYR Quarterly Volume 3 Issue 2, June 2016
Guest Editors: Prof. Akila Sallemi Baklouti and Prof. Saloua Karoui Lounelli
Editor-In-Chief: Mimoun Melliti
Editors: Dr. Yosra Amraoui, Dr. Ikram Ben Arfi, Hatem Sebei
Table of Contents
The main sources of language-skills-specific anxiety in Tunsian ESP students
By Zeined Ayachi…………..……………………………………………………………………………………10
Learning situation motivation: The power of teachers
By Adel Hannachi ………………………………………………..……………………………………………..54
Promoting Global Competence in Teachers’ Education: Towards Globally-Oriented Classrooms
By Zakia Djabberi, Tlemcen University, Algeria...................................................................................71
Rethinking the Past: Historiagraphical constructs about the causes of the American civil war
By Jamila Zghal ..................................................................................................................................83
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TAYR Quarterly Special Issue on Trauma in Focus, May 2016
Guest Editor: Prof. Mounir Triki
Editor-in-chief: Mimoun Melliti
Editor: Dr. Yosra Amraoui
Table of Contents
The Origin of Trauma in Joseph Conrad’sHeart of Darkness
By Dr. Noureddine Fekir …………………………………………………………………10
Cultural Representation of the Great Famine Trauma: The Case of the Irish Journalist John Mitchel
By Dr. Lotfi Ben Moallem............................................................................................26
History, Trauma, and Healing in a Post-trauma Stage: Toni Morrison’s Beloved as Case Study.
By Houda Ayari Msolli………………………………………………………………..……….35
Is the Theory of Trauma a Theory of Language?
By Imen Chemengui………………………………………….………………………………...44
Representations of Psychological Trauma in Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetry
By Najoua Stambouli …………………………………………………...…………………….52
Can the Traumatized Speak? Moon Orchid and BaBa’s Traumas of Gender Oppression and Racism at “the Western Palace:” Kingston’ The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980)
By Zeined Derbali ………………………………………………..……………………………...58
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Volume 3 Issue 1, 2016
Guest Editor: Prof. Mounir Triki
Editor: Dr. Yosra Amraoui
Table of Contents:
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Generic structure of research letters’ introductions: CARL introduction model
by Mimoun Melliti …………………………………………………………………………..10
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Mobile Assisted Language Learning in “English Clubs” in Tunisia:
Gamification as a tool
By Marouen Ben Alkileni ……………………………………………………………….……45
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A Humanistic Reading of John Keats’s Narrative Poem Lamia through the
Precepts of Mythological Criticism
By Farhat Ben Amor………………………………………………………………………...89
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From Frog to Prince: Nadine Gordimer’s Representation of the Black South
Africans in July’s People
By Ahlem Msalmi ………………………………………………………………………………114
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The Great Irish Famine: An excess of Emigration to the USA
by Lotfi be Moalem ......................................................................................................125
Download Full Issue
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Volume 2 Issue 4, 2015
Guest Editor: Dr Tahar Labassi
Editor: Mimoun Melliti
Mobility of Meaning in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: A Deconstructive Feminist Reading
By Nodhar Hammami, PhD
Faculty of Letters and Humanities Kairouan, Tunisia
Abstract
The present paper deals with the mobility of meaning in the text of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as far as the representation of woman is concerned. I attempt to show that the image of woman in the poem is mobile and unstable and dependent on individual acts of interpretation. I apply a deconstructive feminist reading to the text to analyze the representation of the poem’s female figures. In the first part of the work I expose the first possible reading of the poem where women can be read as temptresses, prostitutes, sorceresses, neurotic, irrational, superstitious, unnatural and passive creatures. The second part presents another possible contradictory reading which argues that women are positively represented in the text. They rather seem connected with activity, reason, wisdom and art in opposition with the negative representation of man as exploiter, rapist and betrayer. Thus, the intent of the research is to show the mobility of meaning in literary works, the flexible and unstable nature of language, the openness of texts to contradictory interpretations. The work follows the Derridean pattern of reading where the reader moves among the unsettled words or the “undecidables” of a text, as coined by Derrida, to affirm the infinity of play and the multiplicity of meanings. Therefore, deciphering truth and escaping play become an illusion in the analysis of such literary works.
Key Words:
Mobility- meaning- feminism- deconstruction- contradiction- representation- female figures.
By Ahlem Msalmi
Faculty of Letters and Humanities Manouba, Tunisia
Abstract
Joseph Conrad wrote sixteen Malay works of fiction varying between short stories and novels. Critics have always hinted at his accuracy in the depiction of the Malay Archipelago. Florence Clemens notes that Conrad’s “fiction should be read with atlases and geographies at hand. They prove that Conrad may be trusted as a geographer” (461). She adds that “a study of the fiction produces a true impression of the general topography of this area as well as innumerable clear-cut close views” (461). Conrad’s concern with objectivity meant that he relied on his personal experience of the Malayan seas as chief mate on board the Vidar, the Otago, the Palestine and other ships and on books having a documentary aspect like Alfred Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago and James Brooke’s diaries. However, in spite of his preoccupation with objectivity, Conrad endows the Malay Archipelago with a hellish aspect, and conveys it as an underworld.
Academic Criticism in the Results and Discussion Section of MA Dissertations: The Case of ISLT Students of Applied Linguistics
By Amina Ben Jabeur
Faculty of Letters and Humanities Manouba, Tunisia
Abstract
Research on the Results and Discussion sections (DRs Hereafter) is still limited. As far as the dissertation genre is concerned, even fewer studies have addressed this particular part-genre. There is also relatively little research available about critical thinking and its realization in the Tunisian context. So far, critical thinking along with its linguistic and rhetorical realization has been considered a luxury rather than a necessity. This can be judged by the repeated complaints often made by Tunisian supervisors on many occasions such as in students’ theses defenses. The study attempts to raise students’ awareness about the importance of critical thinking (critical writing/reading) in Tunisian academia. It investigates the frequency and the linguistic realizations of the criticism move of MA dissertations’ DRs written by graduate students at the ISLT (Institut Supérieur des Langues de Tunis). In addition, it analyzes the rhetorical move structure of this section in order to locate the criticism move. The research addresses also the issue of linguistic and cultural variability involved in enacting academic criticism on the basis of previous studies on the issue.
Key Words: Academic Writing, Critical Thinking, Results and Discussion Section.
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Volume 2 Issue 3, 2015
Towards a Subjective Adaptation of Objectivity
Dr. Nadia Konstantini
Abstract
This paper is a critical inquiry into the postmodern nihilistic negation of objectivity departing from an ontological analysis in the field of Humanities through the works of Boris Cyrulnik in Psychiatry, Pierre Bourdieu in Sociology and Philippe Descola in Anthropology. How are subjectivity and objectivity perceived and applied in the works of these thinkers? If their studies are constantly confronted to changes and revisions, do their findings follow the postmodern nihilistic trend that categorically refutes Truth? This short overview of major studies by Cyrulnik (2011), Bourdieu (1984) and Descola (2005) will help us rethink the postmodern nihilistic view about objectivity, trying to follow the path of a subjective adaptation to objectivity and lead us to consider the possibility of a temporary unity of Reality.
Key words: animism, habitus, now truth, objectivity; resilience, subjectivity
Ob/Subjectivity of Testimonial Narratives in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter
Faten Houioui
ISLT
Abstract
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub establish the theory of testimony in the work they co-authored: Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. They define testimony and testimonial narratives within the context of trauma and memory studies. Dominick La Capra in his ground breaking book Writing History, Writing Trauma, considers testimony as a genre-in-the making, which provides a “purely documentary knowledge” (86) since it is a source of facts, of reliable information about the past (ibid). Moreover, La Capra compares survivors who testify on trauma to “living archives”. Accordingly the trauma survivors construct a testimonial discourse that is objective from the perspective of ‘reliable information’ and ‘documentary knowledge’, yet subjective since they are survivors of extremely excruciating experiences. In Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter three female characters are traumatized: the Chinese grandmother, the mother and the American –born daughter. They are able—though belatedly—to retrieve and reconstruct experiences they witnessed and thought they had forgotten. In addition, their testimonies—incorporated in the novel— provide consistent information about past historical/personal events, such as the Sino-Japanese War, of 1937, World War Two and the war between the Communists and the Kuomintang, which led to the victory of Mao Tse Dung and his followers in 1949.
Dr Farhat ben Amor
University of Kairouan
Abstract
As a key figure in American literature, Emily Dickenson (1830 - 86) wrote poetry that dealt excessively with death as a metaphysical fact. What may be most original is that the poet’s preoccupation with death leads her to subject this metaphysical fact to epistemological queries whereby there occurs a discernible collision between the subjective imaginative construction of death and the sordidness of the objective world with its restrictions and bewildering enigmas. This paper seeks to gauge the degree to which Dickenson succeeds in founding in her poetry a compromise between the subjective and objective worlds – which, as I saw it, defines the crux of her poetic enterprise as a whole. In this respect, the study involves a probe into the poet’s construction of the ‘self’ that is made the territory of this collision between the subjective and the objective. The chief result this paper seeks to put forward is related to the inseparable interaction of both the subjective and the objective in shaping the mould of the ‘self’ in Dickenson’s poetry, thus giving birth to a self that is both ‘subjectively objectified’ and ‘objectively subjectified.’
Key words: Death, epistemology, metaphysics, objective, self, subjective
Volume 2 Issue 2, 2015
Marwen Ben Alkilani,
PhD student
Abstract
The purpose of this review is to explore attempts at defining Communicative Competence (CC) made by ELT theorists. Teaching CC is considered a major goal according to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methodology theorists such as Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983). Thus, it is important to understand how the concept was been defined to better understand what is targeted within the framework of CLT. This review also discusses research on the teachability of CC/CLT and the implementation of CLT in textbooks and curriculum design.
Keywords: ELT, CC, CLT, teachability of CC, textbooks
Najla Fki, GRAD Research Unit, English Department
Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Sfax, Tunisia
Abstract
Non-finite clauses are one of the most preferred structures in scientific discourse. Although they represent the marked form of clauses, they are regarded efficient as synthetic tools allowing the compression of the message. Besides, by virtue of lacking tense marking and a clearly-stated subject, their use brings an aura of universality and factuality that fits the absolute nature of scientific knowledge. These characteristics are particularly luring to the research article (hence RA) as one of the most known forms for the dissemination of scientific findings. Because of its highly-held position within the array of scientific genres, the RA is expected to present knowledge as accurately as possible within specific rules and norms. In the present paper, it is hypothesized that the use of non-finite structures in RAs helps the drafters observe the standards of developing a research paper both in form and content. To find evidence for this claim, quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis are employed to describe the distribution of non-finite clauses in a corpus of RAs extracted from two different disciplines which are medicine and social psychology. This choice is motivated by the assumption that the variation in the nature of soft and hard knowledge affects the degree of standardization in both scientific camps. Relying on the syntactic and semantic analyses of non-finite constructions in a total of 25 articles, it is found that the recurrent patterns employed in the corpus mimic not only the standardized IMRAD format typical of research papers but also the communicative function of each section in the articles. The results also reveal that the overreliance on non-finite clauses is a strategic tool that permits the authors to observe the normative requirements of the scientific community calling for informativity and detachment as well as deviate from those standards to guarantee personal gains of fame and recognition.
Cities in Motion: Flanery and the Aesthetics of Metropolitan Flux
Amira Hedhili
Abstract:
Protean and multiparadigmatic as they are, the flaneur(se), as a literary trope and hermeneutic construct is of viable structural and ontological expediency in probing the thematic of mobility in Charles Baudelaire’ and Paul Auster’s psychogeographical cityscapes. Entangled in the metropolitan aporetic world, with its surfeit of unanchored referents and abundance of urban ephemera, the mindless amblings of the flaneur in Charles Baudelaire’s Paris and Paul Auster’s New York modulate into phantasmagoric city rhetorics and performative spatial practices. Consigned to an unrelenting vacillation between flux and fixity, reality and fantasy, the centre and the interstices, the flaneur, this intriguing epicurean figure and avid connoisseur of the urban texturology, stands as a denizen of a limbo world, a dweller of a phantasmagoric, mercurial cityscape where mutability and mobility are the only constants. More than a mere pleasure seeking idler or an escapist artist abjectly yearning for a muse , the flaneur rises as an unlocatable “wandersmänner” and an insatiable practitioner of everyday life. It is through the flaneur’s meanderings that inane urban ephemera assume an aesthetic value and static spaces veer into heterotopias, hyper real phenomena extending beyond the threshold of visibility.
Key Words: flaneur, cityscape, uncanny, objective correlative, cartographical allegories, flux, mobility, flux.
Volume 2 Issue 1, 2015
Storytelling as a Guide to the Past: A Reading of Things Fall Apart.
By Ahlem Msalmi
abstract
Things Fall Apart was meant to be a reconstruction of a lost past, Achebe had to interrupt the redaction of his novel and go back to Nigeria, where he took his time to refer to the Igbo elders who had a record of what the Igbo people’s life was like. The bits of the past he collected were skillfully used to write his first novel, Things Fall Apart. Achebe’s account of the past was meant to be an authentic document that acquaints the reader with the history of the Ibo community. The novel’s claim to authenticity is not only limited to the world it represents, it relies a great deal on the manner or style in which that world is represented. Achebe’s attraction to stories made him opt for storytelling as a form for his first work of fiction.
Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Roxana: Re-thinking Identity through Reality and Fiction.
By Ikram ARFI
Higher Institute of Applied Languages, Tunis
Abstract
As a “component of identity”, Defoe’s language in Moll Flanders and Roxana emphasizes the re-thinking of identity through reality and fiction. Defoe was able to use new means of language that engulfs a new identity to the novel through woman identity (re)consruction. He challenges both the marginal identity of women and that of the novel as a despised literary genre compared with the classical decorum of poetry and drama.
The present study doesn’t only confer a philosophical and psychoanalytic entity to the novel it rather underlines its ideological and literary ethos. It brings to light the theory of autobiographical fiction which deals with identity knowledge and shows how the experience of the self develops the novel premises. Nevertheless, Defoe’s novels are not just mere additions in the field of literary studies, i.e., an abstract theoretical category to be added to Marxist, New Critical, or Deconstructive approaches to the study of “Identity”. It would be prerequisite to drop a line on the thematic analysis of woman identity (re)construction from an ideological point of view which has an impact on the “literary horizon” of Moll Flanders and Roxana. We observed how the novel’s language is in harmony with both Defoe’s vision of the wor(l)d and his novel’s reception. Defoe’s woman self-representation reshapes autobiography into a liberating model that can adjust a new identity to the literary genre itself. He retrieves from the patriarchal ethics, philosophy and canon and moves to new narrative modalities that affect the means throughout which we recognize the wor(l)d.
Code Switching and Identity in TA/Berber Language Usage in the District of Tataouine
Laroussi Bouchnak
Gabes University ,Tunisia
Abstract
The study of language in society has been widening scope to account for the different facets of the relationship between individuals and their environment. The present article tries to examine the relationship between language use; namely code switching; on the one hand and identity mapping on the other hand. It is a case study of ‘conscious’ code switching instances between RVTAand BL with its two varieties in the district of Tataouine (South east of Tunisia). The study of samples of code switching instances may be informative about two aspects of identity delineation of language users. Firstly, it may reflect self conceptualization as individuals. Secondly, it would assume ethnic group membership.
The Apollonian and Dionysian Dialectics in John Keats’s Romance Endymion
By Dr Farhat Ben Amor
University of Kairouan
Abstract
John Keats’s romance Endymion (1817) draws its materials from the mythological heritage which is variously deployed in Keats’s poetry at large. Actually, the whole body of the romance’s four books tells the widely known story of Endymion, the mythical shepherd who is said to see the
moon-goddess, Cynthia, in his sleep, and, on waking, commits himself to the pursuance of his dream, which requires him to follow a labyrinthine journey across the earth, sea and air. In reality, the presence of myth in Endymion is felt not only thematically, but also through the different sets of imagery that map it out. This paper aims at elucidating how the imagery used in this romance reveals allusions and/or allegories, whether
explicit or implicit, to the mythical Olympian gods, Apollo and Dionysus, who represent antagonistic drives that appear to be irreconcilable.
My principal objective is to show how Keats evinces a subtle attempt to blur such an opposition between Apollo and Dionysus, as part of his
inclusive approach to the conceptualization of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’ that requires him to opt for a dialectical strategy which would allow him not
to exclude any element of the seemingly contradictory aspects that both gods embody. The manifestation of this dialectics could be noticed in the
poet’s amalgamation of the constituents of the ‘ideal’ with those of the ‘real’ that gives birth to a whole which seems to take on an organic
character similar to Endymion’s symbiotic attachment to his idealized dream. Such an ‘organic whole’ is suggested in Endymion to be more idealized and, therefore, more exhaustive than the monolithic conception of the ‘ideal’ that totally excludes the ‘real’ from its canon. This means that the constitution of this ‘ideal organic whole’ is not made up of the refined characteristics and poised qualities that Apollo incarnates, but includes within it the very fragments of disorder, primitive instincts and excess which Dionysus stands for.
Volume 1, Issue 4, 2014
By Zeineb Derbali
Abstract
Much of the recent critical writing revolves around the concept of identity proving the fact that it is fundamental in as much as individuals or communities’ social positions are concerned. These writings bear the evidence that the concept of identity is not tamed into a stable definition; it justifies the idea that identity is actually a flexible construction to which disciplines and critical theory add on more momentum depending on determined contexts. “Identity remains one of the most urgent—as well as hotly disputed— topics in literary and cultural studies. For nearly two decades, it has been a central focus of debate for [critical] theory” (Moya, 1). Postcolonial approach to identity, for instance, tethers identity politics to the binary opposite notions of colonial / postcolonial subjects with the concept of power that operates as arbiter and decides on the subjects’ location within inter-nation relationships or within the racial strata of society. Yet, the task of locating subjects and selecting the sight of identity is again an ever-shifting ground taking into consideration the intrusion of social or political factors in the process of constructing identity.
Volume 1, Issue 3, 2014
The Tunisian Awakening in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
By Hajer Yousfi
Abstract
In her novel The Awakening published in 1899, Kate Chopin depicts Edna Pontelier’s journey toward a consciousness of her being as a female self. The process starts with a revolt against married life and turns into a quest for identity. Edna Pontelier’s process of self exploration reveals a number of similarities between Chopin’s narrative and the Tunisian Revolution at different levels. First, the motifs of liberation and identity are indeed relevant to the context of the Tunisian revolution which started as an uprise against dictatorship and ended up questioning the Tunisian identity. Furthermore, the title of Chopin’s novel is already pertinent to the Tunisian revolution for a revolution is an instance of awakening and both concepts stem from a desire to put into effect change. Then, there are many other common grounds between Kate Chopin’s novel and the Tunisian revolution as far as the literary foci of characterization, motifs and plot are concerned. In Chopin’s text, Edna Pontelier could stand for Tunisia as they both experience regression and oppression, hence, their respective quests for liberation. They both go through three main phases in their way to freedom: questioning the status quo, revolting and finally going through a chaotic phase. Thus, The Awakening by Chopin is in some way a narrative of the Tunisian awakening which means that history draws on fiction and vice versa, be it consciously or unconsciously.
Click on the title to read the article
Signifyin(g) Irony: Discursive and Political Subversion in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People
By Asma Hichri
Abstract
It is incontrovertible that the authority of a dominant nation, race or social class allows for the creation of systems of thought which, in a sense, shape the experience, beliefs, and identity of subjected communities, and reinforce their subjugation and coercion. These cognitive systems are reflected, endorsed, and validated by language and discourse. The dialectics of language and authority allows the discourse embodied by a dominant ideology to channel thought and confer upon it the status of scientific truth, thereby widening power asymmetry between the dominators and the dominated. This process of ideological and discursive (de)formation is incarnated in modern South Africa mainly in the apartheid system, an institutionalised form of racial discrimination which secures the hegemony of a racist white minority over the Black majority. However, just as apartheid logic is secured through language, liberation from oppression and servitude requires a parallel process of discursive subversion. This feature is explored by the South African writer Nadine Gordimer in her novel July’s People (1981). In this novel, Gordimer envisages South Africa as a dark and gloomy world where whites are defeated, dispossessed and ousted from their cities and homes after a Black insurrection against apartheid. Drawing on Linda Hutcheon’s exploration of ironic discourse and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s elaboration on the African rhetoric of “Signifyin(g),” this paper both unearths the linguistic foundations of political hegemony and underscores the way such repressive discursive constructions are signified on, subverted and undermined in South Africa under the revolution.
Click on the title to read the article
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2014
Appraising Teaching/Learning English Cultural Studies in LMD System in Tunisia
Dr. Hassen Zriba, High Institute of Applied Studies in Humanities, Gafsa, University of Gafsa
Abstract
Within the context of LMD system, the teaching of humanities and especially English cultural studies has changed its profile in terms of content and methods. Responding to the requirements of communicative approaches of teaching, the learner has been located at the centre of the learning activity. The teacher has become an auxiliary in such activities. S/he has the potential mission of helping learners learn what they need. Aware of this shift of focus, this article attempts to churn out how students can be helped in “getting” what they need from a cultural studies course. It is argued that learners should be instructed how to get knowledge not simply have knowledge given to them in the form of dictated and ready-made semantic chunks. Consequently, LMD system prioritizes applied aspects of the learning process which renders critical interpretive analysis of cultural texts an outstanding priority. In this article, I draw on my personal experience of teaching cultural studies to different levels using electronic platforms within the context of LMD system. The use of electronic platforms (like Nicenet) in teaching students is best suited to the requirements of LMD system. Moreover, through an anonymous online-conducted questionnaire, it was possible to get students’ feedback concerning the content of the course and its methodology. A combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches is employed to study the new state of cultural studies in LMD system and the reactions of students to the various ways of teaching the course in question.
Click on the title of the article to read it.
Nizar Ben Ali
FLAH Manouba, University of Manouba
Abstract
The present study explores the impact of classroom attendance on students’ academic performance in the English department at La Manouba Faculté of Letters, Arts, and Humanities (FLAH), Tunisia. In order to assess the link between absenteeism and grades, attendance sheets were used to record rates of class attendance of four groups of second year students during a nine week period. Students’ tests scores were then analyzed statistically in relation to records of class attendance. Pearson’s tests and the Oldinary Least Squares regressions (OLS) performed on the data revealed a negative correlation (r=-0.297) between rates of absenteeism and test scores which implies that absences damage students’ grades. The study brings new evidence on the negative impact of absenteeism on students’ academic performance. Based on the already mentioned empirical evidence, the following implications are made. First, academics should make sure to encourage students to attend classes in order to minimize chances for any negative influence on learning and to provide opportunities for academic achievement. Second, the weak negative correlation revealed in the present study calls for further research on the issue using different regression models.
Click on the title of the article to read it.
Teachers' perceptions of the integration of technology in the Tunisian EFL classroom context
Seyf Mohamed
University of Gabés
Abstract
Information technologies have been integrated into the language teaching and learning context with relatively great success. Accordingly, teachers' role at the level of higher education in this process is fundamental in order to make this integration relevant for students' learning. This paper reports the results obtained in a study that was addressed to examine how teachers perceive the effectiveness of using technology in an English program at university level and how these perceptions affect the use of these types of tools in their classes. The research conducted was a qualitative study and the analysis of data revealed that the use of technology-based activities in the English classroom is twofold: reinforcing already studied topics in class and promoting motivation.
Click on the title of the article to read it.
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014
By Imen Mzoughi
Abstract
This paper is about the political implications of the spread of English in post-revolutionary Tunisia. It raises fundamental questions about the nature of the revolution of 14th of January in Tunisia, identity politics and language. Subsequently, this paper debunks the conventional views of English language teaching and applied linguistics as independent from identity politics. English is thus taught in a new political context marked by a post-modern and deconstructive conception of identity. From this vantage point, this article attempts to discuss the ‘becoming’ of both the Tunisian identity and the English language in post-revolutionary Tunisia. It delineates the characteristics of the Tunisian identity by invoking Maryse Condé’s Segu. In effect, I propose to examine three interrelated issues of alarming importance: the discontinuities that not only separated the past and the present, but also the ongoing association between English as an international language and Tunisian identity; the variety of the emerging cultural identities and their potential as alternatives; and finally, the special knowledge that Tunisians believed they gained as a result of understanding their identity in dialogic and horizontal terms.
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By Yosra Amraoui
(University of Sousse)
Abstract
Upon their arrival to colonial America in the mid 17th century, the first Jewish settlers faced several challenges that were primarily in relation with their religious identity. Their seclusion from the American societal life drove them to start a new type of activism in order to first guarantee their social integration and secure, at a following stage, their political and religious emancipation. Yet their success in obtaining their basic rights and their integration in the American society was jeopardized by the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the 18th century which only reinforced the Jewish inner politics of recognition within the Jewish collectivity in the U.S. This reinforcement was achieved through the return to history, the use of collective memory and the attachment to the Judaic religion as opposed to the full assimilation attempts it took to achieve “American-ness”. Thus, the religious identity of American Jews was to them their drive towards harboring another national sentiment than to the U.S., that to the future Jewish state. This paper aims to highlight the significance of the collective politics of recognition to American Jews and the techniques the latter resorted to in order to renew their attachment to their religion and reinforce their lobbyism in the U.S. in favor of founding a home for the Jews in Palestine. After the rise and relative success of British Zionism in obtaining promises in this regard, American Zionists took the lead and proved the significance and the solidity of their collective politics of identity recognition. It is my concern in this paper to show how through their attachment to their Jewish origins and through their fear for the future of their Jewish brethrens were American Zionists able to follow the path of their fellow British comrades and obtain the American recognition of the State of Israel on May 14th, 1948.
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By MIMOUN MELLITI
Abstract
The aim of this review is to explore the history and the value of English language teaching textbooks (called also interchangeably ‘coursebooks’). Studying ELT materials, especially coursebooks, has always been an important topic to address viewing the importance of these teaching aids in shaping learners’ and teachers competence. The production of coursebooks has witnessed important improvement starting from 1761 to become a global business by the 20th century with the emergence of the global coursebook. However, ELT specialists and practitioners have disagreed about the value attached to these teaching materials for pedagogical as well as cultural reasons.
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Language and Identity during second language learning and teaching
By Maria Rosaria D’Acierno
Università Parthenope Napoli Italy Faculty of Scienze Motorie and Economia
Abstract
Second language teaching and learning is a difficult process which requires a 1) psychological as well as a 2) neurological and 3) physical involvement. It is a delicat situation even when a second language is simply a subject included into the school curriculum. Learning a second language is not like the learning of any other subject, as for instance, history or literature or physics and so on. They require great effort, duty and talent, too, but they involve neither different cultural background and consequently different behaviour nor a specific position of the muscles of the vocal tract when speaking. When students afford different subjects in their mother tongue, the brain receives various stimuli, but the areas deputed to language remain the same. Identity is not touched, because the sourrounding cultural context is familiar and well known. Learning a second and a third language involves different areas of the two hemispheres, stimulating the right side of the brain, too, a side which is considered more engaged in artistic matters than in linguistic inputs. The learning of foreign languages cannot avoid implying cultural details, cannot reduce a foreign language to the simple substitution of nouns to the same object. Language is much more; it is the way people construct their own identity; it is the way people face reality; it is the way they enjoy, suffer, save food and clothes, help friends, pray, work, bring up children, educate them and so on. In a word, it is the focus of our own identity.
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TAYR Quarterly Volume 5 Issue 3, September 2018
Table of Contents:
Measuring Syntactic Maturity in the Written Performance of Tunisian Deaf Students ………………….............................……… 12
By Mouna Ayadi
Which is which? The Face or the Book: Tunisian EFL learners’ Use of Facebook in L2 Paragraph Writing ……………………. 27
By Wided Sassi
The Rhetorics of Violence in Jalila Baccar and Fadhel Jaïbi’s Violence(s) …..........................................................................…… 67
By Rafika Zahrouni
TAYR Quarterly Volume 5 Issue 4, December 2018
Table of Contents
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Storyworlds in Miniatures: Peripheral World making in the Gawain-Manuscript…………………………11
By Dr. Wajih Ayed, University of Sousse, Tunisia
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The Irish American Tragic Stasis and Nostalgic Longing in Long Day’s Journey into Night…………. 41
By Dr. Adel Bahroun, University of Kairouan, Tunisia
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US Foreign Policy from the Restraints of Isolationism to the Excesses of Interventionism: The Realist Perspective and the Neoconservative Exception ……………………...........................….......................…58
By Dr. Hafedh Gharbi, University of Sousse, Tunisia
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Discursive Power and Subversive Strategies in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People: The Displacement of Power Structure…………………………………….....................................................................………………69
By Kalthoum Belwefi, University of Sousse, Tunisia
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International Students’ Challenge of Cultural Straddling: Lingua Franca or Language of the Linguistic Environment for Getting their Bearings? ……….........................................................................................89
By Latifa Neili, University of Sfax, Tunisia
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The Tragedy of Naming Ireland: Cultural Misunderstanding in Brian Friel’s Translations (1980)……125
By Dr. Nadia Hanana-Marzouki, Higher Institute of Human Sciences Tunis, Tunisia
TAYR Quarterly Volume 6 Issue 1, March 2019
Table of Contents
Localizing social media through the lens of Actor Network Theory …………………................................8
By Dr. Hassen Rebhi, University of Gafsa, Tunisia
Literary Theory in Class: Crafting the Syllabus and Assessing the Outcomes……............................…21
By Sana Bin Ali Taga and Amira Hedhili
Family stories and Counter-history in Hisham Matar’s memoir The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between ……………………………………………………………......................................................................32
By Dr. Hatem Bin Jemia
A semiotic Analysis of Wes Craven’s Scream 4 : Use of Kress and Van –Leeuwen’s Framework of Visual Grammar ………………………………………………………………….................................................………..48
By Najla Mosbehi, University of Sousse, Tunisia
Ideology Discourse Approach: Bigger Thomas’ Logos of Resistance ……….......................………...…68
By Miryam Mezhanni, Institute of Applied Sciences in Humanities of El Kef, Tunisia
The Impact of Social Media Communication on Learners’ Academic Writing in Teaching English as a Foreign Language Situation: the Use of Informal Phraseology…………………………………………………………………………………....…………………..….85
By Dr. Turki Barkat, University Mohamed Kheider of Biskra, Algeria
Islamophobia and Ethnic Profiling in Aym Zighen’s Still Moments: A Story About Faded Dreams and Forbidden Pictures ………………………………………………………….................................................……93
By Dr. Leyla Bellour, Abdelhafid Boussouf University Center of Mila, Algeria and Abdelhafid Boussouf, University Center of Mila
Exploring the Content Validity of Translation Tests at the University of Gabes: Translation and Intercultural Communication ………………………………………………............................................................................104
By Amani Bahar, University of Gabes
Gender differences in politeness and power in Tunisian political interviews…......................................130
By Abdelalim Bouajjar, Higher Institute of Languages in Tunis
Language/cultural planning in contemporary Britain: Self-fashioning or the fashioning of ethnic identity…………………………………………………………………………....................................................…150
By Dr. Hassen Zriba, University of Gafsa
"Ye kin [re]read the years of my life in them walls: Re-reading the Psychological in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms................................................................................................................................................................176
By Mohamed Nejib Hizi
TAYR Quarterly Volume 6 Issue 2, June 2019
Table of Contents
Willingness to Communicate and Communication Apprehension in the Tunisian EFL Context………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………8
By Adel Hannachi, University of Jendouba, Tunisia
Needs Analysis for Managers' and Coordinators' use of English at the Workplace: Case Study of the Tunisian Employers’ Association for Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA)……………………...............28
By Sara Mejri, University of Sfax, Tunisia
Dialectal Differences Due to Social and Regional Affiliations: Attitudes to Language Use by Students at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Sousse………………………………………....................................53
By Imed Souissi, University of Sousse, Tunisia
The Effect of Note-taking on Enhancing Jordanian EFL Learners' Listening Comprehension and Guessing Meaning through Context………………………………………..............................................................................73
By Ryiadh Bani Younis, Ministry of Education, Jordon
The Persona in Henry Fielding’s “Essay on Nothing”: A Satirical Mask…………………………….................85
By Amel Ben Ahmed, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia
The representation of Gulf War II in the Washington Post from 20th to 21st March 2003: An interdisciplinary approach………………………………………………………………………………………........................................103
By Dorra Maalej, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia
The use of English-Arabic code-switching in the first-Year English classroom at Yarmouk University in Jordan: A powerless or powerful teaching strategy?......................................................................................114
By Hedia Ben Elouidhnine, Nadia Rahali, and Razan Khasawneh
TAYR Quarterly Volume 6 Issue 3, September 2019
Table of Contents
The Carnivalized Text: Transgeneric Interactions and the Literature of Becoming in Carole Maso’s The Art Lover……………….....................................................................................................................................................8
Insaf Khémiri, Higher Institute of Applied Languages of Moknine, University of Monastir, Tunisia
Potential Inclusion of Multiple Intelligences in Jordanian Action Pack Five: A Content Analysis………………………....................................................................................….……………………………...20
Lubna Shawish, Ministry of education, Jordon
Heritage Language Maintenance in Tunisia: The Case of Berber in Zrawa"…………………….........................34
By Mohamed Elhedi Bouhdima, University of Manouba, Tunisia
Metaphorical language in political discourse: Case study: The American involvement in the Middle East (1967-1975) ……………………….....................................................................................................................……..55
By Jamila ZGHAL, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Sfax
Verbal Irony in Media Discourse: Dave Barry’s Columns as a Case Study ………………...............……………71
Najla Baccar, University of Sfax
TAYR Quarterly Volume 6 Issue 4, December 2019
Table of Contents
The impact of Extroversion- Introversion on EFL oral performance in the Tunisian context………………………………………………………………………..……………………………….…………. 8
Fatma Baraketi, Faculty of Letters and Humanities University of Sfax, Tunisia
Tunisian students` attitudes towards the use of first language in teaching English as a second or foreign language ……………………………………………….......................................................………………………….29
Abdelalim Bouajjar, Higher Institute of Languages in Tunis, Tunisia
A case study of primary progressive aphasia and its impact on foreign language proficiency compared to L1…………………………………………………………………...................................................……………………49
Amina Klibi, ISLT Tunisia and Riadh ben Rejeb, University of Tunis
Metaphysical Conceits: Recondite and/or Plausible? ……..........................…………………………………… 65
Karim Dhouib
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Volume 7, 2020
By Dr. Hafedh Gharbi, University of Sousse
Abstract
The Neoconservative movement has been one of the most vibrant schools in U.S. Foreign Policy prevailing in the last 50 years. Intellectually fertile, politically astute and ideologically loaded, it has had a powerful impact on different Republican administrations, notably Ronald Reagan’s, George W. Bush’s and, though to a certain extent, Donald Trump’s. The object of this paper is threefold: to identify the Neoconservative movement, to locate it within the American Foreign Policy tradition and recent history, and to measure its capacity of adaptation to new challenges. The rationale of this paper is to evaluate the Neoconservative movement and demonstrate that it is still a valid school in International Relations, able to offer clear solutions to complex issues.
Abstract
The present article reports on specific findings of neuroscience research in relation to language teaching and learning. It states that among the evidence-based approaches, reading aloud, think-pair-share, and intensive training are qualified as important procedures in promoting learning. This is made possible as they intervene in shaping neural networks causing changes to specific structures of the brain in ways which foster memory encoding. A prominent role of the nature of the teaching environment is advocated. The significance of monitoring the stress levels in the classroom setting is highlighted. Discussion then turns to what is recently described as neuromyths in the domains of teaching and learning. The article finally concludes with the importance of scepticism in interpreting scientific knowledge in order to prevent introducing misleading educational approaches based on loosed scientific facts.
Dr. Ikram Arfi, King Fahd University, Saudi Arabia
Abstratct
Toni Morrison’s Belovedmain focus isthe representation of the African Americans with their past, the rupture that has been created through the perception of the memoryof this past and its impact on the conception of the future. The novel functions as more than a repository of remembering the stories of the past.The protagonist, Beloved, figures the persistent nightmares common to survivors of trauma. This attempt to know the incomprehensible trauma done to them is a step towards healing(Barnett 1997). African American cultural trauma “derives not so much from the experience but from the experiential meditation of slavery” (Eyerman 2001).Morrison’s novel does not only entail a mechanical appropriation of trauma through the imitation of reality or mimesis, it also shows a complicated approximation of voicing or catharsis.
The novelist modeling of her novel on the slave narrative is one way of giving African Americans back their voices. She contributes in reconceptualizing American history and history making becomes a healing process for the characters, the author and the reader (Krumholz 1992). This linking of trauma, narrative and psychology can help in reconciling personal and collective memory. This paper examines the move from trauma analysis totrauma healing through reviving the past in Beloved. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is the attempt to widen the scope of literature and links it to the epistemology of history, and hermeneutics of forgetting. It seeks to explore how the contemplation of African American culture can be broadened by the move fromtrauma on the narrative terrain to generate a newvision towards the past and history. It will also investigate how changeand “apocalypse are not necessarily at opposite poles: an apocalypse–that lifting of the veil on whatever lies beyond—can stimulate change”[1](Bowers 2000).
By Emna Maazoun Zayani, University of Sfax
Abstract
The present paper is about a suggested model in linking Written Corrective Feedback with EFL Teachers’ Professional Development and Learners’ Educational Outcomes. This model has been suggested to address a research gap that is about the absence of a theoretical framework that frames these pre-mentioned concepts in a unified way. In the recent few years, the concern with the educational effectiveness and its quality has received much attention. Although paper on the “quality” of professional development continues to be lacking, the ultimate measure of quality professional development is its influence on a teachers’ practice which leads to improved student learning. Therefore, this paper will zoom on teachers’ practice specifically as Written Corrective Feedback. Thus, the researcher links two frameworks (Desimone, 2009 and Hattie& Timperley, 2007) to craft a model that fits the current paper objectives. The paper will focus on the qualitative analysis of thirty tertiary EFL teachers’ open-ended and close-ended questionnaires to gauge information about their knowledge and cognition about the first two parts of the proposed framework. The results show that these teachers are lacking basic knowledge about the practice of written corrective feedback in the foreign language classrooms. These results lead to questioning teachers’ pre-service training, in-service practice and their knowledge–base to ensure instructional quality and professionalism in the Tunisian context.