The speech act of refusals has been studied widely either alone or in relation to such areas as apology, requests, promotion, and invitation. The present study aims to investigate the strategies employed by Iraqi females in refusing marriage proposals. It attempts to explore their preferences to respond directly or indirectly in relation to their ages and educational background of the parents. The sample of the study consists of 25 participants; they are learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the College of Education for Women/ University of Baghdad. The data are collected by using a discourse completion task (DCT) followed by a follow up interview. The researchers used a Google form shared via emails to get responses from the participants. The items of the completion task are mainly designed by the researchers after surveying the literature so as to have the situations in the final shape. Beebe’s et al. (1990) taxonomy is selected as the most comprehensive modal for the analysis of refusal strategies of the respondents. The results indicated that the Iraqi females tend to use more indirect strategies to refuse the marriage proposals. The most frequently used order of responses began with an apology followed by gratitude and then the reason for refusal, as a typical Iraqi way of expressing their refusal. Based on the fact that the study sample are EFLs, there were signs of pragmatic failure as some of the responses carry some negative transfer, thus, the researchers recommend that future studies have to focus on teaching the methods of refusing appropriately by incorporating the teaching of speech acts, including the speech act of refusals, with more details in their Bachelor Program.
Listening comprehension of Iraqi EFL college students are not given time for practice, and incorporate in the programme of the Department of English, therefore, students are not well-prepared to comprehend the spoken language also the Iraqi EFL College students are deficient in comprehending the spoken English. So, listening strategies require a larger amount of consistent practice. The present study aims at finding out the effect of teaching the proposed listening strategies programme on EFL university students' listening comprehension. The sample consists of 104 of 1st year college students at the Department of English Language, College of Education Ibn-Rushed for Humanities. The programme deals with the following strategies: summrazing-n
... Show MoreBackground: Hypothyroidism is the most prevalent thyroid disorders worldwide. Hypothyroidism manifestations are wide spectrum, affecting various systems in human body including the nervous system. Hypothyroidism can cause neuropsychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, depression and diminishing in attention, memory and executive function. Aim: to investigate the level of anxiety and depression in patients with hypothyroidism receiving levothyroxine treatment. Method: a cross-sectional study was conducted at Baghdad Center for Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Therapy from March to June 2022. The study population included patients of both genders, aged 18-65 years, diagnosed with hypothyroidism, were receiving levothyroxine treatment and
... Show MoreHate speech (henceforth HS) has recently spread and become an important issue. This type of speech in children's writings has a particular formulation and specific objectives that the authors intend to convey. Thus, the study aims at examining qualitatively and quantitatively the classism HS and its pragmatic functions via identifying the speech acts used to express classism HS, the implicature instigated as well as impoliteness. Since pragmatics is the study of language in context, which is greatly related to the situations and speaker’s intention, this study depends on pragmatic theoriespeech acts, impoliteness and conversational implicature) to analyze the data which are taken from Katherine Mansfield's short story (The D
... Show MoreThis research is an attempt to explore a social and pragmatic phenomenon of lamentation in elegies of Gray and AL-Khansaa' who represent two different cultures. It illustrates the intended meaning of lamentation in English and Arabic and finds how the two languages express this purpose of poetry by analysing it socio-pragmatically adopting Searle's models (1969),and its modifications. Lamentation is considered as a mournful poem lamenting the death of whole humanity as Gray's elegy and of an individual as AL-Khansaa's elegy. So, Gray portrays a universal picture concerning his lamentation, while AL-Khansaa' portrays an individual and subjective picture regarding her lamentation. As branches of linguistics, sociolinguistics de
... Show MoreRheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, progressive, inflammatory autoimmune disease of unidentified etiology, associated with articular, extra-articular and systemic manifestation that require long-standing treatment. Taking patient’s beliefs about the prescribed medication in consideration had been shown to be an essential factor that affects adherence of the patient in whom having positive beliefs is an essential for better adherence. The purpose of the current study was to measure beliefs about medicines among a sample of Iraqi patients with Rheumatoid arthritis and to determine possible association between this belief and some patient-certain factors. This study is a cross-sectional study carried out on 250 already diagnosed rheumatoid
... Show MorePresupposition, which indicates a prior assumption, is a vital notion in both semantic and pragmatic disciplines. It refers to assumptions implicitly made by interlocutors, which are necessary for the correct interpretation of an utterance. Although there is a general agreement that presupposition is a universal property of Language, there are various propositions concerning its nature. However, this research work proposes that presupposition is a contextual term, thus, is more pragmatic than semantic in its nature.Although Semantics and Pragmatics are two distinct disciplines, they are interrelated and complementary to each other, since meaning proper involves both, and since there is no clear borderline between the two disciplines. How
... Show MoreBackground: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Iraq and the United Kingdom. While the disease is frequently diagnosed among middleaged Iraqi women at advanced stages accounting for the second cause of cancer-related deaths, breast cancer often affects elderly British women yielding the highest survival of all registered malignancies in the UK. Objective: To compare the clinical and pathological profiles of breast cancer among Iraqi and British women; correlating age at diagnosis with the tumor characteristics, receptor-defined biomarkers and phenotype patterns. Methods: This comparative retrospective study included the clinical and pathological characteristics of (1,940) consecutive female patients who were diagnosed with invasive b
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