Cross-cultural studies of speech acts in different linguistic contexts might have interesting implications for language researchers and practitioners. Drawing on the Speech Act Theory, the present study aimed at conducting a comparative study of request speech act in Persian and English. Specifically, the study endeavored to explore the request strategies used in daily interactions of Persian and English speakers based on directness level and supportive moves. To this end, English and Persian TV series were observed and requestive utterances were transcribed. The utterances were then categorized based on Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Pattern (CCSARP) for directness level and internal and external mitigation devises. According to the results, although speakers of both languages opted for the direct level as their most frequently used strategy in their daily interactions, the English speakers used more conventionally indirect strategies than the Persian speakers did, and the Persian speakers used more non-conventionally indirect strategies than the English speakers did. Furthermore, the analyzed data revealed the fact that American English speakers use more mitigation devices in their daily interactions with friends and family members than Persian speakers.

Newspaper editorials constitute a part of media discourse, which is an extremely important field of research in intercultural rhetoric analysis and EFL (English as a foreign language)/ESL (English as a second language) studies. Specifically, certain features of editorial headlines and also their important role in monitoring and directing readers' attention have made the interface between the linguistic analysis of newspaper editorial headlines and teaching of EFL as a relevant issue in language teaching. Through conducting a contrastive textual analysis of selected headlines, culled from the editorials of the English newspaper, The New York Times, and those of Persian newspaper, Tehran Times, the present study aimed at exploring the kind of textual and rhetorical strategies the two newspapers used for propagating their preferred ideologies. The results of the study indicated that headlines in the two papers presented a subjective attitude of the writers (newspapers) toward the topic. However, based on the analysis of the data, it became clear that there were certain differences between the two sets of headlines in terms of Presupposition, and certain Rhetorical devices.

The focus of education has changed from teacher-directed to learner-oriented instruction in previous years. Majority of studies in the field of EFL/ESL learning involves issues relevant to learners and their individual differences. Therefore, the present study focused on some of these individual variables; namely self-efficacy and language learning strategies. This study aimed at exploring the relationship between EFL learner's self-efficacy and language learning strategy use. Also, frequently language learning strategies by EFL learners and the existence of a significant difference in their self-efficacy beliefs and strategy use due to gender and years of English study are investigated. A group of 130 first year university students consented to participate in the present study. The results of statistical analyses indicated that there was no relationship between self-efficacy and language learning strategy use. Moreover, metacognitive strategies are frequently used language learning strategies by EFL learners. In addition, there were no significant differences in both self-efficacy and strategy use due to gender. But, there were significant differences in self-efficacy beliefs and only in metacognitive strategies due to years of English study.

Modality as a property of language use is generally exploited by language users. Its role in newspaper editorial is of special importance in that editorial writers tend to make use of this property to establish either a favorable or unfavorable bias throughout the text to manipulate their readers' opinion. Through textual analysis of the selected editorials culled from the American newspaper, The New York Times, and the Persian English newspaper, Tehran Times, the present study firstly aimed at identifying the linguistic manifestation of modality employed in the two newspapers followed by presenting the classroom implications of the findings. Revealing some genre-specific features of this media discourse, the comparison of the two papers in terms of employing auxiliary modal verbs suggested that both of the papers preferred mainly predictive auxiliary modals such as will or would to the other kinds of modals. However, the higher number of the predictive modals in NYT suggested the idea that identifying what would happen in the future was the main concern of the editorial writers in NYT. On the other hand, comparing the modals of necessity in the two papers suggested that editorial writers in Tehran Times were occupied with what should be done.

Academic writers resort to hedging as one of the interpersonal metadiscourse category not only to present their findings cautiously but also to minimize the effects of Face Threatening Acts (FTAs). The purpose of the present study was to compare and contrast the frequency and types of hedges in Discussion sections of Environmental Sciences Research Articles (RAs) written by English Research Writers (ERWs), Iranian Research Writers (IRWs) who write in English, and Iranian Research Writers (IRWs) who write in Farsi. To this end, 60 RAs in the targeted field were selected from leading journals (20 for each group), and then the used hedges were analyzed based on Salager-Meyer (1994) taxonomy. With regard to the use of hedges in English, this study did not find any significant differences between English and Iranian authors’ writings. However, the findings revealed significant differences between English and Farsi written articles. This discrepancy can be attributed to the nature of Farsi language which might consider less hedged texts as highly validated ones. However, this is opposed to the credibility of using hedges in this field in the international academic discourse community