Understanding how EFL learners process figurative language, an important component of communicative competence, is relevant to effective language acquisition and communication. This study examines whether embodied metaphors are easier to comprehend than non-embodied metaphors for Arabic-speaking EFL learners and whether gender moderates comprehension. Eighty advanced students (40 male, 40 female) from the University of Jordan completed a multiple-choice test, which was developed for this study and refined through a pilot study, grounded in Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory, followed by semi-structured interviews. Quantitative analyses showed significantly higher accuracy for the specific embodied metaphors tested (M = 7.14) compared to non-embodied metaphors (M = 4.33) across genders, yielding a large effect size (d = 1.22); however, no significant gender effect emerged in overall scores. Qualitative interviews provided illustrative evidence of possible differences in how some participants explained their interpretations, including references to visualisation, lexical reasoning, contextual inference, and L1 knowledge. These findings are interpreted in relation to universal embodied cognition and positive L1 transfer and are discussed in relation to potential working memory differences and the varying cognitive demands theorised for conceptual integration networks (single- vs. double-scope). Pedagogical implications concern the possible sequencing of embodied metaphors in figurative language curricula, targeted scaffolding for culturally specific non-embodied items, especially those that showed lower comprehension in this study, and utilising assessment designs that distinguish metaphor types and underlying comprehension strategies. The study discusses implementation in EFL courses, teacher training, and curriculum policy, alongside directions for replication across proficiency levels.
In recent years, corpus linguistics has provided new opportunities for studying language contact using quantitative and data-driven techniques. For the Kazakh language, situated in a multilingual setting involving Kazakh, Russian, and English, lexical interference represents an important sociolinguistic issue. This study investigates lexical competition from quantitative and functional standpoints, with particular attention to frequency, distribution, and variation in Kazakh-language mass media under Kazakh-Russian language contact. Using corpus methods, the study shows that large collections of texts make it possible to identify borrowed lexemes and competing equivalent forms. Borrowed items may coexist with native equivalents, producing measurable differences in frequency and stylistic preference. In some instances, foreign lexemes are more frequent than standardised national alternatives in the analysed corpus, although established Kazakh norms may continue to coexist with such borrowings. To address this issue, the study introduces the Lexical Competition Coefficient (LCC), a descriptive numerical indicator that measures the relative frequency of competing lexical equivalents in corpus data. When the Kazakh item predominates, the LCC exceeds one (k > 1), indicating that the Kazakh variant is more frequent in the corpus. By contrast, a coefficient below one (k < 1) indicates that the borrowed variant is more frequent. The findings indicate that lexical competition in Kazakh-language media is uneven across lexical pairs, with some borrowed forms substantially outnumbering Kazakh equivalents while other Kazakh variants remain dominant in corpus usage. The study combines scholarship on language contact and quantitative corpus analysis and proposes a systematic procedure for assessing lexical competition in corpus data.
This study investigates terminological asymmetry in institutional consumer health question-answer discourse through a quantitative corpus-based analysis of MedQuAD. Grounded in Register Theory, it tests how medical terminology differs between two linked parts of the same communicative unit: the consumer-oriented question and the institutional answer. The full MedQuAD XML collection was downloaded, and the final analytic corpus contained 16,359 non-empty, non-duplicate question-answer pairs. Medical terminology was identified through longest-match-first lexical matching against Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), yielding 609,813 term matches. The study measured term density, term retention, answer-introduced terminology, question-only terminology, terminological expansion, explanation-marker proximity, and source-group variation. Results showed that answers contained far more medical terms in absolute counts than questions, but they did not show significantly higher normalised term density: question density was 188.42 terms per 1,000 tokens and answer density was 187.83. Answers retained 15,891 terms from questions, introduced 334,852 terms, and left 5,727 question terms unrepeated. Introduced terms strongly outnumbered retained and question-only terms. Contrary to expectation, introduced terms were not more strongly linked to surface explanation markers than retained terms; retained terms had the higher marker rate. Source groups differed significantly for all tested variables. The findings show that register contrast in paired medical Q&A discourse is expressed through textual expansion, term retention, term introduction, and source-specific variation, rather than increased normalised terminological density alone.
This study examines visual–verbal blending as a mechanism through which social advertising compresses complex environmental and humanitarian problems into concise multimodal messages. Drawing on conceptual integration theory and corpus-oriented multimodal analysis, it analyses 196 static advertising cases published or circulated between 2020 and 2025: 98 environmental and 98 humanitarian campaigns. It traces how visual input spaces, verbal input spaces, generic spaces, and blended spaces interact in constructing cognitively dense and ethically oriented meanings. The findings indicate that environmental campaigns tend to compress global, delayed, and systemic risks into visible threat, embodied natural vulnerability, future-oriented warning, and responsibility-oriented positioning. Humanitarian campaigns more often compress distant suffering into moral proximity, absence, disrupted everyday life, vulnerability, and the need for ethical recognition or response. High or medium visual-verbal interdependence was found across the corpus, indicating that interpretative orientation is encoded through the joint processing of visual and verbal modes, not through either mode alone. The study contributes to multimodal discourse analysis by offering an applied framework for tracing how social advertising distributes meaning across semiotic resources, condenses large-scale crises into blended configurations, and positions the addressee either as a potential subject of preventive action or as a subject of moral recognition and response. Because the study does not measure audience reception, the identified effects are interpreted as projected viewer positions, not as empirically verified psychological responses.
The adoption of English medium instruction (EMI) in non-Anglophone higher education contexts has intensified concerns about how students develop disciplinary literacy and how English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogy supports this process. Although research on EMI, EAP, and disciplinary literacy has expanded, existing studies remain conceptually and methodologically fragmented, making it difficult to synthesise findings and identify transferrable pedagogical practices. To address this gap, this scoping review examined 36 empirical studies published between 2005 and 2025 to map how EAP and disciplinary literacy have been conceptualised, operationalised, and investigated as interconnected constructs in non-Anglophone EMI higher education. This review synthesised corpus characteristics, methodological orientations, disciplinary coverage, and theoretical/conceptual underpinnings. The findings show that studies are concentrated in Asia, with limited representation from South Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Disciplinary coverage was strongest in STEM, followed by Business, Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities. Qualitative research was the most prevalent (n = 15; 41.7%), followed by mixed methods (n = 13; 36.1%) and quantitative studies (n = 8; 22.2%). The theoretical underpinnings were not tied to any fixed methodological orientation; rather, similar constructs were operationalised through different forms of evidence, including learner needs, disciplinary writing, language skills, content learning, and stakeholder perspectives. This review points to the need for closer correspondence between theoretical constructs and research methods, alongside more transparent reporting of disciplinary literacy and EAP pedagogy. It also calls for more context-sensitive research in underrepresented non-Anglophone EMI settings, particularly studies examining how EAP provision, disciplinary teaching, and institutional conditions may support aspects of disciplinary literacy development.
Address forms are among the most culturally oriented linguistic features in communicative practice. Yet socio-pragmatic research on address forms in non-Western cultures remains limited, especially where local practices do not fit existing theoretical frameworks. This paper offers an exploratory account of self-reported address practices in Nigerian English academic discourse. It identifies forms of address reported by Nigerian university students in student-teacher interaction and analyses their pragmatic and sociocultural meanings. The material was collected mainly by questionnaires completed by 190 Nigerian university students, supplemented by ethnographic observation of academic settings and semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed qualitatively and descriptively, using selected scholarship on address research, politeness theory, pragmatics, cultural studies, and the World Englishes paradigm. The findings show that respondents reported both traditional English address categories, especially honorifics and academic titles, and culture-specific ones, including kinship terms, religious terms, local titles and hybrid forms. The reported choices appear to be influenced by institutional rank, age and seniority, as well as socio-cultural factors and understanding of politeness. They are expressed both in English and in local languages. The study suggests that Nigerian English academic address practices adapt English forms to locally meaningful ways of expressing respect, hierarchy, seniority, family orientation, communal affiliation and relational closeness, while the findings remain exploratory and not nationally generalisable.
As professional communication becomes increasingly globalised, systematic understanding of the intersection between intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) remains limited. This study maps ICC-ESP research from 2003 to 2023 in order to identify publication trends, theoretical orientations, and pedagogical gaps. Using co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence mapping, and burst detection with VOSviewer and Bibliometrix, the study analysed 387 peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. The findings indicate three predominant thematic clusters: ICC in business and medical settings (45%), theoretical adaptations of the Byram framework (28%), and technology-mediated virtual exchange (18%). The results show a highly skewed distribution across domains: Business and Medical ESP account for 76% of the corpus, whereas Engineering, Legal, and Agricultural ESP remain under-represented. The corpus also shows a marked geographical imbalance, with a large majority of publications produced in high-income countries and limited representation from the Global South. The study further identifies a persistent theory-practice gap, reflected in the limited availability of validated assessment instruments and longitudinal pedagogical interventions. The study offers a systematic account of the domain coverage and geographical distribution of ICC-ESP research and examines the shift from deficit-oriented framings towards translanguaging and postcolonial approaches. It also considers implications for pedagogical practice in under-researched professional domains.
Although intercultural aspects of language learning have received increasing attention, learner differences remain comparatively underexamined. To address this gap, the present study examined goal orientation as a classroom-relevant source of learner variation and tested its association with intercultural sensitivity (ICS) and speaking performance. The initial sample included 212 intermediate-level EFL learners at the University of Jeddah, who completed goal-orientation and ICS scales. From this pool, 19 learners completed two recorded face-to-face interview tasks, one administered by a nonnative-speaker interviewer and the other by a native-speaker interviewer. The MANOVA results showed a significant association between goal orientation and ICS, F = 19.14, p < .001, η² = .60. Item-level ANOVAs for the ICS scale were also significant, with F values ranging from 53.85 to 106.10. In the speaking-performance analysis, goal orientation had a significant multivariate effect, F = 29.05, p < .001, η² = .84. Follow-up ANOVAs showed significant group differences for speech rate, dysfluency, subordination, and lexical density. The HMLP group showed higher subordination (M = 1.05) and lexical density (M = 47.70), whereas the LMHP group showed higher speech rate (M = 2.35) and fewer dysfluency markers (M = 8.73). Task-condition effects for the NS/NNS comparison were not significant. The findings indicate that goal orientation is associated with ICS and with distinct fluency-complexity profiles in EFL speaking performance.
The integration of artificial intelligence into higher linguistic education raises questions about how multicultural competence develops when students interact with AI systems that simultaneously represent multiple cultural perspectives and reproduce Western cultural bias. This study examines how such interaction affects the development of multicultural competence among language faculty students. The research proposes and empirically tests a metacognitive-cultural model (MCM) describing this process through four links: stereotype deconstruction, perspectivisation, cultural modelling, and reflexive integration. A mixed 3×3×3 factorial design with repeated measures was implemented with 180 first- to third-year students from three Russian linguistic universities. Participants were assigned to experimental (AI with metacognitive scaffolding), comparative (AI only), and control (traditional instruction) groups. During an eight-week intervention students interacted with a GPT-4-based chatbot. Data were collected using adapted Byram questionnaires, professional intercultural cases, log-file coding, stimulated recall interviews, and implicit association tests. Students in the experimental group demonstrated greater gains in multicultural competence (+12.6 points) than those in the AI-only (+5.9) and control (+3.1) groups (Cohen’s d = 0.92). The largest between-group difference occurred at the reflexive integration link (φ = 0.41). Mediation analysis showed that 43.6% of the intervention effect was explained through activation of MCM links. Students receiving metacognitive scaffolding also identified AI cultural bias more frequently (69.8% vs. 30.4%). The results suggest that AI interaction combined with metacognitive reflection can support critical cultural awareness in language education.
This study investigates phono-lexical similarity between Urdu and Bahasa Indonesia through a corpus-based contrastive analysis. The aim of the research is to categorise phonologically similar lexical pairs using Contrastive Analysis theory and to identify cross-linguistic lexical convergence between Urdu and Bahasa Indonesia. A manually compiled corpus of 326 phonologically similar word pairs was drawn from everyday communication, dictionaries, academic texts, and news sources to ensure broad lexical coverage. The data were organised according to semantic, phonological, syntactic, and etymological criteria and categorised accordingly. The findings indicate that most phonologically similar word pairs are cognates (69.1%), followed by partial cognates (18.4%) and a smaller group of false friends (12.5%). Cognates may support positive lexical transfer, particularly in religious, academic, and formal settings. Partial cognates reflect semantic narrowing or extension and may require additional processing. False friends may produce phono-lexical ambiguity and increase the risk of negative transfer. Most lexemes derive from Arabic (72.4%), followed by Persian (11.7%), Sanskrit (6.7%), Indo-Aryan (2.5%), Portuguese (1.8%), and other languages (4.9%). The study identifies two functions of phono-lexical similarity as a facilitative and a constraining factor in cross-linguistic comprehension. The findings contribute to contrastive linguistics and BIPA instruction and have implications for learners and speakers of Urdu, Bahasa Indonesia, and related languages such as Arabic, Malay, and Hindi. The research is limited to lexical-level contrastive analysis between two languages. Future studies may apply experimental methods to investigate intelligibility or extend the analysis to other linguistic levels or replicate the method with additional languages.
Research on programming practice gives sustained analytical attention to source code and the written materials that accompany it, including comments, documentation, issue reports, and discussion threads. In these accounts, terms such as text, communication, discourse, genre, and sublanguage are recurrently invoked in addressing code and developer activity from a range of perspectives. Their repeated use points to a convergence with linguistic inquiry and invites consideration of code and developer activity in linguistic terms. The present study proceeds from a principle of a division of labour between fields and, to that end, identifies a baseline set of linguistic constructs appealed to in programming research to suggest directions for their investigation in line with linguistic tradition. The procedure combines systematic mapping of studies on programming practice with analytical classification grounded in distinctions established in the study of language. Following the identification of a stable set of constructs, the study clarifies the analytical capacity in which they are mobilised in programming research and advances a set of analytically grounded lines of inquiry in which these constructs may be examined in relation to textual cohesion, lexical organisation, syntactic relations, speech acts, discourse continuity, and indexical marking. The study has implications for recognising programming environments as a distinctive empirical setting for linguistic research, in which text, discourse, and communication practices are available for systematic analysis in established approaches to language study. The directions proposed here are not exhaustive and remain open to further empirical work.
This study examines how literature reviews in English and Vietnamese linguistics research articles construct research positioning through rhetorical move structure and interactional metadiscourse. Although literature reviews play a central role in establishing research territory and justifying new studies, comparatively little work has investigated how rhetorical organisation and interpersonal resources interact in this section across different academic writing traditions. The study analyses a corpus of English and Vietnamese linguistics research articles using Kwan’s model of literature review moves and Hyland’s taxonomy of interactional metadiscourse. Move analysis identifies how authors establish the research territory, create a research niche, and present their own studies, while corpus analysis examines the distribution of hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers, and self-mentions across moves. The findings show systematic differences in both rhetorical organisation and interactional resources. English literature reviews contain a higher density of rhetorical strategies in the niche-construction stage and more frequent use of interactional markers associated with author positioning and reader engagement. Vietnamese literature reviews devote more space to definitional exposition and consolidation of prior knowledge, and they introduce research gaps more cautiously. These differences correspond with contrasting conventions of knowledge negotiation and authorial positioning in the two academic writing traditions. The study shows that rhetorical move structure and interactional metadiscourse jointly organise the literature review and regulate how authors position their research in relation to prior scholarship and readers. The findings advance cross-cultural genre analysis and establish systematic differences in rhetorical niche construction and authorial positioning across English and Vietnamese literature reviews.
Multimodal discourse has become increasingly relevant in language education. Although conventional texts continue to dominate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction, interest in multimodal forms of communication has grown in recent years. This study systematises the features and functions of multimodal texts and evaluates their pedagogical relevance for language learning. The research combines theoretical analysis with an empirical investigation involving bachelor’s students from non-linguistic majors and English language teachers. Data was collected through a pedagogical experiment, classroom observation, and questionnaire surveys. The study analyses how multimodal texts contribute to the development of students’ language and communicative competence and identifies potential difficulties students may encounter when working with multimodal materials. The findings suggest that multimodal discourse may support the development of language proficiency, communicative competence, and learner motivation in EFL instruction. At the same time, certain challenges related to the interpretation of multiple semiotic resources were identified. Based on these results, the study proposes a structured instructional sequence for working with multimodal texts in the language classroom. The results indicate that multimodal discourse represents a potentially valuable resource for foreign language teaching and may contribute to the development of more effective pedagogical practices in diverse educational settings.
Despite its importance, pronunciation remains a marginalised skill in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, often due to limited instructor training, assessment guidelines, and teaching material availability. This study offers an empirical examination of EFL teacher assessment practices and attitudes in the Middle East nations of Iraq, Oman, and Iran, through a mixed-methods exploratory design. The first research phase involved the collection of quantitative and qualitative data from 66 EFL teachers through a 20-item online survey. Quantitative data gathered via closed-response questions was analysed descriptively and compared with open-ended survey responses, before potential relationships between respondent country of practice and attitudes/experiences were examined with Pearson’s chi-squared and Cramer’s V tests. Survey findings were then triangulated with semi-structured interview data in the second research phase involving a subset of 13 participants. Results indicate that effective pronunciation assessment is often hindered in Middle East contexts by the lack of standardised practices, limited curriculum focus, and practical constraints on time and resources, while instructors from the three countries displayed statistically significant differences in assessment frequency. Despite these challenges, respondents described a growing focus on intelligibility and effective communication in pronunciation instruction, including through the use of technology-assisted teaching and testing, rather than the more traditional concern with encouraging learners to sound like Inner Circle speakers. Based on these findings, the study proposes a regionally grounded pronunciation assessment framework that connects intelligibility with L1-specific sound contrasts, locally accepted accent norms, and structured feedback practices within multilingual higher education settings.
Accelerating migratory flows, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, are remodelling national sociolinguistic dynamics and raising significant institutional communication barriers for non-host-language speaking families. In this context, the Child Language Brokering (CLB) phenomenon emerges, positioning children as essential linguistic and cultural mediators for their families and communities. In multilingual and multicultural settings, CLB appears as a mediation practice with institutional and community implications for communication, inclusion, and diversity management. This study examines the CLB phenomenon in education to provide a structured scientific mapping analysis and thus contribute to the systematisation of the field. A bibliometric, thematic, and conceptual analysis was conducted to evaluate 144 publications (1998–2024) indexed in WoS and Scopus, using VOSviewer to explore co-occurrence networks and produce strategic diagrams. The results revealed sustained growth in scientific production, divided into three periods: 1998–2014, 2015–2020, and 2021–2024. Publications were concentrated in high-impact journals and were produced primarily by researchers based in the United States. The analysed publications originated mainly from universities. Disciplines covered Translation and Interpreting, Linguistics, Communication, Social Sciences, and Education. The thematic and conceptual evolution reflected a shift from immigration, acculturation, and identity towards bilingualism, heritage languages and the psycho-affective implications of CLB, culminating in multilingualism and education. Thus, CLB moves from being conceived as a family practice to a sociolinguistic phenomenon with relevant psycho-pedagogical implications. The study points out the need to acknowledge this reality to improve educational experiences of those involved.
The study investigates how ChatGPT translates Arabic idioms into English, focusing on translation strategies, error types, and degrees of figurative preservation. A purposive corpus of 26 Arabic idioms was compiled, evenly divided between 13 transparent and 13 opaque expressions following Moon’s distinction, and verified against lexicographic sources to ensure their conventional meaning and cultural authenticity. Translations were produced under two prompt conditions: a baseline instruction (‘Translate into English’) and an idiom-aware instruction (‘Translate the following idiom into English’). Outputs were analysed qualitatively using a strategy–error framework evaluated through a three-point accuracy scale distinguishing full, partial, and inaccurate translations. The results suggest that transparent idioms are generally rendered successfully through established English equivalents, including under baseline prompting. Opaque idioms display greater variability: baseline prompts produce literal or paraphrastic renderings, whereas idiom-aware prompting increases idiomatic substitution and reduces literal translation. In many cases, idiomatic substitutions replace culturally situated imagery with conventional target-language idioms. The analysis demonstrates that prompt sensitivity interacts with idiom transparency and that semantic adequacy does not necessarily entail figurative richness. The study contributes evidence of the interaction between prompt design and idiom transparency, analysis of the systematic replacement of culturally situated imagery in LLM translations, and a qualitative evaluation framework for idiom translation in AI systems. The findings clarify how LLMs handle non-compositional expressions and identify conditions under which human oversight remains necessary in idiom translation tasks.
This study was motivated by the initial observations of Jordanian people’s distinct use of live (novel) and dead (conventional) linguistic metaphors when they narrate their different sad and happy experiences in natural contexts in Jordan. While there has been sufficient research into metaphor from a cognitive-discursive perspective, there has been a lack of metaphor research that links cognitive analysis with practice. The present study aims to examine if live and dead metaphors correlate with speaker’s types of experiences and find their practical implications. In this study, participants were selected using the convenience sampling strategy. The collected metaphorical expressions from participants went through four analysis stages: transcription, manual identification of metaphorical expressions, inductive coding and interpretation. The present study uses discourse analysis to enrich the practice approach (e.g., effective (in)formal communication). This paper found that people narrating their sad experiences rely on live metaphors more than dead metaphors. This can be attributed to two reasons. Live metaphors serve as rhetorical devices that can attract the addressee’s attention and facilitate articulating sensitive issues more effectively than conventional or dead metaphors. This study thus suggests that live metaphors have a more effective role than dead metaphors in various modes of professional communication such as psychological counselling, politics and debates. This distinction, as revealed by the data analysis, can bear important implications that are worth considering in various fields. Thus, this study recommends communication and rhetoric researchers to investigate how live metaphors can strategically be employed in such modes of communication in various cultures.
