IJALEL vol 4 no 4 2015

iv Rachel Adams Goertel, Pennsylvania State University, United States Reza Kafipour, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran Saeed Yazdani, IAU Bushehr, Iran Shaofeng Li, Uni

ii

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

All papers on which this is printed in this book meet the minimum requirements of "Australian International Academic Centre PTY LTD."

All papers published in this book are accessible online

Editors-in-Chief

· John I Liontas, University of South Florida, United States

· Jayakaran Mukundan, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

· Zosia Golebiowski, Deakin University, Australia

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iii

Editor(s)-in-Chief

John I Liontas, University of South Florida, United States

Zosia Golebiowski, Deakin University, Australia

Jayakaran Mukundan, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Managing Editor

Seyed Ali Rezvani Kalajahi, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Senior Associate Editors

Ahmad M Al-Hassan, Bremen University, Germany

Ali Miremadi, California State University, United States

Biook Behnam, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Christina Alm-Arvius, Stockholm University, Sweden

Eugenio Cianflone, University of Messina, Italy

Haifa Al-Buainain, Qatar University, Qatar

Hossein Farhady, University of Southern California, United States

Huai-zhou Mao

John W Schwieter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Juliane House, University of Hamburg, Germany

Kazem Lotfipour-Saedi, Ottawa University

Khalid Al Seghayer, Imam University, Saudi Arabia

Khalil Motallebzadeh, IAU, Mashhad, Iran

Kimberley Brown, Portland State University, United States

Kourosh Lachini, University of Qatar, Qatar

Leyli Jamali, IAU Tabriz, Iran

María-Isabel González-Cruz, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Spain Mats Oscarson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Meixia Li, Beijing International Studies University, China

Mojgan Rashtchi, IAU North Tehran Branch, Iran

Moussa Ahmadian, Arak University, Arak, Iran

Nurten Birlik, , Middle East Technical University, Turkey

Parviz Maftoon, Islamic Azad University, Science & Research Branch, Tehran, Iran Roger Barnard, The University of Waikato, New Zealand

Ruth Roux, El Colegio de Tamaulipas & Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas, Mexico Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

Sebnem Toplu, EGE University, Turkey

Seyyed Ali Ostovar-Namaghi, Shahrood University of Technology, Iran

Shameem Rafik-Galea, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Simin Karimi, University of Arizona, United States

Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Xitao Fu, Zhanjiang Normal University, China

Yolanda Gamboa, Florida Atlantic University, United States

Yuko Goto Butler, University of Pennsylvania, United States

Zdenka Gadusova, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia

Zia Tajeddin, Allameh Tabatabai University,Tehran, Iran

Associate Editors

Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek, Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia

Anne Dragemark Oscarson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Bilge Öztürk, Kocaeli University, Turkey

Christopher Conlan, Curtin University, Australia

Efstathios (Stathis) Selimis, Technological Education Institute of Kalamata, Greece Ferit Kilickaya, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey

Irene Theodoropoulou, Qatar University, Qatar

Javanshir Shibliyev, Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus

Masoud Zoghi, IAU, Iran

Md Motiur Rahman, Qassim University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Nader Assadi Aidinlou, IAU, Iran

Natasha Pourdana, Gyeongju University, South Korea

Obaid Hamid, The University Of Queensland, Australia

iv

Rachel Adams Goertel, Pennsylvania State University, United States Reza Kafipour, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran Saeed Yazdani, IAU Bushehr, Iran

Shaofeng Li, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Usaporn Sucaromana, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand

Vahid Nimehchisalem, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Distinguished Advisors

Brian Tomlinson, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

Charles Goodwin, University of California, Los Angeles, United States Claire Kramsch, University of California, United States

Dan Douglas, Dan Douglas , Iowa State University, United States Hossein Nassaji, University of Victoria, Canada

Jalal Sokhanvar, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Roger Nunn, The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Susan Gass, Michigan State University, United States

Advisors

Atieh Rafati, Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus

Ian Bruce, The university of Waikato, New Zealand

Kristina Smith, Pearson Education, Turkey

Naemeh Nahavandi, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Oytun Sozudogru, University of York, UK

Saeed Kalajahi, University of Göttingen, Germany

Steve Neufeld, Middle East Technical University, Cyprus

Editorial Panel

Abdolvahed Zarifi, Yasouj University, Iran

Ali Albashir Mohammed Al-Ha, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia Ali Asghar Yousefi Azarfam, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia Asghar Salimi Amirghayeb, Maragheh University, Iran

Bakhtiar Naghdipour, Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus Bora DEMIR, Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey

Cecilia Chu, Hong Kong Institute of Education, China

Dawn Rogier, Embassy of the United States of America, Philippines Ebrahim Samani, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Erdem AKBAS, University of York, UK

Fan-Wei Kung, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Farah Ghaderi, Urmia University, Iran

Farid Parvaneh, IAU, Iran

Gerry Loftus, University of Buckingham, UK

Hassan Soleimani, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

Hossein Saadabadi, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Isa SPAHIU, International Balkan University, Macedonia

John Wallen, University Of Nizwa, Oman

Mahdi Alizadeh Ziaei, The university of Edinburgh, UK

Marilyn Lewis, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Neslihan Önder Ozdemir, Uludağ University, Turkey

Noelia Malla García, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain Orkun CANBAY, Qatar University, Qatar

Reza Vaseghi, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Ruzbeh Babaee, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Seyyed Ali Kazemi, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Shannon Kelly Hillman, University of Hawaii, Hawaii

Sima Modirkhamene, Urmia University, Iran

Tin T Dang, Vietnam National University, Vietnam

Yasemin Aksoyalp, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland

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Vol 4 No 4; July 2015

Table of Contents

Articles

Wintering in the Beginning of Cold Season: Ecofeminist Deconstruction of Nature in

West and East in Farrokhzad’s “Let us Believe in the Oncoming of Cold Season”

Appraising Pre-service EFL Teachers' Assessment in Language Testing Course Using

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

The Metaphors on International Intervention: A Discourse Analysis of the Sri Lankan

English Newspaper Editorials

An Investigation into the Use of Cohesive Devises in Iranian High School EFL

Textbooks

A large-Scale Study on Extensive Reading Program for Non-English Majors: Factors

and Attitudes

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family and Friends Textbooks: Representation of

Genderism

Semantic Framing of NATIONALISM in the National Anthems of Egypt and England

Analyzing the Rhetorical, Typographical and Paralinguistic Features of Electronic

Mails in the Workplace

Boosting Autonomous Foreign Language Learning: Scrutinizing the Role of

Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Resuscitating the Earth: A Linguistic Analysis of Selected Poems in Niyi Osundare’s

The Eye of the Earth

The Impact of Texting on Comprehension

Deixis in Arabic and English: A Contrastive Approach

Fluid Identity of the Daughter in Jackie Kay's The Adoption Papers

Form-based Approaches vs Task-Based Approaches

The Impacts of Task-based Teaching on Grammar Learning by Iranian First Grade

High School Students

Diasporic Authenticity Assertions: Analysis of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter

The Impact of Multimodal Texts on Reading Achievement: A Study of Iranian

Secondary School Learners

vi

Don Delillo’s Point Omega; Ecstasy and Inertia in a Hyperreal World: A

Baudrillardian Reading

The Impact of Parents’ Involvement in and Attitude toward Their Children’s Foreign

Language Programs for Learning English

Verb-Noun Collocations in Written Discourse of Iranian EFL Learners

Fatemeh Ebrahimi-Bazzaz, Arshad Abd Samad, Ismi Arif bin Ismail, Nooreen

Investigating the Relationship between the Morphological Processing of Regular and

Irregular Words and L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

Gender Differences in the Use of Intensifiers in Persian

Moodle-based Distance Language Learning Strategies: An Evaluation of Technology

in Language Classroom

Lacanian Trauma & Tuché in Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark

Establishing the Thematic Structure and Investigating the most Prominent Theta Roles

Used in Sindhi Language

The Concept of Love in Dostoyevsky's White Nights

On The Importance of A Socio-Culturally Designed Teaching Model in an EFL

Writing Classroom

A Socio-Linguistic Investigation into the Etymology of American State Names

Disjoint Reference in Modern Standard Arabic

History Rewritten in a Postmodern Novel: Opposed Views on History in Jeanette

Winterson’s The Passion

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

ISSN 2200-3592 (Print), ISSN 2200-3452 (Online)

Vol 4 No 4; July 2015

Australian International Academic Centre, Australia

Wintering in the Beginning of Cold Season: Ecofeminist Deconstruction of Nature in West and East in Farrokhzad’s

“Let us Believe in the Oncoming of Cold Season”

and Plath’s “Wintering”

Bahar Mehrabi (Corresponding author) Department of English Literature, Shiraz University, Iran E-mail: baharmehrabi22@gmail.com

Nasser Najafi Islamic Azad University, Firoz Abad Branch, Iran

Received: 25-10- 2014 Accepted: 11-01- 2015 Advance Access Published: February 2015 Published: 01-07- 2015 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.1 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.1

Abstract

Ecofeminists seek the reversal of the oppressing binary oppositions of nature/culture, woman/man as to reach a balanced ecosystem in which women are not considered inferior since they are associated with nature Therefore, ecofeminism could be regarded as a suitable framework for the discussion of the literary works and their treatment of woman/nature theme The present article would be an attempt to demonstrate the way Farrokhzad’s “Let us Believe in the Oncoming of Cold Season” and Plath’s “Wintering”, concern such association and deconstruct the binary oppositions in a way that similarly both women personas are ultimately able to take the role of female artist Both women transgress the winter and hope for the spring to come, while the winter they pass through differs since it originates from different social backgrounds As such, new historicism would be applied to discover this difference, since the study is a comparative one and yields to the investigation of different societies in which the poems were composed Farrokhzad lives in an era on the verge of modernism, that’s why she is still preoccupied with the traditions

of the past, though she would finally depict the woman persona as having stepped beyond these limitations Plath’s concerns, on the other hand, rise from a mind entangled with the impacts of modernity and the hollow men Both are able to pass the winter, though, as female creators who await the reproductive spring blossoms to flourish

Keywords: Ecofeminism, New Historicism, Forogh Farrokhzad, Sylvia Plath

1 Introduction

Ecofeminism, the term being coined in 1974 from the French feminist Francoise d'Eaubonne's work, "Le féminisme ou

la mort”, has no single definition, however, there are some core principles agreed by almost all ecofeminists, such as the fact that the domination of women and that of nature are fundamentally connected and that environmental efforts are therefore integral with work to overcome the oppression of women It could be also stated that the ecofeminists, unlike liberal feminists, do not seek equity with the men, but rather a liberation from the traditional roles naturally associated with women; duties such as childbirth and nurturing and the whole domestic arena, as argued here by King:

A healthy, balanced ecosystem, including human and nonhuman inhabitants, must maintain diversity Ecologically, environmental simplification is as significant a problem as environmental pollution Biological simplification, i.e., the wiping out of whole species, corresponds to reducing human diversity into faceless workers, or to the homogenization

of taste and culture through mass consumer markets Social life and natural life are literally simplified to the inorganic for the convenience of market society Therefore, we need a decentralized global movement that is founded on common interests yet celebrates diversity and opposes all forms of domination and violence Potentially, ecofeminism is such a movement (1989: 20)”

In the patriarchal society, women are treated as inferior to men, ‘nature’ is treated as inferior to ‘culture’ and humans are understood as being separate from, and often superior to, the natural environment In ecofeminism, the connections between woman and nature are considered as to show how they devalue and oppress both ‘women’ and ‘nature’ Women have been almost always associated with nature, e.g the menstrual cycle linked to Lunar cycles, is often quoted

as the evidence of women’s closeness to the body and natural rhythms It is stated that, through such closeness with nature, women are regarded as inferior, the fact which is claimed to be not only true about women, but also for oppressed races and social classes who are closely associated with nature Ecofeminism seeks to recognize the interconnectedness and battle these injustices; as Garrard (2004) suggests:

Flourishing Creativity & Literacy

IJALEL 4(4):1-7, 2015 2

More than a theory about feminism and environmentalism, or women and nature, as the name might imply, ecofeminism approaches the problems of environmental degradation and social injustice from the premise that how we treat nature and how we treat each other are inseparably linked (2)

The patriarchal dualism, suggests an inherent superiority of one of the pairs in the binary oppositions, and some theorists have suggested that this degrading of the other is driven by the fear of nature and mortality, and due to their biological connection with birth women are a constant reminder of death Women have been associated with nature, the material, the emotional, and the particular, while men have been associated with culture, the nonmaterial, the rational, and the abstract In other words, ecofeministic thinkers desire the reversal of such dualisms Greg Garrard (2004) identifies two ecofeminisms: the radicals which propose the binary oppositions associated with women to be wiped out and the more modified social philosophical one which also includes marginalized members of the society class and gender to be considered as a way to reform the environmental injustices

The work of Australian philosopher Val Plumwood offers ecofeminism a sound basis for a much-needed critique of the dynamics of domination as they operate in a range of cultural contexts…Ecofeminism, modified by dialogue with social ecological positions, can provide insight into the cultural operations of environmental injustice.(177)

In “Feminism and the Mastery of Nature”, Val Plumwood identified a pattern of dualistic thinking that permeates some cultures and is implicated in their destructive attitudes toward nature Plumwood characterized dualistic thinking is "an alienated form of differentiation, in which power construes and constructs difference in terms of an inferior and alien realm" (42) Subsequently Plumwood blames dualistic thinking for creating "logics of colonization." Ecofeminist Karen Warren gives dualistic thinking a similarly central role in supporting "oppressive conceptual frameworks” As Campbell (2008) affirms:

A critique of the use of dualisms is one way theorists such as Val Plumwood have analyzed western thought and views of culture and nature Nature is seen in opposition to culture, and represents female, nonhuman characteristics while culture consists of male, human representations A culture/nature dualism is closely related to the human/nonhuman dualism with women, animals and nature falling on the same side in each case (viii)

In such dualistic thinking, self is different from the other One owns the self within which he is shut like a box and the world is the other out there As such, the natural world is simply a mechanical system that humans can exploit Because women are also viewed as ‘other’, they are also manipulated and controlled The ecofeminists encourage the equal significant role of humanity as part of the earth’s ecosystem, and also the non-hierarchial nature of a system in which all parts affect each other

Ecofeminism is a practical movement for social change that discerns interconnections among all forms of oppression: the exploitation of nature, the oppression of women, class exploitation, racism, colonialism Against binary divisions such as self/other, culture/nature, man/woman, humans/animals, and white/non-white, ecofeminist theory asserts that human identity is shaped by more fluid relationships and by an acknowledgment of both connection and difference Such is what Karen J Warren has called “value hierarchies, (i.e perceptions of diversity organized by a spatial Up-Down metaphor, which attributes higher value (status, prestige) to that which is higher (‘Up’)” (Warren;1997 4) According to Warren, these “value hierarchies,” together with “value dualisms,” represent one of the “conceptual links” that “construct women and nature in male-biased ways.”

Literary works of any kind, could be analyzed as to see how the writer, or the text, exemplify the concerns with ecology, that is to pinpoint these ecological concerns in the work, and furthermore, to elaborate on the deep backgrounds, social cultural economic and so forth, of such portrayals Women are associated with nature and therefore, the woman poet is not qualified enough to transcend the nature as the male poet is able to do so Pamela Di Pesa (1978) reminds us that “[w]omen poets, like women painters and composers, have long been considered anomalous” because engagement in artistic creativity has been equated with “doing something unnatural”for the female and with “a neurotic avoidance of her natural role” (65) As such, investigating the work of female authors to look for the ways in which they have attempted to transgress such imposed ‘naturality’ can be illuminating If this task is overtaken comparatively, then the social; backgrounds of the poets should also be taken into consideration as to see what have been the nature-culture dualities of the society which the woman poet has been able to move beyond

New historicism turned to define history in a new way, which as Sarah Webster Goodwin (1994) states, “stands to open the borders for feminism in comparative literature” (251) She further claims that the so far ignored role of feminism in the field of comparative literature should be taken into consideration since it will provide a suitable frame work for digging into the cultural debates of feminism.”A feminist, historical criticism is both desirable and possible in comparative literature, despite practical difficulties; it could indeed reenergize a languishing field” (252)

Therefore the present study would aim at investigating the ecofeministic views of two modern poets across two different continents, the English Sylvia Plath and the Iranian Forogh Farrokhzad, as female artists in relation to their time and place of living so as to depict the ways these two female poets associate with nature in order to demonstrate

IJALEL 4(4):1-7, 2015 3

the oppressed women and nature as well as the way they both transgress the limitations in their societies in order to reach a unification with their very feminine nature, being finally able to become themselves, woman poets Comparatively studied, the symbolic ‘winter’ they pass through in their two poems, “Let us Believe in the Oncoming of the Cold Season” by Farrokhzad and ‘Wintering’ by Palth, proves to have originated from different social and political backgrounds The new historical study of the two mentioned poems would therefore be accompanied in a comparative way to picture the different winters the female poets have had in mind as the bridges to the oncoming spring

2 Discussion

The close connection between women and nature as being the oppressed in the binary opposition is one of the core principles of the ecofeminism, which is to be wiped out if the balanced ecosystem is to work out properly Forogh Farokhzad’s “Let us believe in the Oncoming of the Cold Season” plays on the integrity of the woman persona with

outside nature from the very beginning of the poem

“This is me, a lonely woman

In the threshold of a cold season

In the beginning of the sad perception of the polluted existence of earth

And the simple tragic sadness of the sky

And the disability of these concrete hands”

At the very first stanza of the poem, the woman persona has been associated, with the environmental elements, which like her, are experiencing ‘sadness’ By juxtaposing the woman with nature, it seems Forogh is able to convey her own ecolofeministic thinking without being aware of it The woman is oppressed just like the nature, the nature which stands opposite to the culture, associated with ‘concrete’ The woman is the one who “understands the secret of seasons” and is thinking of the “intercourse of flowers” while the man is “passing the wet trees” with “his blue vessels going up his neck like the dead snakes” The horrifying picture of a soulless man is juxtaposed in opposite to the lively thinking woman who has close affinity with nature As the poem moves on, the woman becomes the center of the poem, the one who is finally able to overcome the oppressions The whole poem traces the way the woman persona is finally able to achieve the unification she desires with nature This unification is not simply the normally accepted rehearsal of dualistic roles, but to use Stacy Alaimo’s terms (2000), it is a “grounded immersion [in nature] rather than bodiless flight [from nature]” (2) Such would be the force or energy annihilated to the soul of the persona so much so that she could finally join the spirit of equality in nature

In Sylvia Plath’s “Wintering”, such sad atmosphere is that of a room where she has never “ been in/The room I never breathe in ” with “ no light” However, the woman persona here is the one who has the honey and is now contemplating on her surroundings She comes to philosophize that “The bees are all women/Maid and the long royal lady/They have got rid of men” The association of the nature and women is seen in the next lines where “Winter is for women…The woman, still at her knitting/At the cradle of Spanish walnut/Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think” Like the woman in Forogh’s poem, she seems to have undertaken the journey towards self realization through nature In Margaret Dickie’s(1979) words the woman persona whom she associates with Plath herself :” … is able, in

"Wintering," to accept also the activities of women who "have got rid of the men,/ The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors." Knitting, tending the cradle, harboring life in her body-bulb, she will survive”(25)

The long poem by Farrokhzad starts in the first day of Dey Month, the first day of the first month of winter in Persian

calendar It seems as if the journey starts off here The image is not only that of the woman, but rather of the man also, which could be viewed as the ecofeminist concern with the balanced present of all elements in the ecosystem The man

is dead, as if “he has never been alive” and as it moves on, the whole image of rot and decay is seen in association with the death in nature “This is the beginning of dying”, as the poem moves on, the woman also is declared dead in the ninth stanza, where she is “feeling frozen” and her body is “being chewed by the fish” and she keeps asking “why do you always hold me at the bottom of the sea” In the patriarchal way of dualistic thinking, women have been oppressed through their association with nature, if it is looked from an ecofeministic point of view Here the woman persona seems to be objecting to such association which equals death and ignorance for her, as if being captivated at the bottom

of the sea

The woman seeks liberation from the imposed roles on her by society, so much so that she could attain her own personal voice Farrokhzad presents this relationship between women and nature as a positive medium for personal healing, as well as for social and environmental change through a reconfiguration of the body and nature The woman persona in her this poem is taking a journey “I have moved this wandering island through oceans and mountain explosions” (Stanza 10) As the poem moves, along the journey, she reaches night putting the “indifferent world” behind She is seeking reunification with nature, through which she would be able to find her own voice Throughout her journey, she passes from her birth time, symbolically winter, to the youth when she is the ‘bride of the Acaci branches”, the bride of nature She ultimately is able to transgress the present woman she is, by telling her mother “I would die, it always happens sooner than we imagine, so we have to send a death announcement for the newspaper” She is dead now, like the man who passes the “wet trees” However, she is still expressing hope for the next spring to come “Next Year, when spring sleeps with the window, with the green stems flowering in its body, the light bosoms

IJALEL 4(4):1-7, 2015 4

would flourish…”, The journey undertaken by the woman and the healing she experiences, offers an alternative worldview that challenges the dominant dualistic worldview, which separates and devalues women, bodies, and nature Forogh’s poem blurs the boundaries between self and nature, the material and the spiritual, dreams and reality, as well

as gender boundaries She presents a new way of knowing and an alternative value system that through a rejection of binary oppositions recovers nature, women, and spirituality from the chasms of degradation and injustice As Zubizarret (1992) rightly affirms: "The intensity of expression in her poetry becomes the fierce cry of a woman seeking identity in the repressive world of twentieth-century Iran, a world heir to centuries of closed opportunities for women in all endeavors but particularly in art”

The final question for the woman persona in Plath’s poem is also “Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas/Succeed in banking their fires/To enter another year?/What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?/The bees are flying They taste the spring.” As it could be read from the lines, there is the same hope being expressed here The image of woman is juxtaposed with the natural element of bees, like bees they are to work and reproduce However, they will see the spring, meaning through the unification with the natural elements, Plath, like an ecofeminstic thinker, sees the hope of healthy balanced ecosystem in which the dualistic binary oppositions are removed as to give way for more reciprocal understanding of the oppressed, e.g women and nature

The woman is here being depicted in the room, in winter time, as in Forogh’s poem, struggling with her past in order to survive the present and build up hope for the future She is, as it was mentioned before, very much associated with nature, ‘bees’ imagery is repeated throughout the poem However, as Karen Ford (1997) states: ”these bees appear similar to those in "The Swarm." Both are compared to soldiers In "The Swarm" they are clearly doomed, "Walking the plank / Into a new mausoleum"; in "Wintering," however, they are survivors, "Filing like soldiers / To the syrup tin."” (76) It is no surprise to learn that "The bees are all women, / Maids and the long royal lady / They have got rid of the men, // The blunt, clumsy stumbles, the boors." This sense of alliance and cooperation with nature dose not reinforce the oppression, but is used as means to defy such view and use the very soil of nature for gaining her own voice as a woman artist, hence the poem being the last one of the so called ‘Bee Poems” series by Plath, the ones which concern her gaining role through the connection she is able to establish with the world around her

Through such unification with nature the woman poet is able to overcome and transgress the winter line, survive and hope for the silver linings to come, like the blossoms Farokhzad would hope to see coming with the next spring The beekeeper that is linked to the image of a dictator who “uses the bees as instruments of imperialist self-aggrandizement ” ( Christin Britzolakis 2006,119)disappears here, leaving the speaker alone She is the one who holds the power of reproductively, just like the bees As the final piece to the sequence of Bee Poems, “Wintering” no longer depicts the image of the daughter who desires the power of the father, or care taker, but rather the woman persona is able to repudiate the monopoly of power through association with nature and overcome the boundaries, thus reproducing creativity as the female artist In other words this poem “…celebrates the female hive’s powers of survival…” ( Christin Britzolakis 2006,120)

Such association with natural elements assists the women personas in both poems to overcome the limiting boundaries imposed upon women in a patriarchal society and gain their own voices As modern ecofeminists, though years earlier than the fostering of the theories, Farrokhzad and Plath demonstrate their concerns about the oppressed both nature and women and use the very derogative association of women with nature, which are used to oppress the women so much so that they would not be attempting anything ‘unnatural’ The poets are artistically able to juxtapose the images of natural elements and women in the setting of winter in such way that the personas take up a journey through which they are able to make use of the very natural elements and through association with the nature, they are able to finally end up the journey, resurrect from the hibernate in winter, and hope for the spring to come, the season for productivity, the creative artistic assembly of words in form of poetry In other words, the nature/culture, woman/ man binary opposition is deconstructed in both poems

The limitations in these poems are depicted as winter, the one which both poet personas are able to overcome However, these symbolic winters are different due to the fact that the poems certainly have originated from different societies Like Sylvia Palth, Forogh Farrokhzad is also depicting the association of nature and women, as well as the journey which is undertaken to overcome these confinements In fact both, though coming from different social and cultural backgrounds, are women poets who are searching their own role in the ecosystem

Her collection of poems called “The Captive” appeared as the pioneer of love poetry by the female poet among \, or perhaps it is better to say as an opposition to, the male depictions of love in Persian poetry Michael C Hillmann declares that in 1955 Farrokhzad "published the first volume of verse in the history of Persian literature exhibiting a poetic speaker recognizable throughout as a female" (90, 41) She is acting against the current stream of the male dominated culture in the way she depicts the sensual imageries of femininity In addition to the investigation of female body and sensuality, as we discussed, at least in the poems such as “Let us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season” she is able to transgress the limiting winter by believing in it at first, and then through the association with natural elements, the female poet is able to violate against the presupposed role of being a natural woman, gain her own voice The ‘cold season’ of Forogh is the ‘winter of Sylvia, while they differ since they obviously originate from different backgrounds

Farrokhzad has expresses such rebellion against the traditions and conventions almost frankly in most of her poems The point of difference, however, among this poem and another poem in which she is blatantly expressing her sensual

IJALEL 4(4):1-7, 2015 5

desires and defines her “…full of pleasure ” act of making love, lies in one point; sin In this poem “The Sin”, her mind

is preoccupied with the concept of sin, a guilt burden she feels though explaining rather bravely what should be a hidden experience for a woman in Persian Society, act of making love

I sinned, a sin full of pleasure,

In an embrace which was warm and fiery;

I sinned surrounded by arms

Which were hot and avenging and iron

In that dark and silent seclusion,

I sat dishevelled at his side;

His lips poured passion on my lips,

And I escaped from the sorrow of my crazed heart

I sinned, a sin full of pleasure,

Next to a shaking, stupefied form;

O God, who knows what I did

In that dark and quiet seclusion

‘Let us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season” does not portray such sin any more It seems in this poem the transgression of traditions and taboos are no longer colored by the sense of sin She is now free like the bees in Sylvia Plath’s ‘Wintering’ to be what she is, a woman, disregarding the limitations and use her talents, accept the cold season and start a new life, waiting for the spring to come The era in which Forogh lived was the time when as Mahdavi explains, Iran was experiencing the modernized ideas from west, while still entangled with the traditional past (395) Forogh was naturally experiencing the same dilemmas even in her own personal life According to Mahdavi, in Farrokhzad's personal life the same "conflict and spiritual dilemma recurs in her decision to divorce, losing her son" (Shirin Mahdavi 1985, 395) When she was twenty-two, Farrokhzad's marriage, arranged six years earlier, ended in divorce, and Muslim law consequently forbade her officially from ever again seeing her only son; Mahdavi claims,

"This separation left a permanent mark on her life," for essentially the young Farrokhzad was "faced with the choice of either becoming a free woman and pursuing her poetic career or remaining enslaved with her child Having made the choice, she is doomed to feel 'the old grave of this endless grief'" (Shirin Mahdavi, 1985, 393, 395) As it could be seen, thus; the winter for her originates from early beliefs and the system of thought which even affects her own personal life She is able to transgress these conventions though This is evident in the process of her poems, while the early ones are rather traditional in style, tone and even content, the last ones do violate and rebel As she herself admits in a 1964 interview, less than three years before her untimely death, she quips, "I have just begun the business of poetry in a serious way" (Farrokhzad, 3) In the later poems, she continues with "audacity to trespass boundaries and to follow her inner promptings" as she explores the nature of love and intimacy between men and women, staying true to her unconventional style and openness in discussing sexual relationships (Farzane Milani , 1988, 368)

Depiction of the association with natural elements assists the women personas in both poems to overcome the limiting boundaries imposed upon women in a patriarchal society and gain their own voices The limitations in these poems are depicted as winter, the one which both poet personas are able to overcome However, these symbolic winters are different due to the fact that the poems certainly have originated from different societies

Plath’s poems have often been read as to the biography The facts explained about her life which are claimed to have influenced her poetic career and even the subject matter of her poetry like ‘Daddy’ and all the associations with her father, are not completely in line with a more comprehensive investigation of her poems, though they are not to be ignored As Rick Rylance (2001) affirms; “Her poems are psychological but also historical ‘allegories’” (175) Therefore, the personal psychological trouble and the family web should be considered along with the historical life she

lived in order to understand what was the winter for her “The idea of the essential hollowness and inauthenticity of

modern life was much in cultural air in the 1950s and 60s” (177) The pinpoint seems to be the fact that, as a modernist poet, an immigrant in Britain, Plath is also entangled with the problems of modernity in her poems, including

‘Wintering’ This winter could be interpreted as the modern society which is still suffering the patriarchal dominance and is still structured upon the fabricated binary oppositions through which women are natural, while men have to do with culture Plath, like Forogh, uses the imagery of nature to refer to this situation However, the society, unlike Persian one, has already experienced, and even fostered in modernism While the clash between the past and present lingers throughout Farrokhzad’s poem, the winter for Plath has roots in the modern time only Forough has passed ‘the

“oceans” and is now ready to encounter the world as woman artist hoping, like Sylvia, that the spring will come Rylance (2001) documents Plath’s concern with the current historical events of her time to the essay she wrote called

‘Context’ which was published by the London Magazine in 1962 in which she had mentioned the cold war and the

major political issues of the time She seems to have been very much concerned with the “military power structures on

IJALEL 4(4):1-7, 2015 6

everyday life, and, in a larger frame they complicity of these structures with the legacy of Nazi Germany” (177-178) Plath’s own words from the essay could be illuminating to show the influence she herself is admitting to experience; Does this influence the kind of poetry I write? Yes, but in a sidelong fashion I am not gifted with the tongue of Jeremiah, though I may be sleepless enough before my vision of the apocalypse My poems do not turn out to be about Hiroshima, but about a child forming itself finger by finger in the dark They are not about the terrors of mass extinction, but about the bleakness of the moon over a yew tree in a neighboring graveyard…In a sense these poems are deflections I do not think they are an escape For me the real issues of our time are the issues of every day… ”(1977, 92)

Her winter is the depression she feels about the impact of war and all the political ensues on the life of people and

women particularly, thus, she wishes a balanced ecosystem, which out passes the winter and hopes for the equity with nature She is very much concerned and affected by the “…climate of military and political tension which hollows out meaning and betrays certainties…” Rylance (2001; 178) Plath’s accomplishment is making uses of the environement as

a tool in her hand to overcome such hollowness, deconstruct the binary oppositions, and depict the woman in her poem

‘wintering’ who, like the persona in Farrokhzad poem, is able to ‘winter’, and ‘believe’ the winter, then overcome that and hope for a balanced ecosystem, e.g earth to come, in which men and women are able to be natural, the women thus being able to produce and reproduce poetry, art and creativity

The winters depicted originate from different situations Farrokhzad is still entangled with the past, as she lives in a bordering era when modernization is entering every aspect of the newly shaped Persian society Such concern with the past forces the persona to review it and finally accomplish a cross out of the borders, hence, the obliteration of the element of sin, signaling the ultimate change in the thinking direction The persona in her poem “Let us Believe in the Oncoming of Cold Season” passes the winter and hopes for the spring The same happens to the woman Plath depicts in her “Wintering” Both are associated with the natural elements, are placed in a natural setting and both transgress the limitations through the deconstruction of binary oppositions However, the winters differ since Forogh’s originates from

a society on the verge of modernism, still entangled with the traditional conventions as well as the dogmatic patriarchal male dominated Persian literary circles in which she is artistically able to utter her own voice as the female poet, the one who like nature creates Sylvia Plath lived in the modern British and American societies Her winter thus originates from the hollowness she witnesses in the post war society

3 Conclusion

Ecofeminism provides a comprehensive framework for studying the literary works in light of the way the ecosystem is depicted and how the so called ‘natural highrarchies’ are depicted in a piece of literature Women have always been associated with nature, thus regarded as inferior to the culture which has always been linked to the males Ecofeministic thinking seeks to deconstruct such binary oppositions constructed under the impact of patriarchal system, and hope for the formation of a balanced ecosystem which includes all the so far oppressed e.g women and socially oppressed groups Literature makes the ground ready for the depiction of such ecological concerns Poets, novelists or any kind of authors of literature have, consciously or unknowingly, used literature to show such concerns Comparative study of works coming from different social backgrounds would highlight the different as well as similar points in this regard The Iranian modern female poet, Forogh Farrokhzad’s poem “Let us Believe in the Oncoming of Cold Season” and Sylvia Plath’s ‘Wintering” depict two women who start off a journey of self realization, are set in ‘winter’, and ultimately are able to transgress the limitations of their surroundings, through association with nature In other words, both poets deconstruct the nature/culture, woman/man binary opposition so that the woman personas of their poems is able to step beyond the limitations through walking into the deep association with their natural being, as women, and finally gain their own artistic voice, in the symbolic depiction of the wait for the season of productivity, spring, to come The point is that, new historically speaking, the symbolic ‘winter’ these two personas transgress originates from different social backgrounds Farrokhzad is able to violate the traditional crossing lines and move beyond the past, since the era she lives in is on the border of tradition and modernity She is the female rebellion poet in a male dominated circle of Persian poets who wishes to utter her own words and is able to do so finally However, Plath’s mind, on the other side of the continent, in preoccupied with the modern, and not traditional and modern, western society and the hollowness of modern man’s life Ultimately, it is through association with nature, that both poems gain the confidence

to express hope for the future

References

Alaimo, S (2000) Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space

Ithaca: Cornell University P

Britzolakis, C (2006) Ariel and Other Poems In Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath Ed by Jo Gill, Cambridge

University Press

Campbell, A E (2008) New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism Cambridge Scholars Publishing Cambridge Dickie, M (1979) Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes University of Illinois Press, Illinois

Farrokhzad, F (1982) Bride of Acacias: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad Jascha Frederick Kessler with Amin

Banani, tr Amin Banani, intro Ehsan Yarshater, foreword Farzaneh Milani, afterword Delmar, N.Y Caravan

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Ford, K (1997) Gender and the Poetics of Excess: Moments of Brocade University Press of Mississippi

Garrard, G (2004) Ecocriticism London: Routledge

Goodwin, S.W (1994) Cross Fire and Collaboration among Compartive Literature, Feminism, and the New

Historicism In Borderwork; Feminism Engagement with Comparative Literature Edited by Margaret R.Higonnet

Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London

Hillmann, M C (1990) An Autobiographical Voice: Forugh Farrokhzad In Women's Autobiographies in

Contemporary Iran Cambridge, Ma Harvard University Press (33-53)

King, Y (1989) The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of ecology in J Plant (ed.) Healing the Wounds: the

Promise of Ecofeminism, Green: London

Mahdavi, S (1985), Captivity, Rebellion, and Rebirth Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 12-13, (393-400)

Milani, F (1988) Forugh Farrokhzad In Persian Literature, Ehsan Yarshater, ed Albany, N.Y Bibliotheca Persica

Pesa, P D (1978) “The Imperious Muse: Some Observations on Women, Nature, and the Poetic Tradition.” Ed Cheryl

L Brown and Karen Olson Feminist Criticism: Essays on Theory, Poetry and Prose Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Plath, S (2004) The Poems Poem Hunter.Com World Poetry Archieve (158)

Plath, S (1977) ‘Context’, in Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose Writings (London, Faber) (92-3) Plumwood, V (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature London: Routledge

Davion, V (1994) Is Ecofeminism Feminist?, in K Warren (ed.) Ecological Feminism, London: Routledge

Rylance, Rick (2001) The Poetry of Sylvia Plath in Literature in Context Edited by Rick Rylance and Judy Simons

(2001) Palgrave, New York

Warren, K J (, 1997) Taking Empirical Data Seriously: An Ecofeminist Philosophical Perspective In Ecofeminism:

Women, Culture, Nature Ed Karen Warren With editorial assistance from Nisvan Erkal Bloomington: Indiana

University Press

Warren, K (1990) The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism Environmental Ethics 12: (125-146)

Zubizarreta, J (1992) The Woman Who Sings No, No, No: Love, Freedom, and Rebellion in the Poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad, World Literature Today 66, 3

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

ISSN 2200-3592 (Print), ISSN 2200-3452 (Online)

Vol 4 No 4; July 2015

Australian International Academic Centre, Australia

Appraising Pre-service EFL Teachers' Assessment in

Language Testing Course Using Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

Elham Mohammadi Department of ELT, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 27-10- 2014 Accepted: 19-01- 2015 Advance Access Published: February 2015 Published: 01-07- 2015 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.8 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.8

Abstract

The teachers need to be conceived as a “change agent” and not as a mere transmitter of knowledge and culture In developing countries like Iran, one of the most significant concerns in the field of teachers’ education is efficiency of pre-service programs To this aim, the current descriptive-evaluative study intended to describe the state of pre-service teachers' assessment in the field of language testing by (a) examining the exam questions to find out whether they are aligned with curriculum objectives and syllabus (content validity, (b) exploring whether they take care of higher order cognitive processes and (c) finding what combinations of cognitive process levels and knowledge types in Revised Bloom's Taxonomy are prevalent in the questions The results exhibited an unbalanced coverage of content in exams Also the questions were found to be inadequate in terms of measuring complex cognitive skills (Analyze and Evaluate); Remember and Understand domains take up 91.6 % of all questions and no item was found for Create Three combinations of cognitive process level and knowledge type was dominant in the data set: (1) Remember Factual Knowledge, (2) Understand Conceptual Knowledge, and (3) Apply Procedural Knowledge These associations confirm

the Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001) proposition

Keywords: pre-service teachers, assessment, assessment literacy, Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, cognitive processes,

knowledge types

1 Introduction

1.1 Statement of the Problem

Rationale of curriculum planning and different reforms in the domain of education system in Iran and world has consistently indicated improvement of assessment-measurement system and its alignment with theories and ultimate goals of education as being the most salient element of success in educational reform and fundamental shift in quality of school teaching and learning (Rabihavi, et al 2011) Assessment determines whether the process of learning leads to success or failure (Dochy, 2009; Kozhageldiyeva, 2005) To find out whether evaluation process has been carried out accurately needs evaluation itself

Popham (1987) has referred to measurement-oriented reforms in education and believes amending educational movement results in curriculum reform After examining the role played by assessment in reforming science curriculum, Orpwood (2001) also found out lack of proper attention to assessment as a reason for some of the problems

He reminds the demand on experts for more attention towards the role of assessment

In recent years the term 'assessment literacy' has been coined to denote what teachers need to know about assessment (Huttner, et al., 2011) Traditionally it was regarded as the ability to select, design and evaluate tests and assessment procedures as well as to score and grade them on the basis of theoretical knowledge More recent approaches embrace a broader understanding of the concept when taking the implications of assessment for teaching into account Two key questions are asked: (a) What does an assessment tell students about the achievement outcomes we value? (b) What is likely to be the effect of this assessment on students? (Stiggins, 1991) It's essential for assessment literates to know and understand the key principles of sound assessment and translate these into quality information about students' achievements and effective instruction Boyles (2005, p 18) points to language teachers' need of the necessary tools for

Flourishing Creativity & Literacy

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 9

analyzing and reflecting upon test data in order to make informed decisions about instructional practice and program design In their views (Boyles, 2005; Stiggins, 1991) the notion of assessment literacy extends beyond technical knowledge about how to select and create appropriate assessment instruments for specific purposes to include the ability to analyze empirical data to improve instruction In other words, being literate in assessment involves a move away from a passive interpretation towards an active application of data that will impact on teaching and assessment is perceived as a means to promote learning rather than merely observe and record it, hence 'assessment' for learning (Stiggins, 2002)

Several studies in a range of educational contexts indicates that "the typical teacher can spend as much as a third to a half of his or her professional time involved in assessment-related activities" (Newsfields, 2006; Stiggins, 1999 p 23) Additionally in the global economy of the 21st century, students will need to understand the basics, but also to think critically, to analyze, and to make inferences Helping students develop these skills will require changes in assessment

at the school and classroom level, as well as new approaches to large-scale, high-stakes assessment These points imply the need for future teachers to recognize the importance of higher-order thinking and problem solving skills They are to

be their students' model of learning that makes the mission of teacher preparatory programs and teacher trainers more demanding These programs are to create essential sensitivity among teacher trainees toward assessment This study seeks to investigate the state of teacher trainees' assessment in the field of language testing to identify potential weaknesses and inconsistencies

1.2 Significance of the Study

Iranian education system is faced with several complications (Rabihavi, et al 2011; Molaeenezhad & Zekavati, 2007); among these, evaluation practice can be mentioned which entirely relies on retrieving knowledge It suffices for learners

to memorize content and use only retrieving capacity On many occasions this evaluation system fails to assess and measure abilities like reasoning, processing, synthesizing and accurate judgment among learners The questions constructed and administered by teachers are necessary instruments for measuring such abilities Examining teachers' exam questions at school has found these questions and progress tests incompatible with measurement criteria (Rabihavi, et al 2011) This might be attributed to the state of teacher education in Teacher Training Centers; Teacher educators were not able to create due attention to testing standards and psychometric principles among student teachers For making sound inferences about students' abilities and subsequently directing their teaching, language teachers need

a strong knowledge of assessment practices Only if do they understand the basic principles of classroom assessment their efforts to improve teaching and learning based on assessment results will be effective Addressing relevant questions, findings of the current study would help understand the problem better and can be used for improving and reforming evaluation system and teaching methods They may somehow shed light on needed curriculum in teacher training domain Given the significance of assessment courses in general and language assessment literacy in particular, there is a need to take a closer look at the status quo of these courses in Iranian context

1.3 Foreign Language Testing

Brindley (2001) has referred to the allegedly heated issue of future language teachers' preparation in the field of foreign language testing and evaluation in recent years O'Loughlin (2006, p 71) argued that second language assessment is a

"notoriously difficult domain of knowledge" for students in second language teacher education programs because of the high theoretical complexity of key concepts like reliability, validity, and practicality and the need to be balanced against each other in designing and using assessment instruments Developments in the domain of language testing are different from language teaching; however they are closely tied to each other (Johnson & Johnson, 2001, p 187) Construction of good test items is believed to be a demanding task for teachers since it involves "a psychological understanding of pupils, sound judgment, persistence, and a touch of creativity" as well as field knowledge and clear view of the desired outcomes (Groulund, 1985)

Jin (2010, p 556) brings up the urgent need for teachers to be thoroughly trained in language assessment concepts, skills and strategies Assessment is an increasingly important domain of language teachers' expertise as the professional demands on them to accurately assess their students increases as the theory and practice of assessment continues to mature (O'Loughlin, 2006, p 71; Newsfields, 2006; Brindley, 2001) Shohamy (2005, p 107) also argues that professional development in assessment is not a question merely of demonstrating the technical 'tricks of the trade' She argues for "… the need to expand the role of teacher education programs in which teachers are exposed not only to the procedures and methods of testing and assessment but also to aspects related to the consequences of tests." Very recently Lam (2014) explored the overall language assessment training landscape in primary/secondary school contexts and investigated the extent to which two assessments courses may facilitate and/or inhibit the development of pre-service teachers' language assessment literacy in one teacher education institution His findings reveal that language assessment training in Hong Kong remains inadequate and the courses are still unable to bridge the theory-practice gap within the assessment reform context

Very little research as yet has been undertaken to study the students' evaluation of language testing and assessment courses (Inbar Lourie, 2008; Kleinsasser, 2005; O'Loughlin, 2006) Studies conducted by Bailey and Brown (1996), Brown and Bailey (2007), and Jin (2010) are among the few ones on language testing courses and included large groups

of informants teaching language testing courses Jin (2010) used almost the same questionnaire utilized by Bailey and Brown (1996) and found out most of the topics covered are the same as the ones listed by Brown and Bailey in their studies He concluded that in China LTA (i.e Language Testing and Assessment) courses cover essential theoretical and

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 10

practical aspects of the language testing area In two other studies by O'Loughlin (2006) and Kleinsasser (2005) more comprehensive reports on language assessment courses were offered O'Loughlin focused on a post-graduate elective course titled 'Assessment in the language classroom' The course entails practical components (e.g designing assessment tools for assessing various skills) as well as conceptual themes The author attempted to reveal how students' understanding of key concepts and ability to evaluate current assessment documents and instruments develops The findings indicate that participants (two students) attained the course objectives; yet they differed in their readiness and capacity to grasp new ideas in language assessment area The researcher attributed this difference to factors such as students' cultural background, prior experience with assessment as learners and teachers and the characteristics of the input they receive in language assessment classes Hence he concluded that a learner-centered approach should be adopted which takes those factors into account while planning and managing assessment courses Kleinsasser (2005) like O'Loughlin (2006) presented readers with direct and detailed reports related to language assessment courses and showed the significance of the collaboration between teachers and students for improving the quality and usefulness of

an LTA course

1.4 Theoretical Framework

To get a better in-depth understanding of the assessment practices of teacher preparatory programs, a robust cognitive framework is required Revised Bloom's taxonomy has been extensively applied in testing and evaluation across different disciplines and its efficiency is substantiated time and again (Chen, 2004; Squire, 2001; Aviles, 1999) Bloom's taxonomy is a framework for examining the depth of cognitive process levels in educational objectives and it is used to determine the extent to which assessment tools measure higher-order thinking skills Revised Bloom's taxonomy provides a broader vision of learning that includes not only acquiring knowledge but also being able to use knowledge

in a variety of new situations This taxonomy, a revision of the original Bloom's taxonomy, was developed by Anderson

& Krathwohl (2001) It has two dimensions of cognitive process and knowledge which is extensively explained in Appendix A Cognitive dimension includes six major categories and 19 specific sub-categories whereas knowledge dimension contains four main categories Although relatively few studies in Iranian teacher education context used this taxonomy for examining assessment tools (Rabihavi, et al 2011), numerous studies worldwide adopt it to take a closer look at evaluation procedures Masters et al (2001) investigated randomly-selected multiple-choice questions from 17 test-banks of accompanying selected nursing textbooks 2143 items were rated on thirty generally accepted guidelines for writing multiple-choice questions, the cognitive levels of original Bloom's taxonomy and distribution of correct answers Results indicated that most of the questions (i.e 47.3 %) were written at the lowest cognitive level of Knowledge 24.8 % and 21 % of items were respectively at Comprehension and Application levels and only 6.5 % were

at the Analysis level Since most of the textbooks were intended for upper division courses, these findings turn out to be surprising Another field of study whose tests were the subject of scrutiny with regard to cognitive process levels is Agriculture (Squire, 2001) 628 agricultural science questions in senior secondary schools in Botswana were analyzed

A great proportion of questions were at Knowledge level of Bloom's original taxonomy Almost no item was found at higher cognitive levels of Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation Unexpectedly even the essay-type items in those tests were at the lowest levels Using Revised Taxonomy, Chen (2004) examined the knowledge types and cognitive levels of Computer Science test in Technical College Entrance Examination of Taiwan between 2001 and

2004 In a similar pattern, most items (44 % to 77 %) assess only lower-level thinking that required students to remember factual information No item was found at Evaluate and Create levels

1.5 Research Questions

Given the above introduction the research questions are formulated in the following way:

Q1: Do exam questions of Teacher Training centers cover all cognitive levels of Bloom's Taxonomy properly and consistent with objectives of the curriculum?

Q2: Do exam questions of Teacher Training centers have content validity?

Q3: What cognitive process levels and knowledge types in the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy were measured in Testing exams of Teacher Training Centers?

2 Method

Concerning the nature and purpose of the study, we adopt a descriptive-evaluative research method To this aim the curriculum, syllabus and the assessment instrument for language testing course of pre-service teachers are examined and analyzed

2.1 Context of the Study

The main bodies responsible for training teachers in Iran are Teacher Training Centers and Universities that are jointly managed by Ministries of Education, and Science, Research, and Technology Prior to 2013, the undergraduate teacher training programs consisted of two two-year period; upon completion of the first two-year the graduates would get an Associate's degree in relevant majors The then-teachers are allowed to continue their studies for another two-year period to obtain a B.A This second term was mostly for in-service teachers In 2013 the teacher training programs shifted onto four-year long training at the end of which graduates would receive a B.A

2.2 Sampling Procedures

Five Teacher Training Centers were chosen for this study Two reasons can be enumerated for this selection:

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 11

(1) The Centers' ease of accessibility to the researcher (Convenience Sampling)

(2) To the extent the availability is possible for the researcher, it was tried to cover as geographically

different areas as possible (Purposive Sampling)

The centers are:

(a) Shahid Bahonar Center (located in Tehran)

(b) Shahid Mofatteh Center (located in Shahr-E-Rey)

(c) Shahid Bahonar Center (located in Arak)

(d) Mirshaki Center (located in Aligoudarz, Boroujerd)

(e) Shahid Rajaei Center (located in Urmia)

Language Education Departments in T T Centers follow a curriculum prescribed by High Council of Planning under

the supervision of Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and Coordinating Body of Teacher Education in

2001 Short descriptions for each of the core courses is provided in this document, along with educational objectives, syllabus (the weight given to each section or topic), and suggested materials However lecturers are allowed to structure their own lessons by keeping those points in mind Language testing (language assessment literacy) is divided into two two-credit courses titled Testing (1) and Testing (2) The assessment instruments were designed and developed by the

lecturer him/herself In recent decades teacher-made tests have played a very fundamental role in assessing students' learnings, however, their efficiency has rarely been investigated (Rabihavi, et al., 2011)

2.3 Data Analysis

The exam questions for Testing 1 and 2 were collected, and then each question was rated based on Revised Taxonomy's cognitive processes and knowledge types (explained below) To ensure the accuracy of researchers' coding results two Ph.D graduates of Tarbiat Modares University in TEFL were recruited to serve as raters The criteria for coding, the definition of the Revised Bloom's taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) and some sample questions were given to the raters to help them become familiar with the coding framework Then Cohen's kappa coefficient was computed to ensure inter-rater reliability and to observe whether there is a statistically significant consistency among raters

To see the frequency counts and percentages of the major combinations as well as the sub-combinations of the cognitive process and knowledge dimensions crosstabulation which is a descriptive statistical procedure was employed

3 Results

The consistency among raters was specified by computing kappa value This figure was respectively 0.88 and 0.83 for Rater 1 * Rater 2 and Rater 1 * Rater 3 that shows a high degree of agreement among raters Both values are significant

at 001 level This means

The results for the first research question are reported below

For answering research questions Table of Specifications is needed A TOS, sometimes called a test blueprint, is a table that helps teachers align objectives, instruction, and assessment (Notar, Zuelke, Wilson, & Yunker, 2004) When constructing a test, teachers need to be concerned that the test measures an adequate sampling of the class content at the cognitive level that the material was taught The TOS can help teachers map the amount of class time spent on each objective with the cognitive level at which each objective was taught thereby helping teachers to identify the types of items they need to include on their tests The tables developed for this study are provided in the Appendix B

Importance percentage of each chapter =

No of sessions devoted to each chapter

*100

No of all sessions

No of questions for each chapter= no of all questions * importance percentage of each chapter

Concerning the question on cognitive domain of exam questions, the results (overall frequency and percentage) for all five centers are reported in the following tables The purpose of this question was to determine the extent to which exam questions are successful in measuring higher-level thinking processes (e.g analyze, evaluate, and create)

The questions were judged on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy Overall 346 items out of 441 fall within the lowest level of cognitive process that would mean as 78.5% in percentile This category entails two subcategories of recognizing and recalling which respectively constitute 38.3 % and 40.1% of this category

Concerning next cognitive level, Understanding, 58 items were found which would mean 13.2% Among seven different subcategories, Interpreting comprises 36.2% of the whole category Other processes of Exemplifying, Classifying, Inferring, Comparing and Explaining make up respectively 1.1%, 1.1%, 2.7%, 1.6%, 1.8% of all questions

No item was found for Summarizing

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 12

Table 1 demonstrates the distribution of items across sub-categories of Understanding

Table 1 Cognitive level (Understand)

Figure 1 The percentage of questions on cognitive categories (Revised Bloom's Taxonomy)

Figure 1 displays the resulting item analysis in terms of coverage of cognitive sub-categories There is a huge difference between the first major category (i.e Remember), consisting of two sub-levels of Recognizing and Recalling, and the rest of the taxonomy

Table 2 The frequency and percentage of exam questions on cognitive subcategories

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 13

For answering the second question which is on the content validity, table of specification, objectives and topics set in the curriculum and syllabus are taken into account (Appendix B) In the following table the coverage of subject matters

in exam questions is specified in terms of the number of items and the percentage for Testing (1):

Table 3 The amount of content coverage in Testing (1) exams regardless of teacher training center

Functions of Language Tests

Forms of Language Tests

Basic Statistics in Testing

Characteristics of a Good test

Theories of Language Testing

For Testing (1), Table 3 shows the relevant proportion of items on each subject matter Looking closely it is apparent the majority of questions (62%) are on purely theoretical areas which are taught in the first half of the semester The

sections on "Test Construction", "Characteristics of Good Test", and "Theories of Language Testing" are not

satisfactorily taken care of Given their importance that derives from the practical value essential for future teachers, it

is necessary to amend this weakness and devote a larger number of questions to these areas

Table 4 The amount of content coverage in Testing (1) exams across teacher training centers

Table 5 The amount of content coverage in Testing (2) exams regardless of teacher training center

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 14

By taking a look at Table 5 that includes all questions of Testing (2), a rather balanced and satisfactory coverage of content areas is observed However it seems there are two neglected issues which are "Cloze and Dictation-type Tests" and "Functional Testing" Considering the fact that syllabus places a high value on these parts of the content, inadequate number of items were observed

Table 6 The amount of content coverage in Testing (2) exams across teacher training centers

center

center

Tehran centers

To answer the third research question cross-tabulation was conducted that is presented in the table below From the item classification of 441 questions, five major cognitive process levels along with thirteen sub-levels and three types of knowledge were found The five major cognitive skills are: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze and Evaluate As for the knowledge type, Metacognitve Knowledge is absent from the list This neglected area of knowledge in tests designed for assessing prospective teachers' competencies takes on an additional significance while considering its implications for classroom practice Metacognitive Knowledge is associated closely with some terms such as metacognitive awareness, self-awareness, self-reflection and self-regulation; all can be used interchangeably It can play

an important role in student learning and by implication in the ways students are taught and assessed in the classroom; it seems to be related to the transfer of learning which is the ability to use knowledge gained in one setting or situation in another (Bransford et al., 1999) Teacher educators are to cultivate the awareness of this knowledge among prospective teachers by its inclusion in assessments One way is to use portfolio assessment that offers students the opportunity to reflect on their work which also leads to gaining self-assessment information The lack of any question on this knowledge can be attributed to the difficulty of its measurement in formal classroom tests; it is more easily assessed in classroom activities and discussion of various learning strategies (Pintrich, 2002)

Table 7 The crosstabulation of the cognitive sub-categories and knowledge types

knowledge types

Total Factual

Knowledge

Conceptual Knowledge

Procedural Knowledge

Table 8 The crosstabulation of major cognitive processes and knowledge types

As for items classified as Apply, all of them, comprising about 6.8 % of overall questions, were identified as Procedural Knowledge Only one sub-category of Analyze, the next cognitive process, was found in the tests which is Organizing Out of three items, two were measuring Conceptual Knowledge while one tests Procedural Knowledge For Evaluate both sub-categories, namely Checking and Critiquing, were present and each has two questions The two items of Checking aim to measure Factual Knowledge whereas the items of Critiquing measured Procedural Knowledge For the last major cognitive category, Create, no item was found

4 Discussion & Conclusion

This study was undertaken to investigate what cognitive levels and knowledge types were tested on language assessment literacy exams administered in the past two years at five Teacher Training Centers The results of item analysis can have a positive washback effect to language assessment literacy classes across teacher preparatory programs The findings for the first question indicated a narrow range of cognitive processes (i.e lower-level capacities

of Remember and Understand) were mostly being tested in all centers and only a very limited number of questions aim

at measuring complex cognitive abilities of Analyze and Evaluate This is similar to Masters et al study (2001) in which the majority of the questions were written at the lowest cognitive level of Remember In the current study after Remember the next cognitive processes in terms of frequency were respectively Understand and Apply corresponding

to the order found in Masters et al study Also this finding corroborates the results of Squire's study (2001) that found a great proportion of items at Knowledge level of Bloom's Original Taxonomy (corresponding to Remember in Revised Taxonomy) and a few number of items at higher cognitive levels The result is also compatible with the findings of Rabihavi, et al (2011) In their study, the exam questions of two teacher training centers were analyzed and they were either labelled as Knowledge or Comprehension on Bloom's Taxonomy; none of the items measured the more complex processes Current findings is consistent with Lan and Chern's study (2010) that aimed to investigate cognitive process levels and knowledge types measured on the English reading comprehension tests of college entrance examinations in Taiwan In their study items on Remember Factual Knowledge and Understand Factual Knowledge, which belong to lower cognitive levels, were the majority in the tests under scrutiny and few items were found at higher levels of Apply and Analyze Analysis of Turkish high-school physics-examination questions by Kocakaya and Gonen (2010) likewise

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 16

evaluation levels) Studies by Hand, Prain and Wallace (2002), Çepni et al (2003), Karamustafaoglu et al (2003), Köğce (2005) also support the view that most traditional examinations are of the lower order cognitive skill type

In this study, the reason for finding no item on Create category might be due to its productive nature that cannot be grasped through multiple choice or fill-in-the-blanks formats This view is consistent with Buckles and Siegfried (2006), who found that multiple-choice questions can measure elements of in-depth understanding when being carefully designed, and maintained that Synthesis and Evaluation levels could not be accurately measured since the creativity or originality could not be simply tested via multiple-choice questions

Concerning the third research question, the following association of cognitive skills with knowledge types surfaced more often than the other combinations in the data set:

(a) Remember Factual Knowledge

(b) Understand Conceptual Knowledge

(c) Apply Procedural Knowledge

As far as the third research question is concerned, the findings are in line with Chen's (2004) in the computer science discipline which revealed this knowledge-and-cognitive association The result in the present study further confirms Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001) proposition that certain types of knowledge tended to be associated with certain types

of cognitive skills

It is well worth noting that inasmuch as instructors' approach in assessment affects students' learning preferences, the findings of this study have direct implication for classroom practice As long as the majority of questions only test students' ability to remember or understand the content, the test takers would find memorization and reproduction of knowledge sufficient for getting an acceptable score and would not pay attention to the depth of the content They would develop a rote and superficial approach to learning without forming a connection between learnings and meaninglessly accumulate information This situation gets even worse by considering the fact that test-takers will become future teachers and hence become learning models of their own students Training teachers with this attitude towards assessment adversely affect students since they don't recognize the importance of higher order cognitive process and consequently will not expose their students to these skills Language assessment literacy course in this sense has got a double significance for future teachers; teacher educators are required to prepare the candidates by familiarizing them with essential knowledge and skills on assessment and getting them to realize the necessity of testing higher level cognitive skills

Given the above discussion some potential areas for further research emerge As results of this study demonstrated a gap in the assessment of higher order cognitive skills in teacher preparatory programs, there is a need for developing an alternative evaluation instrument which covers as broad range of cognitive processes as possible and compensates the shortcomings of current assessment procedures Another issue worthy of investigation is to make sure whether test-takers actually apply expected cognitive skills while answering a question and to check the correspondence between what takes place in reality and the judgment of test-developers Procedures such as think aloud or interview can be adopted for this purpose Since "Methodology of Teaching English" is one of the mandatory subjects to be completed towards the English teaching licensure, it is needed to appraise its assessment from cognitive processing perspective

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memory that is consistent with presented material

long-term memory

Categories & Cognitive

including oral, written, and graphic communication

Paraphrasing Representing Translating

Changing from one form of representation to another

Drawing a logical conclusion from presented information

Mapping Matching

Detecting correspondences between two ideas, objects, and the like

a system

task

unfamiliar task

relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose

Distinguishing Focusing Selecting

Distinguishing relevant from irrelevant parts or important from unimportant parts

of presented material

Integrating Outlining Parsing Structuring

Determining how elements fit or function

within a structure

intent underlying presented material

IJALEL 4(4):8-20, 2015 19

The Knowledge Dimension

a discipline or solve problems in it

larger structure that enable them to function together

using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods

knowledge of one’s own cognition

Appendix B

Table of specification for Testing 1 (The Percentage and Number of Questions for Each Section)

Farhady, H., Ja'farpour, A., & Birjandi, P (2004) Testing Language Skills: From Theory to

Practice SAMT Publications: Tehran.

Detecting Monitoring Testing

Detecting inconsistencies or fallacies within a process

or product; determining whether a process or product has internal consistency; detecting the effectiveness of

a procedure as it is being implemented

external criteria; determining whether a product has external consistency; detecting the appropriateness of a

procedure for a given problem

reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure

Chapter13

Chapter12

Chapter11

Chapter10

Chapter9

Chapter8Content

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

ISSN 2200-3592 (Print), ISSN 2200-3452 (Online)

Vol 4 No 4; July 2015

Australian International Academic Centre, Australia

The Metaphors on International Intervention: A Discourse Analysis of the Sri Lankan English Newspaper Editorials

Jeyaseelan Gnanaseelan English Language Teaching Unit, Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna

Park Road, Vavuniya, Sri Lanka E-mail: jeya86@hotmail.com

Received: 06-11- 2014 Accepted: 22-01- 2015 Advance Access Published: February 2015 Published: 01-07- 2015 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.21 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.4p.21

Abstract

The metaphors used in the Sri Lankan English newspaper editorials during the peace talk time (2001-2007) commenting

on the international intervention in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict reveal community based ideological and attitudinal positions of the newspapers published in Sri Lanka Metaphors literally contribute to our understanding of reality The frames and scripts used for legitimization and de-legitimization of the issues related to international intervention and facilitation in the peace talk, peace process and monitoring the ceasefire bring out certain realities comfortable to certain people, groups or communities The binary positions projected in the editorial discourse are identified Discourse constitutes power in constructing ideational, textual and interpersonal constructs which are ideological It can transmit and even legitimize power in society During the peace talk time, the editorials are expected to develop constructive discourse on conflict intervention and resolution to make a positive impact on legislative changes but they display

‘ethno-nationalist’ tendencies The study analyzes whether the media has been a part of the problem or a part of the solution Since newspaper and editorial discourses are the constructions of journalists and editors of the elites, the biased ideologies are “hidden or subtle in expressions and often revealed in mild forms” This study takes up selected editorials

of the Sri Lankan English newspapers which appeared mainly during the Memorandum of Understanding between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eezham during that period, to relate the discourse themes with rhetorical and metaphorical features

Keywords: metaphorical discourse analysis, social construction, ethnic conflict, international relations and intervention

1 Introduction

The Sri Lankan ethnic conflict has been going on for more than half a century from 1950s to date It became an intensive armed struggle in 1980s In 1987, India intervened between the Tamils and Sinhalese, the two major communities, to resolve the crisis It failed Then later from 2001 to 2006, international community consisting USA,

EU, Norway, and Japan intervened and it failed This paper analyses the selected editorials of the Sri Lankan English newspapers on the international intervention and ethnic conflict resolution during the period of Ceasefire Agreement (2002- 2006) between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eezham It traces an ethno-nationalist ideological significance in their editorial construction projecting binary positions in intervention and resolution

Metaphorical construction of cultural and linguistic nationalism and ethnocentrism is analyzed in the editorial constructs of the Sri Lankan English newspapers The prevalence of these ideologies in the Sri Lankan texts has been studied and confirmed (Abeysekara, 2002; Balachandren, 1999; Bartholomeusz, 2002; Bartholomeusz et al, 1998; de Silva, 2006; Devotta, 2004a, 2004b, 2007; Dharmadasa, 1992; Gunawardena, 1990; Kearney, 1967; Little, 1994; Manor, 1994; Obeyesekere, 1970; Ponambalam, 1983; Smith, 1978; Tambiah, 1986; Uyangoda, 1996; Wilson, 2000 etc,)

According to Ponnambalam (1983) in his book, Sri Lanka: The National Question and the Tamil Liberation struggle,

‘after Sri Lanka gained independence from Great Britain in 1948, discrimination toward Tamils increased through government policies and led to resistance In the late 1970s, the Tamil militants materialized their armed struggle after non-violent resistance groups failed to raise awareness for their cause’ Thus the present day conflict took a significant national as well as international dimension in Sri Lanka where the Sinhalese fighting to maintain control of Sri Lanka to project a Sinhala identity to the country as a whole and the Tamils fighting for an end to discrimination, for equal representation in political and economic affairs and recognition of their traditional homeland in the Northeast of Sri Lanka

2 Intervention Background

2.1 Indian Intervention

The interest of the Indian government in Sri Lankan affairs increased from 1983 through 1987 Numerous attempts at mediation between the Sinhalese and the Tamils failed The impetus for such intervention was most likely the pressure from the many citizens of Tamil Nadu who were related to the Tamils in Sri Lanka Finally, the Indian government

Flourishing Creativity & Literacy

IJALEL 4(4):21-35, 2015 22

military intervened in 1987 Negotiations were held, and the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed on July 29, 1987,

by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President, Jayewardene The accord stated that the Indian government would not support a separate Tamil state; however, it did recognize the northern and eastern areas as “areas

of historical habitation” of the Tamils (Hennayake, 1989)

This was eventually enacted as the 13th Amendment Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) established order in the north and east Consequently, the uprising of the JVP, a socialist movement cum Sinhala nationalists took place in the south against the Indian military presence Few of the demands agreed to in the Agreement were implemented When the militants refused to disarm its fighters, the IPKF tried to demobilize them by force and ended up in full-scale conflict with the Tamils Simultaneously, nationalist sentiment led many Sinhalese to oppose the continued Indian presence Casualties mounted and eventually India pulled out its troops in March 1990

2.2 International Intervention

The war has caused great damage to the population and economy of the country In 2001, however, the militants announced a unilateral ceasefire just before Christmas 2001 The new United National Front (UNF) government reciprocated the unilateral ceasefire offer and signed an MOU in February 2002 Norway and other Nordic countries monitored the ceasefire through the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM)

The militants temporarily pulled out of the peace talks in 2003, citing lack of attention on an interim political solution The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) rejected the Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal submitted by the

militants for the northeast of the island of Sri Lanka on October 31, 2003 In 2004 the United People Freedom Alliance

(UPFA) came to power The Asian tsunami of late 2004 killed more than 30,000 people in the country It was hoped that the disaster would bring the warring sides together, but the conflict continued The militants suggested a Post-Tsunami Operation Mechanism Structure (PTOMS) for rehabilitating the North East victims But due to the strong opposition from the Sinhala hardliners, and the consequent Supreme Court verdict, it was abandoned

Gradually the situation became complicated by allegations that both sides violated the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) In light of this renewed violence that erupted in December 2005, ethnic riots and unsolved murders suspected to have been committed by the military and the militants’ attacks followed A new crisis, and possibly the resumption of a proper war, emerged in July 2006, resulting in the International Community’s skepticism over resumption of the peace talks

3 Objective

The basic assumption of the Research Problem is the editorial discourse constructions of journalists and editors of the Sri Lankan elite media “hide or express their ideological and attitudinal positions in subtle and mild forms.” The general objective is:

To investigate the metaphorical construction of the editorial discourse of Sri Lankan English newspapers on the international intervention during 2001-2007 to arrive at the ideological and attitudinal positions and its consequent contribution to the sustainable peace of the country

The paper investigates how the editorial writers construct social reality and shape public opinion The existing presuppositions (EP) and propositional attitudes (PA) reveal covert and overt positions of the editorial discourse

4 Theoretical Background

Discourse analysis reveals that “the relations between notions such as ideology, discourse, and text have been more

complexly reconceptualized” (Canagarajah, 1999, p.30) In the context of the Sri Lankan press, “discourse is the linguistic realization of the social construct, ideology; the abstract paradigms of discourse are linguistically manifested

in text” (ibid.) Lyotard (1984) attacked the grand theories, meta-narratives, and totalities which have shackled the

heterogeneity of discourses to impose unitary meaning” (Canagarajah,1999, p.32).This study makes use of the frameworks of the Ideological Discourse Analysis (IDA) of Van Dijk and the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Norman Fairclough for analyzing the media texts Van Dijk says, “Since newspaper and editorial discourses are the constructions of journalists and editors of the elites, ethno-nationalism is “hidden or subtle in expressions and often revealed in mild forms” (van Dijk, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c) The texts have been often politically analyzed by the political scientists, but not by the linguistic (or discourse) analysts of media discourse in both national and international levels in Sri Lanka

Chilton and Ilyin (1993), Chilton and Lakoff (1995), Chilton (1996), Chilton and Scaffner (1997), have pointed out the crucial conceptual and semantic role metaphors play in the production of political meaning Since social and political realities are abstract systems of ideas, metaphor is required in order that they are conceptualised and communicated

"Metaphor is one important mode of concept formation and argument construction"(Chilton 1996, p.40) Chilton and Ilyin (1993, p.10), argue that:" A new metaphor, or new use of metaphor, can break up the rigid conceptual frames of an existing political order, introducing new options and stimulating political thought and imagination For instance, accepting a metaphor may also lead to accepting its underlying analogy and its presuppositions (Musolff, 2004, p.150) The metaphor is a conceptual instrument that enables people to think about situations that are new, complex, and remote Metaphor creates a common ground or of maintaining contextual continuity and cohesion Editorial discourse employs metaphors and the cognitive system in use to legimatise the positions of the editorial writers It persuades giving a distorted picture of metaphors and political discourse, for, “metaphors may communicate something which is difficult to express in literal speech because literal words are lacking” (Gibbs, 1994, p.124; Mio, 1997, p.121); and

The issue of a metaphor’s effectiveness in persuading an audience has not been uncontested Psychological studies support the hypothesis of the advantage of metaphor over literal language, such as Sopory’s and Dillard’s (2002) meta-analysis of 24 empirical studies shows Moreover, changes in social practices may produce new discursive challenges which demand creative response (Fairclough, 1989, pp.169-196) It shows its creativity in metaphorical political discourse necessary to ensure political survival

Scripts as defined by Schank (1998, p.7-9) are a set of expectations about what will happen next in a well known way Scripts are useful for a variety of reasons They make clear what is supposed to happen, and what various acts on the parts of others are supposed to indicate They also make mental processing easier by allowing us to think less Werth (1999, p.43) defines the concept of frame, developed by Fillmore (1982) - as: "A frame is a sort of "experiential space" frames represent the distilled experiences of the individual and the speech community centering on specific linguistic expressions A linguistic expression such as a word will evoke the whole range of experience which that item

is normally involved in"(p.71) In the present study, both scripts and frames are useful to categorise/label the cognitive system used to link past experiences with the event, tracing ideological continuity

5 Research Methodology

Metaphorical Discourse Analysis is useful in analyzing the ways of social construction in editorial discourse using the methods of Social Constructionist Approach (SCA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) The Table given below gives the detail of the Sri Lankan English Newspaper editorials (2001-2007) selected for the study

Table 1 The Sri Lankan English Newspaper Editorials Selected for the study

Names of the dailies &

Sunday Observer

The Island and The Sunday

Island

(Private)

440 The Daily Mirror and The

Sunday Times

(Private)

250 The Morning Leader and

The Sunday Leader

(Private)

162

Source: The Primary Survey

6 Analysis of Metaphorical Construction

6.1 The Scripts/Frames of Intervention as a Powerful and Paternalist force

The international intervention is seen as the powerful forces giving pressure to the government The metaphorical

references look at this situation negatively, for instance, “Uncle Sam” and “global headman” (The Island, 24 August

2006, editorial, p.8) referring metonymically the U.S.A and “The road to hell” to the Northeast situation to give emphasis to the arguments The International Community takes the role of the judge and punishes the criminal: “the

world powers are on a crusade to democratise the world” (The Island, 12 January 2005, editorial, p 8)

The media appreciate when the International Community acts against the extremists and Tamil Diaspora internationally and criticize when the International Community intervenes in the ethnic conflict resolution and insists on refraining from the military approach The editorials supported the governments and International Community in resolving the conflicts militarily or with the minimum solution which will not affect the majoritarian nationalist interests; they oppose when the International Community supports the minorities to win their political rights or maximum devolution The

media appreciate when the international non-governmental organizations assist mainly the South in economic

development and humanitarian services and when the international community criticizes only the Tamil nationalists

The Island, (20 February 2003, editorial, p.8) in its editorial on “the importance of foreigners” was ‘furious’ that “those

who speak about foreign interference and subservience to foreigners are dismissed as ‘Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinists’, frogs-in-the-well etc” It ridicules that “the most venerated of the species of foreigners amongst us today is the

IJALEL 4(4):21-35, 2015 24

‘International Peace Monitors’” “Norway has at various times been perceived by Sinhala nationalist groups as being

"pro-Tamil" because of the small but vocal Tamil diaspora in the country” (Goodhand et al, 2005, editorial, p.40)

In the editorial, “Blake, Blake burning bright! You’ve got the Tiger right!” the newly-appointed USA ambassador, Robert Blake, is praised for his warning to the LTTE:

On Tuesday, we had a different Blake speaking of a different Tiger in an entirely different way It was not about the animal’s ‘fearful symmetry’ or the ‘distant deeps or skies’ burning the fire of its eyes The new

US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Robert O Blake, putting his diplomatic finger on what really ails Sri Lanka’s peace process, told the press in Colombo that the Tigers were not willing to give up violence He

hit the nail on the head, slap-bang! (The Island, 21 September 2006, editorial, p.8)

However, to the LTTE, “Co-chairs as a scarecrow” (The Island, 09 January 2006, editorial, p.8)- something that looks

frightening but not dangerous Therefore, they should have “a stick and stick approach”:

The Co-chairs who met in Tokyo the other day have said they will have a carrot-and-stick approach to restarting Sri Lanka’s stalled peace talks We thought they would come out with something innovative at their much flaunted meeting They are apparently on a wild goose chase: India was the first to experiment with it years ago It used the carrot on the LTTE, the monster it created and the stick on the JRJ government, which had ruffled its geopolitical feathers A forced marriage was arranged and the outcome was the birth of a nobody’s baby—Provincial Councils The Tigers refused to have any more carrots and returned to flesh eating Then the stick was used generously on them as well but to no avail The rest is history and we have been holding the ‘baby’ ever since! Today, India talks of neither carrots nor sticks

So, the Co-chairs must adopt a new approach; a stick-and-stick approach The party that violates the truce—be it the government or the LTTE—and slaps roadblocks on the path to peace should be

belaboured with a stick to be specially designed, until the culprit falls in line (The Island, 01 June 2006,

editorial, p.8)

The International Community is “running the peace process” as a business (The Sunday Times, 04 September 2005,

editorial, p.12) The ‘international community’ (within quotation) is obsessed with the pain of the unresolved conflict

and expresses, “the international euphoria” (The Sunday Leader, 05 December 2004, editorial, p.12) Among the ‘much euphoria resulted among the “international community”’ (The Island, 27 May 2004, p.8) there are “a handful of

swashbuckling nations by virtue of their military might enhanced by their nuclear weapons, controlling the destiny of

the world” (The Island, 09 October 2006, editorial, p.8) On hearing the LTTE’s interim proposals, the White world

thinks that resolving the crisis is the White man’s burden It goes even a step further and regards the peace process as a

trap: “an international conspiracy to capture them in a honey trap”: (The Sunday Times, 07 September 2003, editorial,

p.12)

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka is burdened with a set of invertebrate leaders who would shamelessly cringe and crawl before foreign powers and stop at nothing

(The pro-interventionists) want to create an environment for their foreign bosses to control the country in

a bigger way and to facilitate the separatist campaign to cut the Sri Lankan melon (The Island, 25 August

2006, editorial, p.8)

The editorials always criticize the internationalization of the conflict but encourage even the LTTE to participate in the meeting when the International Community pledges financial assistance The International Community is represented as parties interested to solve the crisis: “Yesterday's statement by the US Government, come close on the heels of one by

the EU” (The Daily News, 21 August 2004, editorial, p.8) The International Community is the insurer for the losses due

to the ill-effects of the peace process and their participation is asserted as an enhancement: “it should also underwrite any agreement reached”; “guarantee the observance of a mutually agreed formal joint ceasefire”; “enhance the chances

of minimizing any breaches of the ceasefire.” (The Daily News, 05 February 2002, editorial, p.8) Achieving peace in

this context has become a chance for survival given to them

The wide use of "We" in the editorials expresses the ideology of consensus (Fowler 1991, p.49) with which the discourse is being identified The order of identification is suggestive A division was constructed between the USA and the European Union with regard to the ban on the LTTE in the West In hierarchical terms, the US, contrary to India, was expected to play important role in the war and not in the peace process An attack is always there on their intervention in the political process This attack often assumes the metaphor of a father and his responsibility towards

his children, suggesting its inability to act like an adult, which has resulted in the present situation (the Frame of

IJALEL 4(4):21-35, 2015 25

State as a person metaphor in Chilton and Lakoff (1995, pp.41-42), and in particular with the United States as the World hegemon, the "world policeman" in the "New World Order"

The World Bank and the International Community are viewed as paternalist and hegemonic when they are not

pro-Sinhalese The editorial treated President, Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumaratunghe as an ignorant student of good

governance and suggested that she needs “a lecture on good governance by a World Bank official, who had become too

big for her boots or slippers.” (The Island, 07 March 2005, editorial, p.8);

The nation’s capital is quite often substituted for the government as found in the expression, “but Oslo's hope is that” (The Sunday Times, 04 September 2005, editorial, p.12); and sometimes for the name of the country or the bureaucrats

who are in power China is hailed as the “big brother who has come to our aid especially when the chips were down,

and no one (other than Pakistan) helped Sri Lanka when the Northern insurgency broke out.” (The Sunday Times, 10

August 2003, editorial, p.12)

6.2 The Scripts/Frames of the Intervention as inappropriate intrusion

The editorials generally exhibits the intervention in interference frame and the dictatorship frame (“usurped”,

“pressured”, “warned” etc,), accounting for the action of the International Community to sidestep the United Nations They have negative connotations for the Sri Lankan people Highlighting their illegal nature and their action in an emotional schema helps (van Dijk 1988a) the readers both to remember and link it with past experiences

The readers inter-textually link with the texts of the international Press on similar crisis The editorial treats the JVP, a Sinhala Nationalist Party as the family members and regards Sri Lanka’s attempts at sending away the invited guests,

the Norwegians: “showing them the door too” (The Sunday Leader, 05 December 2004, editorial, p.12); “Doomed are the peace makers!” (The Island, 14 August 2006, editorial, p.8) This is mainly because of the fact that the Norwegians,

according to the editorial, are aliens and are ignorant of the conflict, the activities of the LTTE and their human rights violations in the Wanni region: “the cool salubrious climes of the North Pole” (Norway) versus “the hot impenetrable

jungles of the Wanni” and “the Scandinavian monitors appear to have gone to sleep” (The Island, 23 February 2002,

editorial, p.8) However, “the Norwegians cannot be blamed because the UNP government and now the UPFA

government have given a free rein to the Norwegians to interfere in our internal affairs” (The Island, 17 January 2005,

editorial, p.8) The Co-chairs are only “preachers pouring water on a duck’s back Nobody seems to pay heed to their

preaching but they go on pontificating” (The Island, 24 November 2006, editorial, p.8)

That their approaches are accused as groundless and blind is presupposed: “the actors in this tragicomedy, the LTTE,

government, opposition, Norwegians and Indians are still poles apart in their thinking with no common ground in sight”

(The Sunday Leader, 24 August 2003, editorial, p.12) The dignitaries visiting the LTTE are ironically described as,

“pilgrims of peace” (The Island, 17 January 2005, editorial, p.8) This is not the case with the India’s intervention because “our Johnnies- come- lately into foreign affairs insisted on India’s presence, only to eat their own words” (The

Island, 22 January 2003, editorial, p.8) The editorial is conclusive about the powerlessness of the International

Community to bring the LTTE to negotiation:

Where are the Americans, the Japanese, the Vikings, the British and other Europeans—the knights on a

mission to slay the dragon of terror? Look for them ` not here` ‘not there` and oh, here they are in a corner, covering their faces in shame! Yes, the brave dragon slayers have reason to be ashamed Despite

their bragging and sabre rattling, they cannot even tame a Tiger (The Island, 22 April 2006, editorial, p.8)

So, even if Mr Akashi had been able to have a private audience with the LTTE leader, he wouldn’t have achieved anything by way of taking the peace process forward With the Tigers, he may talk the hind legs off a donkey till the cows come home but still return to Tokyo via Colombo without any positive results Many before him tried to achieve peace in a similar manner only to realise in the end that they all had

been barking up the wrong tree (The Island, 09 May 2006, editorial, p.8)

It is time that a whip is cracked on the Tigers as the Canadians did If not, the LTTE will regard this

weakness as a blank cheque to continue to do as they please (The Island, 23 April 2006, editorial, p.8)

Japan is warned of the attempts to destroy the basic amenities of the people: “Japan should proceed very carefully on

this Sri Lankan issue without treading on the corns of the people” (The Island, 22 January 2003, editorial, p.8) because,

“There are already too many cooks involved in preparing this Peace Soup As the Sri Lankan variant of ‘Too many cooks’ goes Too many cooks soup, soup, soup!” (ibid.)

However, scholars of the International Relations justify the intervention They provided “different elements of the

safety net - the U.S and India providing security guarantees, Norway mediation, Japan funding, etc,” (Goodhand et al.,

2005) because, they identify “asymmetry in negotiations tends to favor the government” The government can access them but they are “not available to guerrilla groups” This situation pressured the Tamil militants in their dealings with the International Community to “search for legitimacy and political parity with the Government”

The Norwegian negotiators are continuously monitored and are seen accountable for the Ceasefire/Human Rights violations committed by the parties: “the Norwegian role in Sri Lanka's peace bid is meanwhile under the microscope, aggravated by the murder of this country's foreign minister three weeks ago The Norwegians must be held to account

for this assassination” (The Sunday Times, 04 September 2005, editorial, p.12) The Norwegians are blamed for their

not able to control the violations as fish trapped on the hook: “but Oslo's hope is that the Sri Lankans' infamous ability

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to forgive and forget, will get them off the hook” (ibid.); “they wash their hands off the matter” (The Island, 11 April

2005, editorial, p.8) Monitors are as “King Kekille known for his downright stupidity and absurd judgments That bovine king, like the present day monitors, would let the culprits hauled up before him off the hook and punish a third

party” because “they called for the government to disarm the so-called paramilitary groups” (The Island, 16 January

2006, editorial, p.8) The SLMM are engaged in “Sisyphean task” to bring the LTTE into the fold (The Island, 30 May

2006, editorial, p.8)- in Greek mythology, a cruel king of Corinth who was condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up the hill only to have it roll down again just before it reached the top The editorial titled as “Exchanging the devil for the

rascal?” (Rhetorical question) (The Sunday Times, 04 September 2005, editorial, p.12) regards even the rumored “UN

intervention” as far worse than Norwegian one

The Norwegians and SLMM are alleged as stealthy cats “pussyfooting on the peace process” (The Sunday Times, 04 September 2005, editorial, p.12) and “darlings of the so-called international community” (The Island, 11 April 2005,

editorial, p.8) They are like teachers, who “impart lessons to the Sri Lankan media on ‘responsible journalism’”; they take “swipes at the media and the critics of the terrorists”, but “do not contain the LTTE which poses a threat not only

to the peace process but also to their very lives” (ibid.) The approaches of the International Community are criticized as slanted, unreliable and distorted: “Mr Harrold’s skewed logic and we know Mr Harrold, we are asking too much from

a person like you” (The Island, 07 March 2005, editorial, p.8) When the EU banned the LTTE, Mr Bauer, the

Norwegian diplomat, commented that it would obstruct the ongoing peace process So he was compared to “King Kekille”:

Incidentally, Mr Bauer’s swipe at the EU may evoke one’s memories of that legendary king known for his bovine judgments—Kekille He always set the guilty party free and hanged the innocent It looks as if

we were not without descendants of King Kekille, at least in far away Norway (The Island, 22 August

2006, editorial, p.8)

a thorn in the side of the Nordic monitors (The Island, 26 August 2006, editorial, p.8)

The SLMM/Norwegian facilitation is criticized as a disabled, “practically paralysed” (The Sunday Leader, 02 July

2006, editorial, p.12) Whenever the LTTE launches violence, the SLMM does not blame just the LTTE but the

“ghosts” (The Island, 10 January 2006, editorial, p.8); “the Vikings appear to be a possessed lot Wherever they go, they see ghosts” (The Island, 12 June 2006, editorial, p.8) The powerful and active West is personified as a sleeping, inactive person: “The West Must Wake Up” (The Daily News, 07 January 2006, editorial, p.8):

a scarecrow with an old clay pot for the head and that it can do anything and get away with it; no reaction from the Co-Chairs, except for some diplomatic mumbo-jumbo; but the scarecrow looks on with nary a

nod of its much hallowed hollow head (The Island, 09 January 2006, editorial, p.8)

But, successful peace processes depend upon strong inter-personal relationships between protagonists and mediators

(Goodhand et al, 2005, p.31) The LTTE is “allowed to go hell for leather to thrust war on the other”; “compliments and praise sans action to rein in the Tigers smack of a hidden agenda and a sinister move to sweet-talk the government into giving in to the LTTE”; “other than helping rein in the Tigers and making them amenable; the Co-chairs to spell

out” (The Island, 09 January 2006, editorial, p.8) “The world-view and organizational culture of guerrilla organizations” has to be distinguished from “those of states” The intervention “involved building long-term, trusting

relationships with key individuals” (Goodhand et al, 2005, p.31) They say that “the precarious balance of political forces in the South” did not permit such mediation and faces criticism:

Negotiations are, no doubt, the best way to settle a dispute but forcing a legitimate state to subjugate its sovereignty to talks with an intransigent terror outfit without providing any safeguards is tantamount to the strangulation of democracy Or, it is like throwing a ewe into a Tiger’s cage for mating purposes The history of peace making in this country has been a long drawn process of throwing a countless number

ewes to the Tigers one after the other (The Island, 15 November 2006, editorial, p.8)

The call for intervention is interpreted as lack of vision: “President Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumaranatunghe 's call

for the United Nations to get more involved in the peace process here comes as a shot in the dark” (The Sunday Times,

04 September 2005, editorial, p.12) Postponing the conflict resolution is seen as far better than intervention:

“internationalizing of what is essentially still a domestic dispute” and “the best is that the peace process be on cold storage now” (ibid.) After Mahinda Rajapakse became the President, “ the people were given the impression that the meddlesome Vikings would be given a thundering kick each in their posterior and sent running whence they had come”

(The Island, 11 March 2006, editorial, p.8) The financial intervention in the Northeast is construed as an attempt at

rebuilding the pro-Tamil activities of the International Community are seen as shedding light on its intrigue with the LTTE:

(The LTTE) may have oiled many foreign palms during the past few decades With a great deal of funds

at its disposal, it is certainly in a position to offer any foreign official a bribe that he or she cannot refuse The UN should follow suit, as there are said to be some white skinned closet Tigers in its offices here

(The Island, 24 August 2006, editorial, p.8)

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World Bank Country Director Peter Harrold’s statement to the Sunday Times that the WB recognises the LTTE as a key stakeholder and it would consult the outfit on the disbursement of the funds (six billion rupees) to be channelled through state agencies for rebuilding in the LTTE-controlled areas sheds light on how the closet Tigers in international organisation are clawing Sri Lanka’s sovereignty

He sounds just like Mr Anton Balasingham, the ideologue of the LTTE

We predicted immediately after the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement, which the then UNF government swallowed hook, line and sinker, international agencies with LTTE sympathizers at the helm would in time to come recognise these areas as ‘an unofficial state’ and by extension the LTTE as the ‘government’

in those parts of the country (The Island, 07 March 2005, editorial, p.8)

The pro-Tamil activities of the International Community are hated as the activities of real tigers The rehabilitation

activities in the Northeast by international agencies are called as the LTTE intruded ones Allowing the International

Non-governmental Organizations and the International Community to intervene in the conflict under the pretext of

rehabilitation means “bartering away sovereignty for a mess of pottage” (The Island, 05 April 2005, editorial, p.8) The

editorial argues that while the culture of LTTE is the culture of violence, the culture of the International Community/international aid agencies is the culture of mercenary: “(LTTE) is an organisation that's driven by a culture

of guns as opposed to a mercenary one that the lending institutions and donors are wedded to” (The Sunday Times, 07

September 2003, editorial, p.12)

The International Community is seen as adding flavor to the conflict resolution cooking and as bidders in the auction:

“in a bid to give a special UN flavour to the Sri Lankan peace process” and “the Norwegian role in Sri Lanka's peace bid” (The Sunday Times, 04 September 2005, editorial, p.12) The International Community and Aid agencies are criticized as “the development wizards” (The Sunday Times, 07 September 2003, editorial, p.12) who are supposed to

have magical powers and their promises are just a mirage: “a mirage built on the illusory promises of the World Bank” (ibid.)

This type was cued in the frequent lexical chunk "refugee exodus", which by having the Jewish exodus from Egypt as a source, highlighted the ordeals of both the Tamil and Muslim communities The editorials argue that these situations strengthened the "holy" character of the decision to intervene Instances where the Tamil struggle was characterized as evil, demon were also included in this category The International Community are named as saviors in a biblical sense:

“as saviors of world economies” (ibid.) The economy is portrayed as “shambles”, and the assistance of the International Community is a trade off for peace (The Island, 23 February 2002, editorial, p.8)

6.3 The Scripts/Frames of the Intervention as aids, guaranty and insurance

These scripts cue in "courtroom" lexis (murder, guilty etc,) and mostly refer to Prapakaran, the leader of the LTTE, as

well as the Tamil militant movements This comes to legitimize the ‘war against terrorism’ in Sri Lanka The pro-UNP

(the United National Party) media refer them to the SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party), JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna), and JHU (Jathika Hela Urumaya) parties and leaders Metaphorical construction exploits the social aspect

of the conflict It is “a creative co-production by the readership” when political metaphors develop lives of their own (Chilton, 1996, pp.251-402) Media and politics are engaged in a collaborative interpretation of traditional metaphors by extending it Some political metaphors seem to have a “poetic effect” in the sense that they trigger very rich interpretations by opening a wide range of “weak implicatures” (Sperber and Wilson, 1995, pp.202-237)

The situation is “closely monitored by friendly countries” (The Daily News, 17 Feb 2003); “Sri Lanka and Sri

Lankans” have “many friends and well-wishers in the global arena who desire to help our country emerge successfully

out of the worst crisis to plague our society in centuries” (The Sunday Observer, 24 Nov 2002) But this had happened

only when they are pro-government or pro-Sinhalese: “a few of Sri Lanka's closest friends” and “Our close friends in

the international community” (The Daily News, 08 Dec 2005) “The international safety net to strengthen the peace

process” is termed as slogans to identify a company or its goals and as an advertising catchy phrase:

The "international safety net" is his (Ranil Wickramasinghe, the leader of the Opposition Party, the UNP) ongoing slogan, and its the same track on which he pursued the peace process having talks with the LTTE through Norwegian facilitation with the global community keeping sentinel During his tenure as Head of

Government, he used the ' international safety net ' to egg Norway on through the US (The Sunday Times,

04 Sept 2005)

The intervention is named as the sentry (ibid.) The international relations is looked at as the pressure of the

International Community on the LTTE: “the Government has urged the international community to exert maximum

pressure on the LTTE to desist from such attacks” (The Daily News, 08 Dec 2005); “to pressure the outfit to open up their ‘unofficial state’” (The Island, 07 March, 2005) The International Community is given the job of controlling only

the LTTE not the Sri Lankan Security Forces:

No fruitful session of talks could take place amid booming guns and exploding bombs These weapons of violence have to be silenced and hostilities have to be suspended if the proposed talks are to produce the desired results There should also be a solid guarantee against any attempt by the LTTE to reinforce its

military capability during talks (The Daily Mirror, 14 Sep 2006)

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The US support is praised as the model for democratic practice: “substantially boosted”; “should further energise the State's search”; “unflagging zeal”; “a vital segment of democratic opinion in the West is unambiguously siding with it”;

“being synonymous with democratic vibrancy”; “this citadel of representative governance in the West”; “this positive

opinion”; “a substantial segment of global opinion” (The Daily News, 07 Jan 2006) The development assistance is named as “bonanza” for building the state unto them (The Island, 27 May, 2004) The Northeast is usually described as

battered and impoverished areas, which threaten to pull in the development aid to the country:

The view of the Japanese is that there must be peace before they pump in the buckshee for the development of this country The World Bank is now echoing (though it's not a new song ) the view of the Japanese that there must be peace in the country before they pump in the dollars or the yen and the

kroners to develop it, especially in the battered and impoverished areas of the North and the East (The

Sunday Times, 07 Sept 2003)

It resists the World Bank and Japan’s precondition of peace There is a conflict of reasoning Though it accepts the Northeast as “battered and impoverished”, it belittles the situation in giving priority to the norm of “money first, peace later” It accuses the international aid institutions as the echoes of the International Community It can change and impact the attitudes of the Sinhala Majority Community to be positive The International Community should take “the risk of throwing some good money down the river in the greater cause of the pursuit of democracy and the rule of law in

a nation” (The Sunday Times, 07 Sep 2003) Development is, insisted here as, the real solution, not a political one:

Japanese envoy Yashushi Akashi learnt (Learner Frame) that the LTTE did not buy that line themselves (Traping Frame) The reason being, that over the decades, these billions have not filtered (Filter Frame) to the ordinary people, and this mess of pottage (Too many cooks-cooking-the soup Frame) mean nothing really to the ordinary folk of the north or south On the other hand, had the co-chairs invested some of these funds into the country (Topicalization), including the war-ravaged north and east (Secondary Position), and put their money where their mouth is, the people of the north and east would have accrued some tangible benefits (Apparent Compassion & Altruism Moves), and acted as a red-rag to the war-mongering LTTE leadership, whose clearly unreasonable demand of ISGA (Interim Self-governing Authority), and nothing but ISGA, seems to have escaped the co-chairs' wrath for the log-jam In this

Christmas season, all we can pray for is 'God save Sri Lanka’ (The Sunday Times, 26 Dec 2004)

6.4 The scripts/Frames of the India’s intervention as invasion

Half a century old history of the conflict is placed in a wider "regional security and pan-Tamil Eelam tendency" schema The lexicalization includes India in countering the LTTE, highlighting the nexus between Tamil Nadu and the Northeast

of Sri Lanka and the ethnic similarities that led to the support for the struggle By placing this war on these "chronicles", its nature and THEIR qualities have been highlighted in terms of their historic continuation India’s reluctance to send military assistance and ground troops is illuminated within a wider terrorist script

The danger to the personified India’s security (reminiscent of the Cold War era), has now become not China or the US,

but "terrorist organizations in the South Asia" By assigning the militant organizations the role of a gangster and exposing their illegal character, the discourse implies the need for "policing" They are "inside" India and this "policing"

is for the regional stability: “as the LTTE evolved, they turned closer home, to India, for their training and funding,

going on to master the art of the suicide bomber” (Neighborhood House script) (The Sunday Times, 14 Nov 2004)

The choice of Norway, its low key and limited agenda made sense in several respects First, Norway was seen as an

acceptable, non-threatening mediator (Goodhand et al, 2005, p.23) by the two protagonists as well as India, for whom

Sri Lanka “is more like India’s backyard” (The Daily Mirror, 06 May, 2004 and IS 22 Jan 2003); “a bully’s buddy”:

Minister of Tourism Anura Bandaranaike has told Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Nirupama Rao

a home truth He has asked her in plain English to mind her own business without getting too big for her

slippers He has reminded her of the bitter experience of J N Dixit, who had hubris and chutzpah oozing

from every diplomatic pore of his (The Island, 08 Sep 2006)

It regards India’s interference as hegemonic and self-interested Sri Lanka is portrayed as subservient to India and as a prostitute to the International Community and India:

Of course, (Inter-personal expression) who plays what role is essentially a concern of Sri Lanka, if we still do consider our country to be a sovereign, independent republic but in recent years our foreign policy has been to crawl on all fours to New Delhi, even on issues that do not concern India’s security And with this ‘Peace Process’, Madame Lanka has become everybody’s darling in the bazaar – anybody who has

currency in his pocket being welcome (The Island, 22 Jan 2003)

The conflict is made into a spectacle and India’s intervention is described as causing pain to the Sri Lankans (ibid.); Indian policies and interventions are seen as flawed The international relations is shown as problematic and antagonistic but “the hatchet was buried”:

According to the editorial, India’s approach is unstable and disastrous The LTTE air force is amplified as a threat to

India The Indian authorities choose to forget the way they served as patrons to the Tamil militants India’s realization

of the LTTE’s excess is criticized as too late and absurd: “it was only after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991

that India finally thought the LTTE had gone too far”; for “India now to lament that the Tigers have got rather above

themselves is both hypocritical and puerile and the disastrous 13th Amendment and the disastrous provincial councils system”; “Delhi has begun grumbling about the prowess of the Sea Tigers and the rebels' incipient air force”; “it is past

time that India's perfidy should be exposed but in the past, its relations with the Tamil militants are the shows of

bonhomie and camaraderie”; “to keep an ace up their sleeve to make sure they can turn on the tap of violence when the fancy takes them”; “Rajiv Gandhi and his viceroy in Colombo, Mani Dixit, had Sri Lanka dancing to their tune”; “New

Delhi changes its ways Like a scorpion, all it knows to do is sting” (ibid.) However, the media has always suppressed

the historical event of the attack of a Sinhala Soldier on Rajiv Gandhi and the Soldier’s popularity among the Sinhala community for having done so

The Research Analysis Wing (RAW) is accused as notorious and “continued to play ducks and drakes”; “RAW is so anxious to finance the JVP” The Tamil militants “were RAW's loyal henchmen, largely financed by the Indian

taxpayer” India’s intervention in 1987’s is seen as an invasion: India “intervened, demanding threatened to invade”;

“launched”; “entered Sri Lanka's territorial waters illegally and by force”; “‘in a blatant act of war, Indian Air Force fighters and bombers invaded Sri Lankan airspace and over-flew Jaffna”; “a naked display of power intended to cow the

Colombo government into submission” That the Tamils welcoming India is falsified as “the cheers of LTTE cadres

lining the streets of Jaffna, strewing flowers in their path” (The Sunday Leader, 15 May, 2005) Thus it suppresses the

fact that it was only the Sinhalese who were against the Indian intervention but India is always evasive: “New Delhi

clearly hit the ball into our court” (The Daily Mirror, 06 May, 2004)

In a sarcastic tone, India is called as mother: “Sri Lanka has come a full circle in its relationship with Mother India

"Some mother!" you may say, but the fact ‘remains that we have to learn to live with India” The caring mother India becomes an object of danger: “Mother India might threaten, cajole and bribe politicians into submission, but it is time the Sri Lankan people came to grips with the peril that lurks across the Palk Straits Mother India is running amok”

(ibid.) India is blamed as the paternalist to the Tamil insurrection “having kick-started the entire insurrection has done the Indian rope trick and washed their hands off” The international relations are criticized as unreliable, tricky and

evasive: “Their priorities today are not in the Wanni and other remote places but the Washington defence establishment

to play nuclear games” (The Sunday Leader, 02 July, 2006) India, it says, has no moral right to advise Sri Lanka on the

resolution and human rights issues:

Once a father blew a gasket on seeing a report card his son brought him after a school test It had single digits against most subjects "Is this how you are faring? You are a complete failure Shame on you!" the exasperated father yelled "No, dad, that’s not mine It’s one of your old reports I managed to dig out," said the son, handing over his own report (which was no better than the big man’s) Moral: Failures must

be wary of faulting other failures! India is behaving like that father and Sri Lanka like the son Crabs that

move sideways, it is said, want their young ones to walk straight! (The Island, 27 Nov 2006)

The traditional homeland of the Tamils was recognized by the merger of the North and the East by the Indo-Lanka Agreement 1987 Later it was declared as null and void by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 2006 It was regarded as a

“merger most foul”:

The real tragedy is not so much the made-in-India merger, which JRJ carried out under duress but the fact that it had been taken for granted for so long in spite of the public knowledge that it was illegal Later the

merger became a sort of holy cow which no one wished to touch (The Island, 17 Oct 2006)

The merger itself, as freely acknowledged, was forced down the country’s throat by India which having created the LTTE monster sought to defang it somewhat through the Indo–Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987 The long touted Tamil ``homeland’’ theory has been effectively and conclusively demolished and it is not necessary to re-tread that path all over again for the purposes of this commentary It is “the hot potato”

(The Island, 22 Oct 2006)

The metaphor found in the U.S as a World policeman (Chilton and Lakoff 1995, p.42) is transferred to India, which is seen as a regional policeman The justification of the ‘policing’ is given, in the presence of “criminals like the LTTE” Attributing criminal characteristics to the LTTE comes to suggest the causes of the war and maintains a polarisation of

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‘good’ and ‘bad’, thus strengthening the need for ‘policing’ or it is put in another law and order frame The Sunday

Times, The Daily News and The Island always comment on “India's policies and pressures” on the ethnic conflict and

peace process and its “continued support and neutrality” at present They always advocate “friendship with India” but

with caution

The media reflects the prejudice that “India consisting a sixty-five millions of Tamils is always supportive to the Sri

Lankan Tamils” The Sri Lankan Tamils are the settlers and invaders from South India and during the last two thousand

years of Sri Lankan history The suspicion towards Tamils is extended to the Indians in general So, there is always

alertness at any Indian involvement in Sri Lanka Col R Hariharan, a retired Indian Military Intelligence specialist on

South Asia, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90, associated with

the South Asia Analysis Group and the Chennai Centre for China Studies describes the Sinhalese obsession with the

Tamils:

“This convergence and confusion in view points of India and Sri Lanka will continue till the President is

dependent upon right wing Sinhala support This section of Sinhala polity has survived by building up the

so called "Dravidastan" bogey of Tamil Nadu together with the LTTE gobbling up parts of Sri Lanka”

(Hariharan, 2008)

The editorials always‘re-contextualize’ the theme of terrorism making the Tamil militants as the only agents of

violence

Terrorism is like water, which takes the shape of the vessel it is in The reason why the world has failed to

remove the scourge of terror is that the world powers have got distracted by the labels of their own

making This has led to the emergence of two types of terrorists—‘their terrorists’ and ‘our terrorists’

Some have sought to explain the double standards on the part of the world leaders Those who are waging

the global war on terror are driven not by their desire to rid the world of terrorism or their concern for

Christianity but by their thirst for oil as well as other politico-economic interests (The Island, 29 Sep

2006)

“‘The Tamil Problem’ can be resolved through discussions and negotiations in a civilised manner with any

government.” The Island, (07 Dec 2004) pointing out the failure, says: “some Tamils complain that these problems

have remained for decades and nothing been done about them and certainly there are many problems to be resolved

which have dragged on over decades” but “in other quarters Tamils enjoy even greater rights than the Sinhalese such as

the freedom to live freely in any part of the country enjoying their rights although no Sinhalese or Muslim could do so

in the Northern Province” (Apparent contrast Move) However, Hariharan, (2008) distinguishes the effects from the

causes:

“President Rajapaksa’s government has repeatedly given an impression that once the LTTE is vanquished

it would be all smooth sailing with the Tamil population automatically joining the democratic

mainstream It appears to identify the LTTE as the problem, rather than as the manifestation of the

problem.”

The North and East of the island have been claimed as the traditional homeland by the Tamil-speaking community The

territoriality of the Tamil and the Sinhala communities has instilled the idea of cultural nationalism and

ethno-nationalism in contrast to statist ethno-nationalism (i) on 16th October, 2006, in a judgment that could have far-reaching

consequence, the Sri Lankan Supreme Court declared as illegal the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces to

form a single Tamil-dominated North-Eastern Province as the place of “historical habitation” Gans, (2003) of the

Tamils (Ponnambalm, 1983) (ii) on 14 May 2007, the SLFP government formally declared that Sri Lanka be a "unitary

state" instead of the International Community- advocated ‘federal state’ In parallel to the Tamils claim of the Northeast

as their traditional homeland, the Sinhalese make a counterclaim of the whole island as their traditional homeland The

Daily Mirror (19 Oct 2006) applauds the Supreme Court judgement on the de-merger as “path-breaking” The political

campaign of the Sinhala nationalists is seen as “persistent” It is a “legal remedy” to the ill-treatment or infected disease

of the Sinhala community, “the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces” which was “illegal” It constructs an

emotional attachment to this verdict as it is “to their heart’s content” The editorial resistance is transferred as the

Whatever the causes that led to these shameful incidents, the bestial acts that were committed on

innocent citizens of this country cannot be excused It was a time when India for the first time appeared in

the form of a monster attempting to gobble up this little island (Binary: Aggressors versus Victims)

“The bestial acts” of the ‘Sinhala goondas’ during the ethnic riot in 1983 are compared equally with ‘the monsterization

of India’ and ‘the terrorization of the Tamil militants,’ so that the intensive effect of the former is lessened Now it is the

Sri Lanka which was the victim The demonization frame is evoked in the nature of beast positioned against monster

which is far worse

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7 Findings and Discussion

In Sri Lankan context, the discourse themes help the construction of binary positions, through the use of US and THEM According to van Dijk (1991, p.13), the term ‘THEM’ refers to deviance and threats, viz., threats to OUR country, space, population composition, and ethnic representation in political power, employment, education etc It recognizes the concerns of dominant group, their prejudices, group norms and goals, as well as dominant ideologies He says that ethnic minorities are linked to the prominence and availability of the overall social cognitions such as (a) Socio-cultural difference and lack of adjustment and tolerance; (b) Deviance of established (dominant) norms (including terrorism, violence and crime); (c) Competition for scarce resources (educational, economic and natural recourses)

Johnson’s (2005) project titled as Proposition 203: A Critical Metaphor Analysis draws on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980)

work with metaphor analysis to uncover the rhetorical strategies applied by supporters of the English for the Children organization during the 2000 Arizona Proposition 203 campaign The data were from three sources: (a) The Arizona Republic; (b) the East Valley Tribune; and (c) the 2000 Arizona Voter Information Pamphlet Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough &Wodak 1997; Johnstone 2002; Schiffrin 2002), Santa Ana’s (2002) metaphor analysis framework was applied to expose the metaphors used to denigrate bilingual education and those who support it, as well

as the underlying ideology behind biased legislation like Proposition 203 Metaphors were analyzed in terms of the cognitive entailments produced by their source and target domains In general, the overall debate between bilingual education and Proposition 203 was characterized as a WAR The results show that extra emphasis was placed on portraying bilingual education as a FAILURE and situating minority-language students as VICTIMS Conversely, English was enshrined in the media as the key to the “American Dream.” This work exemplifies the analytical power of critical discourse analysis by illustrating how language is utilized as a tool for political ends

After the victory over the Tamil militants in May 2009, the editorials almost backgrounded the significance of resolving the conflict politically and started commenting on the positive dimensions of the victory over terrorism, especially economic development and the outcomes of the provincial, parliamentary and presidential elections and resettlement and rehabilitation All the editorials constructed a situation that economic development of the country is the real solution to the ethnic conflict

In the metaphors, scripts and frames of the International Intervention in the peace process as a powerful and paternalist

force, there are two binaries: (1) Pressure on the LTTE versus on the Government and (2) the Good versus the Evil They project US as the angels and THEM as the demons, the international community/USA as teachers, as rescuers and

saviors, as paternalist and sponsor, as the Almighty and Omnipotent and as the World hegemon and world policeman,

as the insurer, and as the crusaders of democracy The ethnic conflict resolution is metaphorized as the white man burden The ideological and attitudinal positions behind these metaphorical projections are that the intervention is accused as international conspiracy and hegemonic interference, the intervention is preferred to be dominantly a War on Terrorism and Norway, the facilitator, is criticized as the proxy of the USA

Metaphorical Framing Analysis is an apt tool in discourse analysis Ross (2002) used it in the study on ‘An American Frame: New York Times Editorial Discourse on Palestine and Israel’ This research examines the editorial framing of international violence and terrorism through its commentary about Palestinian/Israeli conflict before and after this

“critical discourse moment (Sep 11 Attack)” The present study owes much to Ross’ analysis to study the possible effects

of major news events upon newspaper framing Gamson (1992) has called them as the cataclysmic events that tend to galvanize public attention It examines the interaction between news discourse and the construction and negotiation of public discourse about issues The present study attends to the discursive strategy of the binary positions extended to trifurcated classification that categorizes conflict as "yours, mine, or ours" in this framing analysis

In the metaphors, scripts and frames of the Intervention as Inappropriate Intrusion, there are four binaries: (1)

Intervention versus interference, (2) Pro-LTTE versus Pro-GoSL, (3) Terrorism versus democracy and (4) Internationalization versus intra-nationalization They project the intervening countries and international Non-

governmental Organizations as dictators and ‘our Johnnies who come lately into foreign affairs’, as teachers, as intriguers plotting with the LTTE, as aliens indifferent and ignorant and as stealthy cats Norway’s cool weather is compared to that of the Wanni as hot Norway is fish trapped on the hook These countries are ‘too many cooks preparing the peace soup’ They are metaphorized as a sleeping, inactive persons, as mercenary wedded to the LTTE, as adding flavor to the conflict resolution cooking, as bidders in the auction, as the development wizards and their promises as illusive mirage, as critics of the media and of the critics of the terrorists’ and as pilgrims of peace The ideological and attitudinal positions behind these metaphorical projections are that the Norwegians are blamed as unable

to control the Ceasefire Agreement/Human Rights violation in facilitation process, the international community favours the LTTE and the aspirations of the Tamils, the international community is in intrigue with the LTTE to destroy the sovereignty of Sri Lanka, the Tamil-oriented Northeast rehabilitation projects of international agencies are named as the LTTE intruded ones and the ethnic conflict resolution is 'over internationalized' and 'the international community-imposed' and it is not practicable

In the metaphors, scripts and frames of the Intervention as Aids, Guaranty and Insurance, there are two binaries: (1)

Friend versus Enemy and (2) Aid without condition versus Aid with Condition They project the international

community as the providers of the international safety net, the international relations as slogans, and the international community as the guarantors The development assistance is projected as bonanza and as water flowing The ideological and attitudinal positions behind these metaphorical projections are that the Sri Lankan and international

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community relations should be seen as the pressure of the international community on the LTTE, the international community should control only the LTTE not the government forces, and the development aid should be so generous without any serious conditions on the ethnic conflict resolution

In the metaphors, scripts and frames of the India’s Intervention as Invasion and Hegemony, there are four binaries: (1)

interference versus intervention, (2) historical causes versus ahistorical causes, (3) Indian versus Sri Lankan security and (4) the Tamil minority community treachery versus the Sinhala Majority community innocence in the Rajiv Assassination They project Sri Lanka as India’s backyard and as India's servant The Sinhala majority community is

projected as innocent to India and the Tamil minority community as treacherous to India India and Indian intervention

are portrayed as Machiavellian and the Research and Analysis Wing (the Indian Intelligence) as the evil designer India’s intervention in 1987 is projected as invasion India was ‘the repenting mother’ and the Tamil militancy as her troublesome child India’s international relation is figured as playing games and India as a regional policeman The ideological and attitudinal positions behind these metaphorical projections are that Indian intervention is considered as hegemonic interference and seen as unstable and disastrous

The media exploit the inter-textual and interpersonal functions of discourse to make persuasive statements about the ethnic conflict and peace contextualized and co-textualized in the scripts of “war against terrorism”, “global security”,

“New World Order,” “national security and sovereignty” ‘The International Community’s double standard’ is constructed through these grand narratives The International Community’s sympathy towards the Tamil community and their contacts with the Tamil leadership, were seen as internationalization of the conflict and supporting terrorism and separatism These relations were hinted as creating ‘many problems’ The Tamils’ political struggle can be easily solved once ‘the terrorism’ is suppressed – the major obstacle for reaching a solution –whereas the problem of party rivalry and absence of southern consensus are neglected

Ross and Bantimaroudis (2006) researched on ‘Frame Shifts and Catastrophic Events: The Attacks of September 11,

2001, and New York Times's Portrayals of Arafat and Sharon’ It is a Quantitative content analysis of the editorials and news coverage of the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian territories in The New York Times for one year The present study is also interested in the frames of ‘global war on terrorism’ developed after this event It examines the hypothesis that following major global events, such as the September 11 attacks, media frames of distinct, yet thematically related coverage shift to rally around the government elite frame Evidence partially supports frame shifting but indicates that frames also become more diverse rather than echo dominant views

The editorials de-legitimize the power of the international community over Sri Lanka within aggressor versus victim frame They always legitimize the positions of the Sinhala community and de-legitimize those of the Tamil community The ethno-nationalist extremism and its intransigence in denial of devolving power are backgrounded They gloat on the illusive scripts and frames of globalization and national security and exploit these universal terms of abstraction Thus the media pay less attention to the violations of human rights of the minorities at the national level

Stability and security of the states and regions under the pretext of the global and regional commitments of India and USA are presented through the use of ‘Deliberative future-oriented rhetoric’ Thus the International Relations are foregrounded disregarding the intra-national relations Globalization and political liberalism can be a cover-up for discrimination at the intra-state level for pursuing ethno-nationalist governance and lopsided foreign policy interests So

‘the present-oriented epideictic (ceremonial) rhetoric’ is developed to support ‘suppressing terrorism and violence’ The

‘past-oriented judicial (forensic) rhetoric’ is used in balancing the dominant community-induced political causes of the conflict: (1) the invasions of the Tamils from South India from the ancient period; 2) the assistance and support of India

in the 80s; 3) the west’s support to the Tamil community and the militants till now

In their persuasive strategy with the rhetoric elements of logos, ethos, and pathos, the use of emotional appeals shows the negative impacts of the struggle and stresses the need for economic development Ethical proofs are developed to contain terrorism which serves the political interests of Sri Lanka Logical reasoning and proofs retain the unitary nature

of Sri Lanka by integrating the political and economic interests in the international relations Economic globalization (‘political globalization’) in Sri Lanka implicates the International Community in the conflict in the name of safeguarding their investment interests so that the political governance and sovereignty of Sri Lanka can be ‘insured’ in these power blocs

Thus, as the literature review of the past researches revealed, an important characteristic of ideological discourse is its reliance on binary language For example, according to Said (1978), the ideology, Orientalism, is a dichotomous Western worldview based on “an ontological and epistemological distinction” (p 2) between the so-called Orient and the West In addition to using a dichotomous language, ideological construction uses an essentialist discourse,

universalizing certain traits and characteristics (ibid.)

8 Conclusion

The basic assumption of the research problem has been established: the metaphorical editorial discourse constructions

(of journalists and editors of the Sri Lankan elite media) hide or express their ideological and attitudinal positions in subtle and mild forms The media’s failure in distinguishing “Sinhala people” from “Sri Lankan people” has alienated

the minority communities to lose confidence in media’s contribution to nation-building Both the Sinhala and Tamil Press have played a negative role in sharpening the ethnic conflict The discourse generally lacks the well-known (obligatory) Resolution category (Gamson, 1992) The minority groups and the International Community are assumed

to create all kinds of problems for the majority The ideological value structure of such editorials emphasizes order,

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authority, and control: the Tamil community should be obedient, patriotic, and loyal, and if they do not obey the law, then they will have to suffer the ‘inevitable actions’ of the radical Sinhala nationalists The editorials reveal the ‘intent and content’, ‘insular and secular’ approaches, and ‘commands and demands’ of the dominant community

The findings are the result of an analysis of a particular genre in its time and space Therefore, this study claims that since the genre of the editorial is dynamic and always in flux due to the change in the contexts, especially the editorial committees, the Sri Lankan English newspaper editorial discourse may have different positions in future Hence, these findings need not be construed as fixed positions The changing current political circumstances in this post-war, development-focused scenario may positively or negatively influence the ideological and attitudinal positions of the media elites in Sri Lanka This work has challenged long-held beliefs about the media’s engagement in constructing a positive atmosphere, especially amidst the intensive emotional and ideological historical conflict The media seem to be inadequate in revealing the forces underlying ethnic violence in the context of political and economic dynamics of globalization

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