English-Persian Word Formation with an Eye on Culture and Thought Effects

Subject Areas : Journal of Studies in Learning and Teaching English

Ebrahim Abedi ¹ , Lotfollah Yarmohamadi ² , Naser Rashidi ³

1 - Shiraz Azad University
2 - Shiraz Azad University
3 - Shiraz University

Received: 2012-02-09 Accepted : 2012-05-09 Published : 2012-06-01

Keywords: culture, thought, word formation, semantic domain,

Abstract :

This research aims to introduce culture and thought -within Whorfian hypothesis-of the target language to EFL learners and helps them get a deeper idea over the root and reference of words and thereby keep them longer in memory. To test the hypothesis Orwell’s Animal Farm was chosen along with two translations in Persian as well as a Persian short story titled Ahu-ye Kuhi . Required data were extracted from the aforesaid books with no sampling procedure applied but the whole books were taken into consideration. The researchers made use of syntactic discussions like grammatical gender in addition to semantic domains like colors, planets, flowers, religion, and others in a contrastive way. Any word signaling one of these domains was highlighted and analyzed through examples. The domains revealed a high rate of effect on the formation of words both in English and Persian with basic changes in between. It was concluded that the roles of thought and cultural domains on the vocabulary systems of the two languages are effective and crucially important particularly in that EFL learners get familiar with the culture and thinking styles of the target language which paves the way for learning the language easier.