Markers of Prominence in Persian General Practitioners’ Books and Online Medical Journals

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran

2 Senior Linguistic Consultant, SIL International, University of Reading, United Kingdom

Abstract

Giving certain elements more significance than others in the same context is called prominence. This study aims at identifying and comparing markers of focal and thematic prominence in Persian general       practitioners’ books (GPBs) and Persian online medical journals (OMJs) based on Levinsohn’s model. The data were gathered from 100 texts from two written Persian GPBs and 100 texts from two Persian OMJs. SPSS software version 24 was used to evaluate the data. Results demonstrated “emphatic   markers” such as fæqæt ‘just’ were used for focal prominence much more frequently in OMJs than in GPBs. In addition, significant differences were observed between GPBs and OMJs with regard to the markers of focal prominence and prominence in general, but not with regard to markers of thematic prominence. This may be related to the twofold effect of the different discourse types and different addressees of these texts.

Keywords

References

 
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Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies
Volume 14, Issue 2
November 2022
Pages 45-64

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