English is an SVO (Subject, Verb, Object) word order language. This canonical SVO pattern is the default unmarked word-order configuration typical of English, which makes this language to be classified under the typology of SVO languages. However, driven by the major purpose of language as an instrument of human communication and social interaction, and as a semantic system for making meanings, addressors sometimes depart in their discourse from this basic canonical order of constituents where a grammaticalized system like inversion takes place, resulting in inverted constructions. Through testing and developing the Degree of Focus Hypothesis, proposed by Huffman (1993), this study, which employed a mixed methods research design, sought to explore the communicative and semantic values of inversion; and the pragmalinguistc functions of preposing, i.e., clause-initial adjuncts, to the pragmatic process of communication. The study confirmed the Degree of Focus Hypothesis where the hypothesized notion of concentration of attention stemming from inversion was found to be applicable. The paper stressed that what triggers inversion or non-inversion is a certain communicative effect such as focus rather than a relation of formal determination where one element determines mechanically the form or appearance of another. A contribution to linguistic and educational research, the paper, therefore, highlighted the importance of a human factor in the functioning of language and emphasized the need to break away from grammar-based teaching (traditional grammar) to discourse-based language teaching (communicative grammar) where languaging rather than language should be the focus of language teaching and learning.

Since its de facto creation, Israel has endeavoured to legitimize its existence and mystify the ethnic cleansing it perpetrated in 1948, systematically working to efface historic Palestine from the Arab and global public memory. Visual discourse plays a constitutive role in the construction and preservation of national themes. This paper, a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of visual representations, aimed to examine how visual representation serves to memorialize and reconstruct national themes, and so how this semiotic mode of representation can act as a form of counter-hegemonic discourse against attempts at the memoricide of the other and mystification of history. Using Kress and van Leeuwen’s(2006) grammar of visual design as a framework for visual analysis, this social semiotic research analyzed the visual structure of a number of Nakba images to examine the role of visual representations in the memorialization of key Palestinian national themes, and so the reconstruction of historic Palestine. The study shows how national themes visually represented, such as ethnic cleansing and Right of Return, serve as a constant reminder of the Nakba, stressing their sociopolitical and emancipatory role in shaping the Palestinian collective consciousness about their past, present and future. Exploration of further visual signs can reveal more the function of visual and multimodal communication in the preservation of important national themes and role in national liberation.

The current study aims to investigate students’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of online learning implementation in ESL classrooms and how gender differences influence their perceptions. Participants were 60 undergraduate students from a private university in Perak, Malaysia, who enrolled in English language courses taken during the shift to online learning at the institution. The study utilizes a quantitative approach where data were collected using an adapted questionnaire in the form of Google Form. Data collected were analysed with independent samples t-test using the SPSS software. Overall, the majority of the students agreed that the implementation of online learning posed challenges for them. The students, however, showed unbiased opinions towards the benefits of the online learning implementation in the ESL classrooms. Based on the analysis, the study found that gender differences do not influence the students’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of online learning. The findings indicated that students do face difficulties in learning online and that there is a need for the lecturers to improve the teaching practices and strategies for online learning. The institution management is also recommended to provide better resources and technical support for effective online learning.

This work addresses a number of crucial themes in the history of linguistic enquiry — themes that are still relevant today. Aiming to encourage multiple language learning, and give potential stakeholders momentum to provide supportive multilingual environments for children, the paper first addresses the question of the origins of language or the naturalism-conventionalism debate, highlighting children’s innate potentiality for multilingual acquisition. Second, the paper highlights the pragmalinguistic functions of language, shedding light on the language-thought debate, and illustrating the centrality of language to our life, relations and the exercise of power. The paper, next, deals with the nature-nurture debate or the fantastic and prodigious potentiality of children to develop multicompetence in multiple languages with enviable unselfconscious ease. Drawing on records of longitudinal data comprising the linguistic development of three children raised as simultaneous bilinguals, the paper finally tackles the central theme of the study, providing evidence — both theoretical and empirical — that childhood multilingualism is not only legitimate and highly possible without any detriment of any kind, but also a great asset and a source of power; and that children who have the opportunity to expand their multilingual meaning potential from infancy or early childhood, and to maintain them throughout their lives are fortunate indeed; and therefore concludes that families and policymakers that can offer this critical opportunity to their offspring and citizens are highly encouraged to do so.

This paper examines UN resolutions 242 and 338 to find whether these two milestone texts of UN discourse on the Palestine Question, taken as the basis for “the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” genuinely and practically work towards an amicable solution to this prolonged problem, this almost century-long unequal conflict. The study seeks to find out whether such UN discourse is linguistically structured to achieve such an end; with the ultimate goal being offering us “the possibility that we might profitably conceive the world in some alternative way” (Fowler, 1981 cited in Jaworski & Coupland, 1999, p. 33) as is the case with any discourse study that adopts ‘critical’ goals. The study therefore employs Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) — an approach within the pluralistic framework of CDA. The findings show that temporisation of the Palestine Question has been an indirect result of the bad faith and linguistic manipulation of the powerful forces; that the way these discourses are structured is responsible for perpetuating rather than ending Israeli occupation. So rather than redressing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and ending Israeli occupation as the core of the Palestine Question, UN discourse is found to protract the status quo — the consolidation of Israeli power and expansionism.