Each culture has its own system of address forms, which vary not only across languages but across the varieties of the same language. This fact confirms the impact that sociocultural factors assert on the set of address forms and their functioning. The present study is focused on a sub-category of address forms, namely, terms of endearment, which are explored in American English and Syrian Arabic family discourse. The study aims to specify the set of the terms of endearment in two contexts and reveal similarities and differences in their usage related to their pragmatic meaning, im/politeness, and communicative values. It also investigates how frequently and in what contexts terms of endearment are used in the American and Syrian family circle. The dataset, which includes 312 interactions with 199 terms of endearment (87 English and 112 Arabic) were obtained from 20 hours of American drama television series, This is us and 25 hours of a Syrian drama television series, Rouzana. The data were categorized and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively implementing discourse analysis theory, politeness theory, and cultural studies. The results of our analysis have shown that the American English and Syrian Arabic terms of endearment are used as indicators of personal attitude and emotion, as well as markers of informality, closeness, and emotive politeness. They indicate that in Syrian Arabic, terms of endearment can also express respect and deference, they are more variable, expressive, and conventional which may suggest that they are a salient feature of the Arabic family discourse. The findings of the present paper add to the existing writings on forms of address and can be useful for further research in sociolinguistics, cross-cultural pragmatics, and intercultural communication.

By displaying a certain fragment of reality in the linguistic consciousness of a person, socio-cognitive categories convey important information about the social structure of society, the lingua-cultural identity of its representatives and the values they share. This study focuses on kinship terms in the Syrian Arabic and Hindi languages. It is aimed at identifying similarity and the cultural specificity of kinship terms in two linguistic cultures and explaining the identified features through types of cultures and cultural values. The research is based on kinship terms that name consanguineal (blood) and affinal (non-blood) relatives in Arabic and Hindi. The material was collected through analysis of terms in dictionaries as well as anonymous questionnaires and observation. The collected material was systematized and analyzed using comparative, definitional, semantic and lingua-cultural methods. The results showed that both languages have a rich system of kinship terms, in which the line of kinship (paternal or maternal), the type of kinship (relatives by blood or through marriage), and age are recorded. They testify to the We-identity of the representatives of the cultures under consideration for whom family relations are of great value, and to the importance of determining the place of each member in society in the social system. The revealed features showed that age differences are more important in Indian society than in Syrian, although respect for elders is one of the most important values of both cultures. The results obtained once again confirm the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of language, which in turn provides new data for other areas of humanities.

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The purpose of the study is to conduct a contrastive analysis of American English and Syrian Arabic address forms and account for their pragmatic characteristics within the settings of family and acquaintances. The scientific novelty of the study lies in its new data displaying the influence of social and cultural context on language use, which may lend support to the existing literature that aims at understanding the constructions of social relationships. The findings of the study have shown that the American culture is individualistic, in which the communicative style is oriented toward flattening the hierarchy. By contrast, the Syrian culture is collectivistic, in which the communicative style is age- and status-oriented.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the clinical, radiological and histopathological features of a rare grade 2 variant of meningioma. Patients and methods: A retrospective analysis of the data of 6 patients who underwent surgery for a histopathologically proven chodroid meningioma. Results: Six patients' pathology reports showed chordoid meningioma. On imaging, four lesions (67%) were isointense in T1 while the other two were hypointense. On T2 weighted images, four patients were hyperintense (67%) and displayed non-restricted diffusion pattern with elevated values on corresponding apparent diffusion coefficient maps. Pathologically, chordoid elements varied vastly among cases, radiological characters corresponded to choroid elements in all cases.Conclusion: choirdoid meningioma, as a rare meningioma entity, should be suspected pre-operatively in cases with high signal intensity in T2, homogenous enhancement and increased apparent diffusion coefficient, gross total surgical excision is curative.