Advertising is a prominent discourse type which is inevitably linked to a range of disciplines. This study examines the language of a non-product advertisement, not isolating it from its interaction with other texts that surround it. It is based on Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework in which there are three levels of analysing texts: description, interpretation and explanation. In addition to analysing the advertisement at hand in terms of these three levels, the study includes semistructured interviews conducted with English language teacher candidates. The purpose is to explore the social function of advertising not only from sounds, sights and language of the text, but also assess the impact of these on teacher candidates' views. To this end, three teacher candidates were interviewed; they were asked to explain how they related the advertisement to their own context. Findings from the inductive content analysis of interviews point to the fact that there is a close connection between the advertisement discourse and the "teacher" image in the minds of participants. The core results imply that integrating discourse analysis activities in teacher education programs can be fruitful in regard to gaining insight into how to question ideologies critically and resist manipulations. Thus, teacher candidates will be able to teach their future students how the use of language influences our understanding of social or moral issues transmitted through media.

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In today's world, the great demand for using English entails language users to be pragmatically competent so that they could adapt themselves to differing requirements of various contexts. Within those contexts, some factors such as the culture of the target language, the speech act used in the interaction, status and gender of the interlocutors are accepted as essential components. Refusals, one of the most difficult speech acts to perform based on their face threatening nature, were chosen as the main concern of the present study. In an attempt to find out what kind of refusal strategies are employed by Turkish pre-service teachers of English, 27 first year students (14 males and 13 females) at Çukurova University were randomly chosen. Data for the study were collected via a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) in which the participants were to respond nine scenarios (three lower, three equal and three higher interlocutors). Data analysis concentrated on two main variables: gender of the participants and the status of the interlocutors. In addition to those, refusal combinations utilized by the participants was another focal point of the study. The whole qualitative data were discussed through descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses, and "excuse, reason, explanation" was found to be the most frequent refusal strategy used by the participants. Another important finding is that males were found to prefer directly uttering "no" more frequently than females. It was also found that the number of the strategy combinations increases as the status of the interlocutor rises.

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Article InfoMission statements are increasingly becoming an inevitable component of educational institutions. The main reason behind this can be attributed to the fact that they are determinants for the accreditation of schools in today's competitive educational arena. Thus, gaining an insight into the emphasized concepts in mission statements of primary schools is essential since primary schools are the places where the education starts for every single individual. In this regard, the aim of this study is to provide a document analysis of mission statements of Turkish public primary schools which are governed by the Ministry of National Education. To achieve this, mission statements of 500 primary schools across Turkey were compiled; particularly schools from the Western and the Eastern parts of the country were randomly selected and included in the analysis. As well as the comparison between mission statements of schools located in two opposite sides of the country, a special attention was paid to whether any reference to language teaching and learning was available in the mission statements. The whole data were analysed via content analysis. The results give in-depth information about common and differing points among mission statements. The most common mission was found to be educating individuals who valued Atatürk's principles and reforms underpinning the Turkish education system. Besides, a number of distinct missions