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In this study, an attempt is made to probe two sets of widely used ELT textbooks in the Iranian context based on the representation of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). In accord with the theoretical assumptions underlying ICC, we analysed seven English textbooks to find out how they take into consideration the intercultural components including intercultural knowledge, intercultural attitude, and intercultural skills. This paper manifested that unlike the locally produced Iranian Vision series, the Top Notch series was found to take a much broader international approach in representing cultural elements associated with the development of language learners' ICC. The Vision series has failed to include diverse intercultural components. This alienation is highlighted through insufficient references to the target (or other) cultures, whereby it results in the deprivation of language learners from the authentic, real-life cultural contexts, which adversely affects the development of language learners' intercultural competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the intricate dynamics of student–faculty interactions in asynchronous online communication, focusing in particular on professors’ responses to non-native English-speaking students’ (NNSs’) favor-asking during online exchanges. Through qualitative analysis of email exchanges, this research examines how students articulate their concerns and requests for grade reassessment, and how professors respond to such instances of favor-asking. This study indicates that politeness is a more critical issue in asynchronous email communication than whe face-to-face interactions. The findings reveal that students often challenge professors’ authority by questioning assessment fairness, whereas professors employ disaffiliative strategies to maintain academic rigor and uphold their authority. This study highlights the role of cultural norms and politeness strategies in shaping these interactions, suggesting that a lack of awareness regarding these norms can lead to misunderstanding and escalate tensions. Furthermore, this research underscores the necessity of teaching pragmatic communication skills to non-native speakers to enhance their engagement and effectiveness in academic discourse. This study illuminates the complexities of these exchanges, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by both students and faculty in the context of assessment and communication in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to describe how metapragmatic devices can exert change in indirect reporting. This was achieved through the analysis of naturally occurring indirect reports during interaction. Specifically, indirect reports were extracted from a series of expert talks (≈800 minutes) broadcast by Iranian national TV. The analysis of these expert talks showed cases of communicative 'know-hows', where Persian speakers reflectively managed the dialogue in terms of their interpretation of the original utterance. Accordingly, Persian speakers negotiated the degree of reflexivity by changing the verb of saying and by adhering to specific syntactic markers. Thus, contrary to previous research, the present study revealed that Persian indirect reports can benefit from some syntactic markers to show that speakers do not perfectly adhere to the pragmatic force of the original speaker's utterance. By contrast, Persian speakers use classes of markers, or contextualisation clues (Gumperz 1982), to show their control over the utterances. These markers are generally used to indicate politeness, uncertainty, and summarisation in Persian indirect reports. Such markers can distinguish indirect reports in Persian from those of other languages such as English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]