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Persuasion in media discourses produces certain meanings and mobilizes public attitudes in a set direction. Logical appeals, for instance, are created to gather public support for a particular viewpoint, which propagates a specific cause. This paper critically investigates the newspaper's use of persuasion strategies employed by editorial writers to represent the 2011 Arab Spring conflict. The data consist of 20 newspaper editorials published in the Arab News (AN) belonging to the Arab region yet presumed as a newspaper's voice from a non-Arab spring country. The purpose is to probe journalistic roles and discursive positions taken in representing the conflict. The content analysis technique is used to examine the selected editorials. Findings reveal that the newspaper (AN) constructed the events persuasively and portrayed different aspects of the uprising. This study points out that editorial writers relied on several logical appeals to, almost, set a pro-Arab Spring stage. In addition, it has been noticed that the AN adopted a more compassionate attitude towards protesters' losses, and their ambitions for bringing a 'change' were justified, generally, than the ruling authorities. Overall, the findings reaffirm the media's contribution to represent conflicts in different societies under social, cultural, political, and national parameters by using certain tools of persuasion. This study recommends that future research should draw a comparison between news reports and editorial opinions, and investigate post-Arab Spring situations.

This paper examines how the Cultural Model of teaching literature in the Applied linguistics scenario can adopts a trans-disciplinary approach to teaching of language and skills courses. The premise stated is that it does not focus merely on language learning but also makes an impact on other variables like learners' autonomy and motivation to learn. In the context of EFL, this study also premises that the Cultural Model assists in enhancing the learners' autonomy and learners' motivation as literary texts are directly related to their cultural consciousness. The Cultural Model allows both the teachers and the students to go beyond the lexis and consider the literary aspects of a text as it is culturally closer to their consciousness. A questionnaire (for students) and semi structured interview (for teachers) were designed to study the perception of teachers and students and find the relationship between such variables as Learners' Autonomy and Learners' Motivation with Cultural Model of teaching literature. The study carried out multiple linear regression tests on a sample of 120 EFL respondents. The data was analyzed with SPSS 25.0 to ascertain the influence of predictors and dependent variables. Results showed the evidence of significant relationship between Learners' Autonomy and Learners' Motivation with Cultural Model of teaching literature. This shows that the Cultural Model of teaching literature acted as a predictor to enhance Learners' Autonomy and Learners' Motivation. The study recommends that students should not be passive receivers of the teaching content with undeveloped skills but should build in them autonomy and motivation to read, interpret, evaluate and criticize a literary text. Besides, teachers should also make efforts to make students read literary texts in cultural contexts.

Saudi Vision 2030 is a scheme; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has formulated to realize its mainstream economic, social, and administrative goals. Accordingly, the Kingdom strategizes to implement this transformative Vision. The current research aims to analyze how American media has reported several events, actions, and policies in line with Saudi Vision 2030. Thus, the question posed is how an image of the transformative Saudi Kingdom has been presented by American media discourse, in line with Vision 2030. The study is substantial for the Kingdom to ascertain how the world has responded to its Vision. Moreover, in a world with media as a dominant directing agency, it is imperious for the Kingdom to keep an eye on its image in the global community. The research is primarily a quantitative study based on the corpus approach to study the designated media discourse. A specialized corpus of 150,000 words is compiled and analyzed through a variety of corpus tools. The results reveal that American newspapers have given limited representation of the Vision and related activities. Their media usually highlights the pre-existing features of the Kingdom. On the other hand, there are very occasional references to some new aspects like the transformation of the economy, promotion of tourism, revision of the society, etc., which are being implemented in the Kingdom. The study suggests that the Kingdom needs to brief the Western world for an enriched campaign of its contemporary image.

Discourse markers, as words or phrases, play a significant role in promoting coherent segments of discourse. This paper investigates the use of discourse markers (DMs) in newspaper articles. By applying Fraser's framework, this study aims at investigating the functions and positions of DM "but" (English) and its equivalent "lakin" (Arabic) in newspaper articles written by native and nonnative speakers of English and Saudi and Egyptian speakers of Arabic. It also highlights the similarities and differences in the functions and positions of DMs "but" and "lakin." This quantitative study adopts a corpus-based approach. The data consist of articles collected from 12 newspapers categorized as: Arabic language newspapers published in Saudi Arabia ("Alriyadh," "Al Jazirah," "AlHayat") and Egypt ("Al-Ahram," "Al-Gomhuria," "Eltahrir") and English language newspapers published in Saudi Arabia ("Arab News," "Saudi Gazette," "Asharq Al-Awsat") and the USA ("Washington Post," "The New York Times," "USA TODAY"). Findings demonstrate, first, that DM "but" is used frequently as a confirmation or addition marker by both native and non-native speakers. However, second, "lakin," functions as the primary correction DM in standard Arabic. Moreover, third, the native Arabic speakers mostly share the same functions of using "lakin" despite different dialects they have. This study also reveals that "lakin" can be found only in the medial position, whereas, "but" is found in the initial and medial position. It concludes that DMs "but" and "lakin" evidence that functions of DMs proposed by Fraser are universal and they could be generalized.

Proficiency in English language depends on the knowledge of its vocabulary possessed by the second and foreign language learners and even the native speakers. Though developing the vocabulary is vital, it poses several problems, especially, to non-native students of English. Students with a low vocabulary knowledge show weak academic performance in different courses related to the language skills, linguistics, literature, and translation at the university level of education. This study, in particular, aims to investigate the problems faced by English majors in learning the vocabulary at Prince Stattam bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU) in Saudi Arabia. It also puts forward some vocabulary-learning strategies to minimize the potential problems. The data consist of the responses of 100 student-participants (undergraduates) randomly picked up from five different levels (four, five, six, seven, and eight) of 4-Year BA English Program at PSAU. This quantitative study uses an online questionnaire, as an instrument, to collect the data. The results reveal that the English majors at PSAU face several problems in learning the vocabulary such as knowing the meanings of new words, pronouncing new words, using new words correctly, memorizing and spelling new vocabulary and so on. To its contribution, this study emphasizes the importance of learning the English vocabulary, draws students' attention towards it, highlights the problems encountered by students, and raises their awareness of the vocabulary. Future research may explore teachers' perspectives on students' vocabulary-learning problems and instructional methods implemented to teach the vocabulary in English language classrooms.

The present study was conducted to document the medicinal uses of Family Lamiaceae and Rosaceae in Dir Kohistan during the summer of 2016. Field visits were arranged to different resource-based areas of Dir Kohistan and plants were identified according to their phytogeographic locations. The study revealed that nine species of the family Lamiaceae and seven species of the family Rosaceae are used by the local community for the treatment of human ailments. They utilized these plants through personal experiences and ancestral prescriptions. The plants were used for different health disorders like kidney pain, lung infections, jaundice, as carminative, antimicrobial, antifungal, antiseptic, laxative, febrifuge, sedative and astringent agent. The study revealed that the medicinal flora of the area is under high pressure and was threatened locally due to population growth, habitat degradation, tourism, marketing pressure, over exploitation and unscientific methods of collection from their natural habitat.

Salinity is a major problem caused by the accretion of excess salts composites in the form of ions like sodium (Na+ ), potassium (K + ), calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+) and chloride (Cl- ). The possible out-turns of the salinity on the morphology; physiology and biochemical variables of bismarckia palm (Bismarckia nobilis) were investigated in this study. The seedlings of bismarckia palm were grown in pots and periodically irrigated with various concentrations of NaCl solution to assess the various biological variables at the regular intervals. The experiment was performed by following the completely randomized design (CRD) and the results showed that the increased level of salt stress significantly decreased the shoot, length, fresh and dry weight. Conversely, the root length and fresh, dry weight were enhanced under higher salts concentration (150 mM of NaCl). However, there was no effect of stress on leaves parameters particularly for total number of leaves. Moreover, the chlorophyll contents were reduced with the increase of the NaCl concentration. Similarly, the antioxidants activities including SOD, POD and CAT were enhanced at maximum test dosage. Conclusively, it can be concluded that high saline condition of soil may hinder the morphological, physiological and biochemical statutes of bismarckia palm (Bismarckia nobilis).

Political speeches delivered by state heads or politicians may stir controversies sometimes, especially, when speakers give arguments for or against some issues. To investigate so-called political discourses, critical discourse studies are conducted in different contexts. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), for instance, explores connection between different uses of discourse structures and socio-political contexts in which these structures occur. It also highlights issues such as power, dominance, ideology, and manipulation. The current study investigated Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's maiden speech to the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 27, 2019 -- watched by over four million viewers on YouTube. This study used van Dijk's (1980) framework to analyze macro and micro structures in the speech and the underlying agenda behind employing such discourse structures. The qualitative data consisted of speech transcript, delivered in English, which contained about 2577 words. Findings reveal that macro propositions in the speech summarized global, regional, and national issues such as climate change, money laundering, corruption, Islamophobia, Pakistan's war on terror, the Kashmir conflict, and Pakistan's relations with India. The use of microstructural elements (pronouns, rhetorical question, references, number game, presupposition, modality, lexis and conjunctions) enabled the speaker to voice his ideological and political beliefs on aforementioned issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]