Papers by Waheed M. A. Altohami
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Dec 31, 2023
The goal of this study is to provide a sociocognitive critical discourse analysis of Donald Trump... more The goal of this study is to provide a sociocognitive critical discourse analysis of Donald Trump's 75th UNGA (The UN General Assembly) speech 2020 to demonstrate how Trump (re)framed America and other political actors. The study's methodology has been divided into three stages: (a) identifying the speech's macrostructures (major themes) embodying the speech's global meanings, (b) analyzing the speech's explicit and implicit local meanings, and (c) laying out Trump's subjective context model. Findings revealed that (1) the semantic (cognitive) structure and textual arrangement of Trump's speech are meant to draw attention to two ideologically opposed discourse worlds with skewed, hegemonic intergroup and outgroup representations; (2) a polarized context model, based on the WE/THEY schema, has motivated and controlled Trump's speech for the purposes of persuading the audience, stigmatizing other social actors, and managing opinion formation; and (3) Trump's context model has been shown to control the production of specific microstructures that correspond with a variety of discursive strategies.
World Journal of English Language, Nov 23, 2023
This study aimed at assessing the performance and efficacy of the retrieval information (IR) syst... more This study aimed at assessing the performance and efficacy of the retrieval information (IR) systems implemented in three widely used search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo), specifically with regard to the challenge of word sense disambiguation in Arabic texts. Such a challenge has been confirmed to negatively influence the retrieval of the most relevant documents. Therefore, we extended the paradigm of using computational methods and natural language processing (NLP) tools, primarily tailored for processing English texts, to explore morphosyntactic as well as lexical issues disturbing the accuracy of Arabic IR systems. Findings revealed striking disparities in the efficacy of IR systems integrated into these search engines, which can be attributed to four principal challenges: (a) the intricate morpho-syntactic structures inherent in Arabic; (b) the idiosyncratic orthographical system of the Arabic script; (c) the multifaceted semantic flexibility of certain lexical elements; and (d) the intriguing diaglossic nature of Arabic, allowing for the coexistence of multiple linguistic varieties within a single discourse situation. Drawing from these findings, a series of solutions rooted in supervised machine learning techniques, including clustering models and adaptations based on geographic locations, are proposed. Moreover, the study advocates for the capacity of search engines to interpret queries across all Arabic varieties, encompassing vernacular dialects. Furthermore, the importance of search engines accommodating queries irrespective of the specific language adopted by users is underscored. While the research primarily centers on Arabic, its implications resonate beyond this language alone. By applying computational methodologies originally designed for English to Arabic, the study not only addresses the challenges specific to Arabic IR systems but also contributes valuable insights that transcend linguistic boundaries. Through a comparative lens, issues like word sense disambiguation between Arabic and English are juxtaposed, extracting lessons that can inform advancements in information retrieval for both languages.
Cogent Arts & Humanities
Cogent Arts & Humanities
Cogent Arts & Humanities, Feb 8, 2023
Frontiers in Psychology
The study investigates the linguistic aspects of Chinese and American diplomatic discourse using ... more The study investigates the linguistic aspects of Chinese and American diplomatic discourse using Biber’s theoretical underpinnings of multi-dimensional (MD) analysis. The corpus of the study comprises texts taken from the official websites of the Chinese and US governments from 2011 to 2020. The study results show that China’s diplomatic discourse falls into the text type of learned exposition which includes informational expositions focused on conveying information. In contrast, the United States diplomatic discourse falls into the text type of “involved persuasion,” which is persuasive and argumentative. Furthermore, the two-way ANOVA test reveals few distinctions between spoken and written diplomatic discourse from the same country. Furthermore, T-tests demonstrate that the diplomatic discourse of the two countries differs significantly in three dimensions. In addition, the study highlights that China’s diplomatic discourse is informationally dense and context independent. In con...
World Journal of English Language
Recently, numerous regulations and policies have been initiated in Saudi universities that suppor... more Recently, numerous regulations and policies have been initiated in Saudi universities that support the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 of achieving smart, sustainable, and globally competitive universities. For the successful implementation of these regulations and policies, however, critical success factors including corporate governance have to be considered. Despite the extensive research on the importance of developing effective and reliable governance policies and practices for the overall growth of organizations including universities, no sufficient studies on the role of corporate governance in improving sustainable development plans and combating corruption, improving transparency, and enhancing sustainable development plans in the Saudi universities. This study, therefore, seeks to explore the impact of CG on improving accountability and sustainable development plans in Departments of English in Saudi universities. In-depth interviews were conducted with 48 participants, including th...
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Increased attention has been directed toward utilizing visual modes because linguistic modes cann... more Increased attention has been directed toward utilizing visual modes because linguistic modes cannot accurately depict L2 learners’ metaphorical conceptions of their language-acquisition experiences. The goal of this study was to investigate the mental images that Saudi EFL students may have in mind while learning a foreign language. To this end, both verbal and nonverbal metaphorical conceptions were investigated. An experimental group of 12 students was randomly selected. Both the learners’ written responses and drawn descriptions were evaluated to tap into the learners’ mental representations of foreign language learning. The multimodality-based analysis of the upper-intermediate learners’ metaphors demonstrated that the EFL learners’ metaphorical verbal and non-verbal representations had the same perspectives on learning a foreign language. The learners’ positive attitudes were also revealed by the extracted metaphorical concepts. Most of the metaphorical representations showed l...
World Journal of English Language
This study used both computational tools in the form of a machine learning predictive model (Supp... more This study used both computational tools in the form of a machine learning predictive model (Support Vector Machine) and a critical discourse analysis model (Van Dijk’s ideological square model) (Van Dijk, 1993, 2008, 2009) to fulfill three objectives: (1) clustering the Saudis’ Twitter-based opinions and sentiments regarding the entertaining and recreational activities run by the Saudi General Entertainment Authority (GEA); (2) offering empirical evidence on how computational linguistic methods could be implemented for offering a reliable conceptual framing of such opinionated big data; and (3) outlining the central themes generating ideologically motivated polarity in Saudi public opinion and the macrostrategies through which this polarity is textually instantiated and actualized. Toward fulfilling these objectives, we designed a purpose-built corpus of 9378 tweets based on five trending hashtags, covering the period between 2020 and 2022. Findings affirmed the efficacy of synergi...
Education Research International
E-commerce software and applications are mainly designed to let business go globally with less co... more E-commerce software and applications are mainly designed to let business go globally with less cost and higher accessibility. The localization of such software and websites into several languages is intended for reaching the largest number of consumers through minimizing the impact of linguistic, cultural, and technical barriers. Such barriers are assumed to affect the quality of localization and accordingly the reliability of the e-commerce software of website. In exploring the persistent problems influencing localization quality in the Saudi context, this study sought to analyze consumers’ perceptions and attitudes regarding the Arabic version of Saudi Amazon (Arabic Amazon.sa) in respect of accessibility, readability, understandability, and translatability issues. Toward this overarching objective, two main research instruments have been used: an online survey covering diverse localization problems and a zoom-based open discussion with the website’s users to collect some concrete...
Ijaz Arabi Journal of Arabic Learning
This study offers a cognitive metaphorical analysis of the events framing the Tunisian Revolution... more This study offers a cognitive metaphorical analysis of the events framing the Tunisian Revolution in English and Arabic news discourse between 2010 and 2014. The study addressed two central questions: (1) How has the Tunisian Revolution been metaphorically represented in English and Arabic political news discourse based on the cognitive domain of journey? What are the similarities and differences between the metaphorical representations in the same news discourse? The conceptual integration network emerging in the analysis is single-scope as the two input spaces of journey and revolution were demonstrated to have different organizing frames. Specifically, only the frame of journey is projected to organize the blend. Findings showed that anchoring the concept of revolution to that of journey has created a kind of semantic tension that helped journalists to evoke emotional responses and manipulate the discursive function of metaphors as persuasive tools. Because of the cross-space map...
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2022
With the widespread of COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia, the educational authorities issued firm directio... more With the widespread of COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia, the educational authorities issued firm directions to convert to virtual classes exploiting the available Learning Management System (LMS). However, during the academic year 2020-2021, the researchers observed that writing EFL instructors at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU), Saudi Arabia, faced diverse challenges due to having online mixedability classes, i.e. those classes where students have varying levels of readiness, motivation, and academic caliper. Though many previous studies explored the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning practices, very few studies addressed the way technological affordances pose challenges for instructors teaching mixed-ability classes. Therefore, the present study, using mixed quantitative and qualitative research methods, sought to explore challenges that evolved due to the technological affordances of LMS to spot the persistent problems and to offer relevant solutions for upgrading, writing teaching and learning practices. The basic research design relied on an online questionnaire followed by semi-structured interviews. Findings showed that differentiated instruction proved to be the most successful strategy for teaching writing in mixed-ability online classes as it allowed the adaptation of materials, teaching and learning practices, and assessment tools to motivate lowachievers. In addition, the collaborative tools offered by the Blackboard such as the White Board, Discussion Board, Blogs, and Breakout Groups helped to meet the preferences of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. Finally, further studies are recommended to explore the affordances of educational technologies regularly to identify potential benefits and limitations for offering the best teaching and learning practices.
Ijaz Arabi Journal of Arabic Learning, 2021
Despite the increasing interest in investigating the influence of subtitles on the acquisition of... more Despite the increasing interest in investigating the influence of subtitles on the acquisition of second languages, including English, French, and Spanish, very little has been done in Arabic. This phenomenon may be attributed to the lack of the use of technological applications in teaching Arabic. So far, different universities have adopted traditional methods in teaching Arabic as a second language. In the face of this limitation, this study explores the impact of Netflix subtitles on improving the language acquisition of Arabic by non-native speakers of Arabic in Saudi universities. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for the analysis of the data set in question. The subject of the study, 68 participants from three Saudi universities: Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Taibah University, and Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University. The participants are in different disciplines, including Islamic Jurisprudence (Shariah), Arabic studies, engineering, and Engl...
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2020
This study explores the discourse of text messages from a microlinguistic perspective by means of... more This study explores the discourse of text messages from a microlinguistic perspective by means of concordance analysis. It aims at sorting the dominant phonological, lexical and grammatical features that mark texting as a peculiar asynchronous mode of computer-mediated communication. Also, it investigates how technology reshapes texters' linguistic habits as long as spatio-temporal constraints are imposed. The study goes beyond the description of linguistic features as it takes at its core the explanation of the functions performed by each of these features. Findings showed that most of the phonological, lexical and grammatical features of the discourse of text messages were consciously employed to save space and to speed up communication. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that though the discourse of text messages is space-bound and visually decontextualized, it proved to be cohesive, adaptable and interactive in order to perform common language functions such as greetings, expressing attitudes, congratulations, showing involvement, asking for information and demonstrating social solidarity. Finally, based on textual evidence, findings showed that texters created a set of orthographical surrogates to recompense the absence of verbal and para-verbal cues due to specific technological affordances.
International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 2020
This paper explores legal doublets in the Corpus of US Supreme Court Opinions in order to identif... more This paper explores legal doublets in the Corpus of US Supreme Court Opinions in order to identify the key linguistic features which govern their use. Based on the framework of data-driven learning approach (DDL), it assumes that getting EFL law students to use online available, user-friendly online corpus tools would help to enhance their phraseological competence. The data set (total frequency = 25.388 doublets) was restricted to doublets coordinated by 'and' as they proved to be highly frequent and linguistically variant. The paper has reached three findings. First, these doublets tend to follow one of six grammatical patterns: verb/verb, noun/noun, adjective/adjective, preposition/preposition, determiner/determiners, and conjunction/conjunction. Second, legal writings tend to put certain morphosyntactic constraints on the use of doublets. Finally, a full-fledged analysis of the phraseological profile of these doublets includes the identification of their grammatical patt...
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2022
The present study seeks to propose a novel pedagogical strategy for enhancing EFL students' collo... more The present study seeks to propose a novel pedagogical strategy for enhancing EFL students' collocational usage of the node 'coronavirus' as currently used in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) across its five genre-based sections, viz. TV/Movies, Blog, Web-General, Spoken, Fiction, Magazine, Newspaper, and Academic. Drawing on a corpus-driven approach, we conducted a pedagogical descriptive analysis of the 'coronavirus' top collocates generated by the COCA. The target collocates have been calculated by the Mutual Information (MI) of 3 or above and specified in terms of the four main lexical parts of speech of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The study has reached three main results. First, employing the COCA as a pedagogical corpus tool can enhance the collocational competence of EFL students should a corpusdriven approach be used descriptively in the classroom. Second, the two methodological stages of demonstration and praxis could facilitate the process of topical priority as a significant index of collocational usage and its thematic relevance. Third, more empirically, the naturally occurring collocates of the node 'coronavirus' have proven significant to the pedagogical situation of teaching the node's collocational meanings encoded in the syntactic categories of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, e.g. infection, cause, novel, and closely, respectively.
Studies About Languages
This paper explores how the Arab Spring Revolutions (ASRs) are metaphorically represented in jour... more This paper explores how the Arab Spring Revolutions (ASRs) are metaphorically represented in journalistic discourse in a way that highlights or hides specific ideologies related to the political events and actors associated with the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions over three years (2011-2013). Drawing on Charteris-Black's (2004) corpus-based approach of Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA), the main political events and actors represented metaphorically in the corpus data have been identified, explained and interpreted at different levels of semantic, pragmatic and cognitive analysis. The present study has reached three major findings. First, various source domains were manipulated to report different facets of the ASRs, while the source domain of games was the most dominant. Second, the corpus proved to be textually coherent based on the conceptual key THE ARAB SPRING REVOLUTIONS ARE GAMES which was built around the image schema of competition. Finally, gamification involved thre...
International Journal of English Linguistics
This paper is a corpus critical discourse analysis of the journalistic representations of Saudi w... more This paper is a corpus critical discourse analysis of the journalistic representations of Saudi women as they appear in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davies, 2008). It follows a sociocognitive approach (van Dijk, 2008) to explore the thematic foci discussing issues related to Saudi women and to discuss the discursive strategies implemented to propagate such issues. The study has reached four findings. First, the thematic foci related to Saudi women are textually and referentially coherent as they were meant to provide a grand narrative underlying a specific context model. Second, Saudi women are negatively represented as no social roles are ascribed to them throughout the corpus. Third, different social actors are also represented alongside Saudi women to put them in a wider socio-cultural context to aggravate their problems. Finally, the most effective discursive strategies which mediated the running context model included victimization, categorization, stereo...
International Journal of English Linguistics
This paper explores Edward Said’s journalistic collocations as a discursive practice of the socia... more This paper explores Edward Said’s journalistic collocations as a discursive practice of the social actors that Said frequently referred to in Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper. Towards this end, a corpus-based approach has been utilized in a methodological synergy that combines the corpus techniques of extracting keywords and calculating collocations as well as the qualitative method of analysing social-actor representations (Van Leeuwen, 1996, 2008). The data used for analysis comprise a corpus of virtually all the articles written by Said in Al-Ahram Weekly from 1998 till 2003. The corpus is 105,031words and has been electronically manipulated by the corpus software tools of Wmatrix (Rayson, 2003) and WordSmith (Scott, 2012). The paper has reached three findings. First, Said’s journalistic discourse in Al-Ahram Weekly revolves around 38 social-actor keywords that reflect his thematic foci all through the time span he was writing articles for the newspaper. Second, of all these keywords, o...
Amir H.Y. Salama, 2019
This paper explores Edward Said's journalistic collocations as a discursive practice of the socia... more This paper explores Edward Said's journalistic collocations as a discursive practice of the social actors that Said frequently referred to in Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper. Towards this end, a corpus-based approach has been utilized in a methodological synergy that combines the corpus techniques of extracting keywords and calculating collocations as well as the qualitative method of analysing social-actor representations (Van Leeuwen, 1996, 2008). The data used for analysis comprise a corpus of virtually all the articles written by Said in Al-Ahram Weekly from 1998 till 2003. The corpus is 105,031words and has been electronically manipulated by the corpus software tools of Wmatrix (Rayson, 2003) and WordSmith (Scott, 2012). The paper has reached three findings. First, Said's journalistic discourse in Al-Ahram Weekly revolves around 38 social-actor keywords that reflect his thematic foci all through the time span he was writing articles for the newspaper. Second, of all these keywords, only twelve node words have been identified to associate with peculiar collocates; the node words were divided into (1) nominations of political personas and (2) genericizations with various discourse functions. Third, Said's peculiar collocations reflected his ideological orientations towards certain political personas and specific topics in his journalistic discourse.
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Papers by Waheed M. A. Altohami