A critical assessment of the current systematical planning and an in-depth review of the teaching materials efficiently improve fine educational materials to the benefit of developed learning and teaching contexts. In some countries, such as Iran, that belong to the expanding circle, local book writers provide English teaching materials that may ignore sociopragmatic language components, particularly culture. There is a blind spot and massive gap in the related literature regarding the inclusion and organization of cultural knowledge in these textbooks. This study investigated culture in Iranian schools by conducting a nationwide survey to fill the gap. The investigation was based on the components of the curriculum administered and used in Iran, namely Vision Series. The evaluation was aimed at two prospects; firstly, to interpret whether the English textbooks taught at high schools in Iran have standardized principles and elements regarding Communication and Culture. Secondly, to investigate the extent to which cultural knowledge and technology as the curricular components are implemented in the Vision Series. In this respect, the 5 Cs checklist developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages was employed. The evaluation done by 120 English language teachers reveals that the textbook Vision 3 is more preferable and desirable than Vision 1 and 2, yet not significantly. The evaluation based on the seven curricular components indicates that Vision textbooks have standards at a low level and are not designed and developed to enhance language learners’ cultural competence in the target language. This study highlights the role of enhancing language learners’ cultural awareness in the expanding circle of World Englishes.

This paper presents a review of studies that have provided evidence supporting metaphorical embodiment. These studies are divided into three categories of behavioral, neuroimaging, and corpus studies. After summing up the findings of these studies, it is concluded that metaphorical embodiment is supported by these three lines of research. This is followed by a review of a number of studies that have measured sensorimotor and action effector strengths of various concepts. Then, the idea of sensorimotor and action effector strength of concepts is linked to metaphorical embodiment to present the main idea of the paper. Based on the findings of studies that have measured sensorimotor and action effector strengths of concepts, it is suggested that the degree of involvement of sensorimotor systems in mental simulation of metaphoric actions may not be at the same level in all metaphors. It depends on the sensorimotor strength of the base of the metaphor in various modalities. If the base of a metaphor has a high degree of perceptual strength in a certain modality, that modality plays the most important role in the processing of that metaphor, while other modalities take less important roles. In other words, depending on the sensorimotor strengths of the base of a metaphor in various modalities, those modalities have various levels of importance in the processing of that metaphor. If the base of the metaphor is weak in all modalities, modal resources can come into play to process that metaphor.

The way and degree to which people in different cultures consider a metaphor to be appropriate, acceptable, or apt has been the subject of controversy in recent decades. According to structure-mapping models, metaphors are understood by mapping relations from the base domain to relations in the target domain. However, previous research lacks literature on cross-cultural contexts and differences in the degree of acceptability of metaphors in different cultures. To address this gap, in this study we examined cross-cultural differences in metaphor aptness among participants from three different cultures. We developed two questionnaires, an acceptability judgment-task and a parallel-relation test using the COCA (English), PLDB (Persian), and KorAP (German) corpus databases. The results suggest striking differences in the acceptance of a metaphor in different cultures where the vehicle of a metaphor is not present. It is suggested that metaphors are considered apt through the process of categorizing the salient features that are considered structurally similar. This idea is partially consistent with studies that support class-inclusion models which suggest that hearers place the topic of a metaphor in a category in which the vehicle fits. The absence of a domain (whether topic or vehicle) may lead to unacceptability of a metaphor. Lack of cultural background in the use of these words hinders the process of finding a salient feature between them and the counter domain in a metaphor to form an appropriate alignment.

This study measured hand and head action strengths of eight typical emotional states using an authentic but implicit emotion elicitation task. Participants listened to and then retold five stories in which eight typical emotional states were experienced by the narrators. The number of hand and head gestures that occur naturally while experiencing an emotional state was used as an index to determine the hand and head action strength of that emotional state. Results showed a larger number of head gestures than hand gestures, suggesting that head action strengths of the eight emotional states are stronger than their hand action strengths. These findings are consistent with the data extracted from Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (LSN), although the two sets of data were gathered in two completely different experimental conditions and in two different languages. Furthermore, our data showed a prototypical directionality effect for the typical emotional states, specifically, happiness, anger and pride were primarily accompanied by upward gestures but downward gestures for sadness and shame; surprise was primarily accompanied by forward gestures but backward gestures for fear and disgust.

In this article, we extend our previously suggested categorization of metaphors to literal statements, and categorize metaphorical and literal statements into four pairs of corresponding metaphorical and literal statements: (1) motion-based metaphorical/literal statements; (2) static space-based metaphorical/literal statements; (3) static object-based metaphorical/literal statements; (4) static event-based metaphorical/literal statements. Then, we report a study that investigated the use of metaphoric and iconic gestures with these corresponding categories during the retelling of a set of stories by a group of thirty participants. The participants listened to five audio short stories. Each story contained one statement of each metaphoric category and one statement of each literal category. After listening to each story, they retold it in their own language in front of a camera. The results showed that event-based metaphors and event-based literal statements were accompanied by the smallest number of metaphoric and iconic gestures. Furthermore, there was a significant similarity between each metaphorical category and its corresponding literal category in the number of gestures that were used with these categories. This similarity supports the idea that the mechanisms underlying the embodiment of metaphorical and literal statements are essentially similar.