Anbar University Journal of Languages & Literature

Syntactic discontinuity is a grammatical phenomenon in which a constituent of a sentence is split into two parts due to the insertion of an element which is not part of it or the movement of a constituent to a position which is not its canonical one. Sentences with syntactic discontinuity convey the same literal meaning given by them without it. Thus, legislators manipulate such constituents in Legislations since they offer them various styles of writing which may help to express the Legislations clearly and adequately. Hence, the present study attempts to test the hypotheses that syntactic discontinuities are varied and frequently used in legal texts and the sentences with syntactic discontinuity have specific structural characteristics. For the purpose of testing these hypotheses, the official English versions of ten Iraqi legal texts is issued between 1999- 2002.
To find out the frequency of occurrence of syntactic discontinuity in the accurances selected texts, the study includes calculating their rates. Analysis of the data has shown that five types of syntactic discontinuity are used by legislators. The study concludes that syntactic discontinuities are widely used, i.e. (118) times, in the analysed texts; this is so due to the need for long sentences which involve many details to make the Law as clear and interpretable as possible to the average readers as well as to the specialists. On the basis of the conclusions a number of suggestions have been proposed. These can be of assistance to the specialists as well as the average reader who needs to understand and correctly interpret the legal texts.

The study aims to investigate the discoursal value of functionality of transitivity of letters-to-the-editor. It sheds light on the function of transitivity and its variants in the act of communication. Letters-to-the-editor is a linguistic case in which the letter writer expresses a specific type of mode related to previous issue that needs to be well interpreted by the editor as well as the third reader. To convey the communicative value of transitivity utilised in letters-to-the-editor of The Times, the study adopts Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (henceforth SFG) to present a statistic of transitivity processes. The analysis requires Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) since letters-to-the-editor is one of newspaper genra. The study presents some conclusions which reflect the communicative value of transitivity of letters-to-the-editor. The discourse functions of transitivity processes realised in the selected samples of letters-to-the-editor are variant, depending on the ideological significance, social power and text type.

Adultery is regarded as one of the greatest sins in all religions which saw it as vicious and forbidden act. Generally, sociologists argued that adultery, whether committed by women or men, is a social threat for both the individual and society. This paper presents the concept of adultery as it was reflected in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) during the seventeenth and twentieth centuries respectively. The aim of this paper is to give attention to the definition of adultery as a dangerous act that affects the people’s behaviour towards adulterer or adulteress. It also shows adultery, a major theme in the history of American literature, as an outlet from an oppressive marriage. In addition, it scrutinises the causes and effects of such a scandalous act.

The present study is an investigation into the Qur'anic ayas of warning and threatening. It attempts at bringing the distinction between the Qur'anic ayas of warning and threatening to light , using functional discourse grammar and pragmatics as a means to achieve this aim. It is found that the Qur'anic ayas under discussion differ with respect to certain points and that the determining factor in differentiating between the ayas is the contextual component, which is one of the four components building up an utterance in functional discourse grammar. The other three components are conceptual , grammatical and output components. It is also found that an equivalent effect can be brought about provided that similar illocutions , but not necessarily similar locutions are rendered.

Seamus Heaney's poetry is characterized by it continuous reference to the past, namely to the childhood. This reference has a very important function in his poetry. As a poet, childhood acts as a catalyst, which creates the literary environment that inspires him. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the role played by childhood memories in his poetry. Three poems are chosen to achieve this aim, they are: "Digging", "Sonnet Four of Glanmore Sonnets", and "A Drink of Water".

This paper is a short study about the American post-modern poet, Frank O'Hara. As an anti-academic poet, his poetry is embedded with materials and associations like movie stars of the twentieth and the thirtieth, the daily social activities, jazz music, telephone calls of his friends, and any other daily incidents that can hardly fit inclusion into the poetry of the other poets.
The study falls into three sections and a conclusion. Section One deals with O'Hara's position within the new American avant-garde of the post-war. The function of poetry, according to O'Hara, is stressed here along with extracts from his own poetry that reject and contradict that function. In the second section, the principles of friendship and coterie are discussed where friendship can be discerned everywhere throughout O'Hara's poetry, and his poems seem full of friends, while the last section studies the poet's 'manifesto' that he called 'Personism'. The study closes with brief notes about the conclusions arrived at from this work and finally the list of references is shown.

Menace and fear play a vital role in Harold Pinter's plays. They are recurrent themes throughout the thematic construction of his plays. Pinter thinks that these feelings spring from within human beings. It is a matter of critical circumstances one may pass through. They are not only external elements that come from sinister people
but also these things embodied within. The present paper tackles Pinter's The Birthday Party which trying to show the reason behind his fear which springs from his minority as a Jew.

The present study aims at assessing the linguistic competence of EFL (henceforth English as a foreign language) intermediate school teachers. The study is limited to the teachers of English who teach at the intermediate day schools for boys and girls in the city of Ramadi schools during the academic year 2012-2013. To achieve the purpose of the present study, it is hypothesized that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of intermediate school teachers' achievement, on one hand and the theoretical mean scores of the linguistic competence test, on the other hand. Also, it is hypothesized that there is no significant difference in the linguistic competence between male and female EFL teachers. The researcher constructed a test as the main tool in this study for collecting data . The sample of this study includes 56 EFL teachers (28 male and 28 female) from the intermediate schools in Ramadi which has been randomly selected. The EFL teachers of the sample have been subjected to the linguistic competence test. The collected data has been analysed by using t-test formula. The findings reveal that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of intermediate school teachers' achievement, on one hand and the theoretical mean scores of the linguistic competence test, on the other hand. Concerning the second hypothesis, results reveal that there is no significant difference in the linguistic competence between male and female EFL teachers. On the basis of the findings, the study suggests a number of conclusions and recommendations.

The objective of this study is to investigate the differences in the effect of comparative and expository advanced organizers on the achievement of 4th preparatory students in English grammar. The study is limited to the 4th preparatory students in Ramadi schools for boys during the first term of the academic year 2012-2013. To achieve the purpose of the present study, it is hypothesized that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the achievement of the first group who is given comparative advanced organizers and the second group who receives expository advanced organizers.
To test the above hypothesis, a sample of 60 4th preparatory students from Al-Meethaq secondary school has been randomly chosen and distributed into two groups. The first group (30 students) has been exposed to comparative advanced organizers, while the second group (30 students) has been exposed to expository advanced organizers. Both assigned groups are equalized in terms of certain variables. The experiment lasted four weeks. During this period, the researcher himself taught the two groups to control the teacher variable. At the end of the experiment, students have been post-tested on the same subject matter which is constructed by the researcher. The data collected has been analysed by using t-test formula at 0.05 significance level. The findings reveal that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups in favour of the first group since its mean score is higher than that of the second group.
On the basis of the findings, the study ends with a number of recommendations.

Hemingway's The Sun Also rises is a masterpiece of human feelings. Major among these feelings are irony and pity especially directed against war and inhumanity. Hemingway uses thgese two modes of human feelings to crystalize his attitudes towards war.