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This study is primarily concerned with answering several important questions surrounding the Anglo-Iranian Oil Dispute of 1950-1951 which have remained unanswered. What were the detailed origins of the disputes between the Iranian Government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company? Why was such a favourable oil concession granted to a British citizen? What was the impact of the occupation of Iran on the Iranian people's way of political thinking and how did oil become an issue for public debate? Why was there an oil crisis in 1951 ? What were the motivations of the parties to the oil dispute? Was the crisis mainly over economic grievances ? What was the role of nationalism ? These are answered within a framework that highlights the salient variables such as politics, economy, international relations and diplomacy. The methodology adopted is a descriptive analysis of archival material and literature on the related subjects. The emphasis is on the Iranian view of the crisis for the reason that, although it received international attention and was in many ways an international crisis, it originated in Iran. There were features unique to it which were Iranian. Given the nature of Iranian society with its strong oral traditions, the past is important to an explanation of the crisis. It is alive in Iranian mind in a way not apparent to western society. Conceptions of the past and an awareness of the weakness of Iranian autonomy are important in the context of the 1950 crisis.Consequently, it is necessary to examine the concept of history prevalent in Iran. This takes the staring point of the thesis to the D'Arcy oil concession. In 1900, Iran was bankrupt in Western terms, the Shah needed immediate cash payment,I authorities were financially corrupt and politics was riddled with foreign intrigue. Oil had been sought in Iran since 1878 without much success. By 1900, the demand for Iranian oil was supported by the British Legation. D'Arcy, an English financier, managed to obtain, through connections with a string of individuals, an oil concession for 60 years. The Iranian authorities had every reason to believe that this oil concession, like all other oil concessions would eventually lapse. However, D' Arcy worked the concession to the point of bankruptcy and his engineer, to the point of exhaustion. As a result an oil industry was established which "was to see the Royal Navy through two world wars, and to cause Persia more trouble than all the political manoeuvrings of the great powers put together". 2The world oil rivalry, compounded with the British government's desire for oil independence, turned the Iranian oil industry into the largest oil industry of the time and an important source of income for the British Treasury. The exploitation of the oil reserves of Iran by an industrial power soon became a matter of great controversy as disputes developed between two parties which extended over several decades. Iran received some funds in revenues. However, the revenues did not improve the Iranian standard of life considerably although they affected the balance of payments, currency reserves and purchase of arms. Iranian society was in the process of transition from a traditional society to a modern one. The Constitutional Movement of 1906 had an impact on the public's political way of thinking. Reza Shah suppressed the society but the desire for a democratic system continued to exist. During the reign of Reza Shah (1925-1941), a large portion of the rural population moved to urban areas. The industrialisation of Iran helped in developing a new class of urban middle class and artisans. It was obvious that the relationship between Iran and the oil company needed readjusting. However, the oil company officiIs did not show much interest in this until it was too late. The occupation of Iran in 1941 helped several political forces appear on the political scene. The released communist prisoners quickly formed the Tudeh Party. The communists were assisted by the Soviet forces in the North to the extent that the Tudeh, a communist party, became one of the main political parties of this period in an Islamic society. However, several factors helped monarchists overcome the communists. One such factor was an increasing American involvement in Iran after Pearl Harbour which functioned as a third power to reduce the dominance of the others. The Tripartite Treaty of 1942 regularised the presence of American troops. The Tehran Declaration of 1943 provided for economic aid at the end of the war. In 1947, the ideological basis for American involvement in Iran was provided by Truman Doctrine. The final blow to the Tudeh Party was delivered in 1949. The attempt on the Shah's life gave the monarchists an excuse to outlaw the Tudeh. Contrary to their ideology, Moscow provoked discontented Iranian minorities rather than encouraging class struggle ! Moscow menaced Iran several times. At least at two occasions Moscow demanded an oil concession. They also threatened Iranian integrity and caused a great deal of public anxiety which directed public attention to Iranain problems. The Azarbaijan crisis of 1945-1946 turned Iranian problem into an international one. Moscow's pressure on Greece and Turkey threatened Western interests in the Near and Middle East and caused inter-Allied friction. In 1941, Iran appeared to have become a model for Allied cooperation. By 1944, however, the first post-war oil crisis seemed to haye turned Iran into a battleground between foreign powers ; the early stages of the cold war. On the Iranian side, at least since 1944 there was a demand for oil nationalisation. The idea developed first into a law forbidding negotiating or granting new oil concessions to foreign powers until Iran was occupied. Mosaddegh was mainly responsible for this. Then in 1947, an overwhelming majority of Majles deputies rejected a Soviet proposal for an oil concession in the North. The Majles instructed the government to negotiate with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for better terms. This set in motion a chain of events which resulted in a proposal to supplement the 1933 oil concession which had replaced the D' Arcy concession. In 1949, a small group of nationalists fiercely fought the proposals. The press criticisms, the Majles debates and public gatherings helped ordinary people understand the oil issue. However, despite strong opposition, the monarchists were III favour of the Supplementary Agreement and attempted to resolve the issue by appointing a strong military man, General Razmara, as prime minister in June 1950. The idea, however, backfired as public desire for the removal of foreign influence was now strong. The Majles opposition, the press and the public appeared to be united. Nationalist feelings were fuelled by long-term resentment over the oil company's handling of the oil issue. By early 1951 nationalist sentiment was too strong to be curtailed. By this time Razmara had become a threat both to the Shah and to the nationalists and acted like an obstacle on the way to the oil nationalisation. His assassination, in March 1951, removed this obstacle. By this time the support for the movement, the demand for oil nationalisation and respect for Mosaddegh covered far-right to the far-left as both clergy and communists supported the nationalists. The communists were represented by the banned Tudeh Party. The political activities of the clergy was mainly associated with Kashani. His role in the movement and relationship with Mosaddegh were vital to the existence of the movement. However, Mosaddegh and Kashani were on a collision course. The Western-educated Mosaddegh was secular. Kashani, on the other hand, was in favour of an Islamic state. The same definition applied to their supporters. However, although they differed in their outlook, the unifying figure of Mosaddegh brought them together over the oil issue; a process which was reversed after 1951. Kashani and some nationalists weakened Mosaddegh and assisted in his downfall. Mosaddegh initiated the first petrodiplomacy in Iranian history. He dedicated his life to fight foreign domination and the nation trusted him. Without him it would be impossible for the nationalists to acquire a political standing strong enough to nationalise the oil. Regrettably, his downfall in 1953 brought an end to his efforts to remove foreign influence from Iran. Iran has been a centre of major political events for over 2000 years. In recent history, the development of two superpowers, Russian and British empires, on either side of Iran changed Iran's geopolitical situation to the extent that they fought within Iran for the dominance of Asia. As a result Iran's independence was weakened, its integrity was threatened, domestic feud was encouraged, corruption and intrigue were promoted, and self-interest and low morality became a feature of life.Whether a victim of international power politics, or a victim of internal strife. low political culture, and short-sightedness of Iranian politicians, the super powers could not tolerate the upset of the oil control in the Middle East. The country-by-country flare-up effect of such an achievement would be disastrous for the Western economy. In their view, the nationalist movement of Iran had to be defeated. Indeed, no other oil-producing country considered oil nationalisation for many years to come.

In the last three decades, Speech Act Theory has been displaced from the spotlight of pragmatic research and relegated to the back seat of this field. This has been the case despite the potential this theory still has to serve pragmatic research. This study is an attempt to revive and develop speech act theory by means of applying it to interactive naturally-occurring discourse proposing a number of different types of speech act and incorporating into analysis a wider range of pragmatic IFIDs. The main purpose of the study is to: (1) investigate speech acts in interaction and find out which 'illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs) are used to identify speech acts in an interactive context, and (2) compare the investigated speech acts and IFIDs cross-culturally between English and Arabic. Regarding data, the study investigated 12 English and Arabic short news interviews (six each). Some of these were video-recorded live from BBC and Sky news channels (English dataset) and Al-Arabiya, Sky news Arabia and Al-Wataniya channels (Arabic dataset). Other interviews were downloaded from YouTube. Two topics were the focus of these interviews: (1) the immigration crisis in 2015 (six English and Arabic interviews), and (2) the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015 (six English and Arabic interviews). The study investigated the two datasets to find which speech acts are used in short news interviews and what interactional IFIDs are used to identify them. Results show that many different speech acts are used in news interviews — the study counted 48 individual speech acts in the analysed interviews. However, it was found that a mere itemizing and classification of speech acts in the classical sense (Austin‘s and Searle‘s classifications) was not enough. In addition, the study identifies various new types of speech acts according to the role they play in the ongoing discourse. The first type is termed turn speech acts‘. These are speech acts which have special status in the turn they occur in and are of two subtypes: 'main act' and 'overall speech act'. The second type is 'interactional acts'. These are speech acts which are named in relation to other speech acts in the same exchange. The third type is ̳superior speech acts‘. These are superordinate speech acts with the performance of which other subordinate (inferior) speech acts are performed as well. The study also found three different types of utterances vis-à-vis the speech acts they perform. These are 'single utterance' (which performs a single speech act only), 'double-edged utterance' (which performs two speech acts concurrently) and 'Fala utterance' (which performs three speech acts together). As for IFIDs, the study found that several already-established pragmatic concepts can help identify speech acts in interaction. These are Adjacency Pair, Activity Type, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, Facework, Context (Co-utterance and Pragmalinguistic cues). These devices are new additions to Searle‘s original list of IFIDs. Furthermore, they are expanding this concept as they include a type of IFID different from the original ones. Finally, the study has found no significant differences between English and Arabic news interviews as regards speech acts (types), utterance types and the analysed IFIDs. The study attracts attention to Speech Act Theory and encourages further involvement of this theory in other genres of interactive discourse (e.g., long interviews, chat shows, written internet chat, etc.). It also encourages further exploration of the different types of speech acts and utterances discussed in this study as well as probing the currently-investigated and other IFIDs. It is hoped that by returning to the core insight of SAT (i.e., that language-in-use does things) and at the same time freeing it from its pragmalinguistic shackles, its value can be seen more clearly.

The concept of a landbridge refers to different types of integrated origin-destination international movements of shipments (in various combinations of sea, land and air) under a single waybill. There are different examples of landbridges with different characteristics related to transport supply facilities, organisational structure and managerial skills. Certain limitations of existing landbridge studies are discussed. They include the failure of a comprehensive academic study to account jointly for both demand and supply of landbridge services. Most articles on landbridges discuss the Trans-Siberian Railway or east-west coast landbridges of the United States of America. No comprehensive academic studies of landbridges in general were found. The main features of the research can be summarised as: *A comprehensive review of literature related to landbridges * An investigation and analysis of Iranian transport supply and demand including both domestic and foreign trade. * An investigation and analysis of the demand of the Central Asian and Caucasus countries (Former USSR republics) for transport * The development of a demand and supply model related to an Iranian Sea-landbridge (ISLB) for eight Central Asian and Caucasus countries and Iran. * Evaluation of the impacts of demand on landbridge supply. *A comprehensive review of the scenario approach and its application to the Iranian Sea landbridge study using a regression technique. Three scenarios are developed (optimistic, most probable and pessimistic). The main result of the scenario modelling suggests that the transport system of Iran requires considerable improvement to compete effectively with other landbridges, given an increase in trade from Iran and the Central Asian and Caucasus countries.

La culture en général et l’art, en particulier, occupent une position unique dans la structuration d’une société. En dépit des conflits, des convulsions politiques et idéologiques qu’a connu depuis un siècle, l’Iran d’aujourd’hui n’est plus un pays sous le joug politique d’une théocratie obscurantiste. Contrairement aux discours bruyants et actions hostiles de dirigeants islamiques qui provoquent si facilement l’attention du grand public en Occident, l’expression artistique iranienne reste très peu connue du public du monde entier. C’est à partir d’une réalisation plastique personnelle qu’ont été évalués que les véritables représentants et porte-parole d’une société iranienne progressiste ne sont plus ses politiques, mais bien ses artistes. Les artistes iraniens essaient de montrer la voix d’un autre Iran, celle d’un pays à l’histoire plurimillénaire, mais toujours aussi épris de culture et avide de liberté.Très attachées à leur histoire et leur culture, les oeuvres des artistes iraniens s’élaborent entre héritage et innovation. Lesquelles font état d’univers où un langage symbolique, ostensiblement hybride, se construit entre traditions ancestrales et modernité postrévolutionnaire. Par le biais de différents types médiums contemporains, comme la photographie, la performance, l’installation, la vidéo, ces oeuvres témoignent de la recherche d'un geste et d'un langage susceptibles de reconstruire la mosaïque du réel. Le regard des artistes, construit par leurs codes culturels, ne les empêche cependant pas de prendre en considération les actuels problèmes sociaux et politiques. Par contre, les artistes iraniens détournent intelligemment la réalité de façon métaphorique et symbolique pour transmettre le contenu de leur message au monde entier. De cette manière, l’art contemporain iranien, a pu s’épanouir sur la scène internationale et a pu attirer l’attention de quelques collectionneurs du marché de l’art et de commissaires d’exposition internationaux, durant ces dernières décennies. / Culture in general and art in particular, occupy a unique position in the structure of society. Despite the conflicts, political and ideological convulsions has been known for a century, Iran today is no longer a country under the political yoke of theocracy obscurantist. Unlike the noisy speech and actions hostile Islamic leaders who so easily cause the attention of the general public in the West, Iranian artistic expression is very little known to the public worldwide. This is from a personal realization plastic what evaluated as true representatives and spokespersons of Iranian society progressive are no longer policies, but its artists. Iranian artists trying to show the voice of another Iran, a country with a history thousands of years, but still as loving culture and eager for freedom. Very attached to their history and culture, the works of Iranian artists to develop between heritage and innovation which indicate universe where a symbolic language, ostensibly hybrid builds between traditions and modernity post-revolutionary. Through different mediums contemporaries, such as photography, performance, installation, video, these works reflect the research gesture and language may reconstruct the mosaic of reality. The regard of artists, built by their cultural codes, however, does not prevent to consider the current social and political problems. By against, Iranian artists intelligently divert the reality of metaphorical and symbolic way to transmit the content of their message to the world. In this way, Iranian contemporary art, has been able to flourish on the international scene and has attracted the attention of some collector’s art market and international exhibition curators, in recent decades.

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This dissertation opens a multimedia archive of contemporary Iranian films, documentaries, newspaper articles, and political philosophies in order to rethink the complicated relationship between cinema and the Reformist Movement in Iran. The existing scholarship has largely reduced interactions between these institutions to modes of mutual support, noting Mohammad Khatami’s backing of the film industry during his tenure as Minister of Islamic Culture and Guidance (1982-1992) and his liberal cultural policies as president (1997-2005). However, the research presented in this dissertation indicates that Iranian cinema and the Reformist Movement crucially informed one another, and the dynamics of their exchange functioned on an ideological level. More than just benefiting from the Reformist Movement, certain films and filmmakers helped to shape and articulate its emerging political discourse. At the same time, the dialogue between Khatami’s Reformist Movement and Iranian cinema have generated a unique set of aesthetic qualities that includes a revival of mystic love, the use of Tehran as a metaphoric site of social and structural reformation, and reconfigurations of perceptions of time. I examine films that were released during Khatami’s tenure as Minister of Islamic Culture and Guidance, his presidential campaign and presidency in order to interrogate the relationship between film and reform and to theorize the visual language that has emerged to enunciate this relationship. I also consider a film and a music video released two years after Khatami’s presidency ended. They did not benefit directly from his cultural liberalism but nevertheless participate in central reformist debates. Their experimentation with form suggests that the reformist aesthetic possesses a momentum that permits it to develop and transform without explicit contact with the political movement that inspired it. I argue, therefore, that the Reformist Movement marked a change on the political landscape at the same time that it signaled a new trend in the country’s cinematic history. I connect innovations in film to current trends in new media and youth culture and propose a new reformist model for the study of cultural productivity in contemporary Iran, one that moves past the reductive category of “post-Revolution.” / text

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Research shows that many immigrant children in Canada face challenges in maintaining their heritage languages, i.e., languages other than English and French or Indigenous languages. Public schools might not recognize or promote the use of heritage languages, many schools do not provide heritage language instruction, and in some instances, students and their parents are actively discouraged from using their heritage language at home. Heritage languages, however, should be maintained to help immigrant students succeed socially and academically and maintain stronger familial bonds. Language maintenance can also lead to multilingualism in a society, facilitating socioeconomic and international relations in the globalized world. In light of these challenges and the importance of maintaining heritage languages, this qualitative case study, informed by the work of critical theorists in the field of additional language education, was undertaken to investigate language maintenance in a heritage language school in a major city in Canada. Issues under investigation included (1) students’, parents’, and teachers’ perspectives on language maintenance, (2) the availability of language maintenance resources at home, school, and in the first language (L1) community, (3) successes and challenges of the students in maintaining their heritage language at home, school, and in the L1 community, and (4) the parents’ and teachers’ effort in facilitating heritage language learning opportunities for children. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, field-observations, descriptive and reflective field notes, and participants’ journal writing. The emerging themes included (1) the importance of language maintenance, (2) language maintenance strategies, and (3) language maintenance challenges. This study sought to raise awareness of language maintenance issues faced by immigrants, in this instance a particular Iranian community in Canada, within the contexts of home, school, and L1 community. In documenting students’ successes and challenges in maintaining their heritage language, heritage language teachers’ experiences as non-mainstream educators, and parents’ efforts to provide heritage language learning opportunities for their children, the research aimed to challenge immigrant students’ education with regard to issues of equity. Results are intended to inform immigrant families and communities, and programming and policy to facilitate language maintenance opportunities for children in Canada and other immigrant-receiving contexts.