Koya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Kurdistan Regional Government’s Natural Resources Policy Formulation and Implementation Process

Rekurd S. Maghdid — 2023-07-16

The process of public policy formulation is known to have significant role in making issues or solving them regardless of their makers. In particular, the policy making for a subject like managing natural resources has different impacts on the country. Recent studies have investigated either the negative or the positive sides of the KRG managing and marketing natural resources. In this article, all the related aspects of KRG natural resources policy such as policy formulation, level of KRG policy, causes and outcomes of the KRG oil policy is going to be discussed. In this qualitative study, content analysis approach is applied for obtaining secondary data to explain all the aspects of KRG Natural Resources Policy. For this purpose, 42 recent studies and books focusing on KRG Natural Resources policy are perused and discussed. Finally, this article concludes that KRG Oil and Gas Policy is a completely important subject to be studied for having influence on all the aspects of the Kurdistan Region and the Middle East energy and economy politics. Accordingly, the study calls for future research on how KRG can manage this sector with the existence of the Iraqi Federal High Court’s refusal decision.

The Use and Abuse of History

Botan T. Maghdid — 2023-07-20

This research attempts to explore the dynamic relationships between writing the ancient history of Iraq and political discourse, focusing on academic publications in Iraq between 2003 and 2014. These publications created images of the enemy through transhistorical narratives, providing "evidence from the past" to justify aggression against certain communities and neighbouring countries. The study uses Stein's definition of enemy images and Ofer Zur's model of creating enemy images to examine the role of Iraqi historiography in shaping political discourse.

The research argues that the peaceful coexistence between Iraqi communities depends not only on political actors but also on the response of the academic community to power. By addressing distorted historical images of "Others," Iraqi historians can play a role in promoting peaceful coexistence between communities. The study highlights the importance of challenging politically motivated enemification of certain communities, which lack evidence from history.

The research reveals a strong connection between the representations of the Persian, Jews, and Christians by the Baʿthist regime and those found in Iraqi academic publications after the regime's collapse. The study highlights the need for Iraqi historians to re-examine their relationship with power and to avoid disseminating politically motivated narratives that distort historical facts.

Thus, this research emphasizes the importance of examining the role of historical narratives in shaping political discourse and promoting peaceful coexistence between communities. Iraqi historians have a crucial role to play in challenging distorted historical images of "Others" and promoting a more accurate and inclusive understanding of history.

Halliday’s Interpersonal Meta-function Analysis of Entrepreneur’s Public Speech in English and Central Kurdish

Hawsar A. Shekhani — 2023-07-20

This paper examines the role and significance of Interpersonal language meta-function in understanding and constructing language use and functions among language users in a business context in English and Central-Kurdish languages. In analyzing entrepreneurs’ public speeches, the researchers employ the descriptive and qualitative approach with the content analysis. The instrument used in this study is to examine the qualitative exploratory data among entrepreneurs’ public speech in business discourse in English and Central-Kurdish. The paper attempts to answer the following questions; What is the dominant mood type among the entrepreneurs in English and Central-Kurdish in business discourse? How does the use and selection of the personal pronoun by entrepreneurs in English and Central-Kurdish influence the interpersonal meta-function? and lastly, What are the frequency and occurrence of Attitudinal mode in the public speech of entrepreneurs concerning Type and possible Polarity? The findings show the information about the distribution of the results in regard to the mood types, the use and selection of personal pronouns and the frequencies of each attitudinal mode in an entrepreneur’s public speech in English and Central Kurdish quantitatively. The study reveals that the prominent type of mood is declarative mood, besides the use and selection of the Personal Systems play a significant role in which the speaker expresses his attitude, influence and maintaining friendship and intimacy with the audience. The dominant personal pronoun is first personal system and the positive Affect mode exceeds other attitudinal modes both in English and Central-Kurdish.

A Socio-cognitive Approach to the Analysis of Selected American (Athletes) Celebrity Speeches

Avin H. Ahmed — 2023-07-20

The pervasiveness of celebrity figures in contemporary media and the effect they have on the minds of the public made investigating their discourse and exhibiting the way they think a worthy topic to study closely. Celebrities, as a social group, use language as a means of inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment. In this regard, they become exemplary and inspirational to the public by conveying their opinion, attitude, ideas, and knowledge. It is worth saying, most celebrities are simultaneously influential, especially entertainers like sports stars. Their discourse is usually imbued with and drenched in feelings, qualities, morals, and values that attract people to follow them, share characteristics with them and watch them. Accordingly, the researchers of the current study selected three American athlete celebrities' speeches to analyze and investigate the type of language used and the kind of ideology imbued within the speeches. Van Dijk’s model (1995a, 2016) of the socio-cognitive approach, mainly the discourse-cognition-society paradigm, is applied to analyze the speeches. The main aim is to show how discourse, social and cognitive structures are used to convey ideologies and what types of ideologies are instilled in the (selected) athlete celebrities’ speeches. After conducting the analysis, the study ends with the conclusion that some profile athletes are key influencers as spokespersons in society at large and they mainly depict themselves in a positive bright way that assists in spreading their mindsets and ideologies.

Paradoxical Connections in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone

Ahmed A. Muhammed — 2023-07-20

The paper examines different types of paradoxical connections in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone with respect to contemporary characteristics of American theatre. It is so clear that the play has a smooth transformation or connection between paradoxical states or situations. The transformation happens due to spatial, and temporal conditions, and different humankind values. The play is full of different types of connections due to social ties, contradictive life situations, death and life, the whole and the parts, the spatial and the temporal transformation, truth and lies, happiness and misfortune, fancy and facts, and humanity with technology. The study is qualitative depending on the study of the cases within the play that are contradicting each other, yet they serve in deepening the meaning and the understanding of the cases. The paradoxical issues to be studied in a comparative way, these comparative situations serve higher thematic issues in a philosophical dimension in very carefully woven relations between the characters and situational environment as well. The common sense that the play made is to accept the philosophy of black and white as positive paradoxical relation, that the black helps to see the pure white and vice versa. Common unanswered questions are to be presented in a rhetorical and philosophical manner; targeting these questions is the way of being closer to a bunch of truths about the complicated fabric relationships which link the characters all together.

The Fairy-Tale Design and the Heroine’s Transition to the Ordinary World

Saffeen N. Arif — 2023-07-20

Like many of her contemporaries, the fictional works of the Canadian writer Alice Munro can be read as a realistic portrayal of the people from her native Ontario, Canada, describing their set of beliefs, values, dreams, aspirations, fears, and apprehensions. A second way to evaluate this fiction is to approach it from a feminist perspective, shedding light on the question of women’s need to be free from the patriarchal rule. The aim of this article, however, is to consider the function of the fairy-tale framework by which Munro’s short story “Red Dress – 1946” is constructed. This fairy-tale design is considered a point of departure from which the story’s heroine grows mentally and spiritually so that she can get her way into the normal world. In addition to taking a brief look at some of the views offered by Munro’s critics of her writings, it also tries to answer such questions as, what function(s) does this form perform to the story to bring about the heroine’s development? Aside from where the Bildungsroman and fairy tale genres meet and where they deviate, how far are certain traditional fairy-tale elements, such as structure, themes, characterization, etc. significant in bringing about the heroine’s mental as well as emotional growth?

Drawing a Demarcation Line between Two Overlapping Colloquial Elements

Bikhtiyar O. Fattah — 2023-07-20

The overlap between idioms and clichés is one of the problematic meaning issues. This overlap can simply be detected in online as well as academic sources. The existence of the overlap between idioms and clichés springs from the absence of a model that can work out some demarcation boundary between them. The present study aims at drawing a demarcation line between these two essential colloquial elements by resorting to linguistic features, contextual functions, nature of community of practice based on interlocutors’ relationship, and the degree of informality to fulfill this purpose. This study makes use of a qualitative approach to carry out the process of analysis based on a model designed to assist the procedures of determining the features of each element. With reference to data, the analysed idioms and clichés have been extracted from 20 discourses (10 written texts and 10 recorded interactions) of 10 different topics.

The most significant concluding points come in three angles: structure (an idiom is mostly a part of a meaningful statement, whereas a cliché is mostly a full meaningful statement by itself); function (idioms are usually used for three different purposes: emphasis, creativity, and persuasiveness, whereas clichés are used either to simplify the idea or to state an idea without exerting any effort by making use of overused statements and common ritualized expressions); and formality ( Idioms are detected in less informal discourses compared to clichés).

Assessing the End-of-Semester Examination Papers During the Implementation of the Bologna Process: Bloom’s Taxonomy as a Framework

Sarkawt M. Qadir — 2023-07-20

One of the significant transformations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is the implementation of the Bologna process. This alteration of the traditional system to the Bologna process system has also impacted the assessment schemes. More weight has been given to formative assessment that can help improve students’ grades and ease success in the courses. Nonetheless, the final exam still carries most of the grades. Therefore, setting appropriate questions that can meet all the cognition levels represented in Bloom’s taxonomy assists in raising students’ cognition to higher levels rather than only assessing bookish knowledge that is located on the baseline of Bloom’s taxonomy. To this intent, the present study endeavored to identify if instructors at colleges of Nursing and Science adhere to the various dimensions of Bloom’s taxonomy that are central to the Bologna process. More importantly, the association of each of the demographic variables to the level of the final examination questions was also examined. The study employed a quantitative method to tackle the topic. Totally, a sample of 75 final examination papers was collected from instructors, including 524 individual questions. The findings revealed that most of the examination papers revolved around low-order thinking questions and the association of the rate of success to the level of the questions was highly statistically significant.

The Economics of Behavioral Finance and its Effects on Investment Decisions in Kurdistan Region of Iraq for the Period 2020-2022

Emad A. mohammad — 2023-08-13

This quantitative research aims to examine the influence of behavioral biases and financial education on investment choices made by residents of Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The research used regression analysis to look at the connection between behavioral biases, financial literacy, and investment choices among 200 regional investors. Investment choices in the region were found to be significantly influenced by behavioral biases, including loss aversion and overconfidence. It was also discovered that investors with higher degrees of financial education were less vulnerable to behavioral biases, suggesting that financial education had a positive impact on investment behavior. Statistical significance between behavioral biases, financial literacy, and investment choices was indicated by a p-value of less than 0.05 in the regression analysis. The research found that investing decisions in the Iraqi Kurdistan area were greatly influenced by cognitive biases. This research shows that financial education is crucial for reducing the impact of behavioral biases and increasing the likelihood of making well-informed investing choices. To enhance investment behavior and lessen the effect of behavioral biases on investment decisions, the study suggests implementing financial education. The results have substantial ramifications for regulators, banks, and individuals in the region who are interested in influencing investment patterns and expanding access to financial services as well as literacy programs. By empowering individuals to make educated investment decisions, these types of programs have the potential to expand access to financial services and stimulate regional economies.