The salience of choice fuels independence: Implications for self-perception, cognition, and behavior

More than ever before, people across the world are exposed to ideas of choice and have opportunities to make choices. What are the consequences of this rapidly expanding exposure to the ideas and practice of choice? The current research investigated an unexamined and potentially powerful consequence of this salience of choice: an awareness and experience of independence. Four studies (n = 1,288) across three cultural contexts known to differ in both the salience of choice and the cultural emphasis on independence (the United States, Singapore, and India) provided converging evidence of a link between the salience of choice and independence. Singaporean students who recalled choices rather than actions represented themselves as larger than their peers (study 1). Conceptually replicating this finding, study 2 found that Americans who recalled choices rather than actions rated themselves as physically stronger. In a word/nonword lexical decision task (study 3), Singaporean students who recalled choices rather than actions were quicker at identifying independence-related words, but not neutral or interdependence-related words. Americans, Singaporeans, and Indians all indicated that when working in an organization that emphasized choice, they would be more likely to express their opinions. Similarly, Americans, Singaporeans, and Indians reported a preference for working in such an organization (studies 4a and 4b). The findings suggest that the salience of personal choice may drive an awareness and experience of independence even in contexts where, unlike in the United States, independence has not been the predominant ethos. Choice may be an unmarked and proximate mechanism of cultural change and growing global individualism.

The Translatability of Some Qur’anic Verbal Irony into English: A Comparative Stylistic and Pragmatic Analytical Study

The current study aims to examine through lexical stylistic analysis and comparison, the differences and the disparateness of meaning and style in rendering the Quranic verbal irony into English, in the work of Mohammed. A.S Abdel Haleem, Mohammed. M Pickthall and Mohammed Khan and Mohammed Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali . Also, the study aims to investigate how the three translators deal with the Quranic verbal irony in their translations into English. This has its powerful consequence in attaining a better understanding on the part of the Holy Quran translators and subsequently of English language receptors in general and for non- Arabic Muslims in particular, where the Qur’anic verbal irony concerned. Also, the study aims to identify the translation strategies employed by the three translators in rendering the Quranic verbal. irony Moreover, the study revealed that the Qur’anic verbal irony is conspicuous occurrence in the Holy Quran and that the process of rendering them into English is generally problematic for the reasons such as linguistic and cultural divergences and discrepancies. Finally, the study gives two ideas; firstly, the equivalence in translation should be examined as a concept that holds a place on a scale that can begin very equivalent to inequivalent. Secondly, better translation of the Holy Quran should bear intelligibility in terms of a total impact of the Message on the language receptor.