This paper presents the acoustic features of speech recorded during interactions with foreigners in Danish and Finnish languages in the light of Speech Accommodation Theory. It presents selective aspects of speech attuning to linguistically less-fluent interlocutors in temporal and spectral perspectives. Foreigner-directed speech and native talk were compared in a spectral (F0, vowel space and intensity) and a temporal domain (phones per second). The results were correlated with the participants’ degree of exposure to foreigners and attitude towards them measured by means of a questionnaire. It was concluded that personal attitude towards interlocutors causes hyperarticulation. It was also shown, however, that the differences between the given instances of conversation are the strongest in the temporal domain, and not in the spectral domain.

In this article, I explore the content of Iran’s first women’s newspaper, Dānish (‘Knowledge’), published in Tehran in 1910–1911. Using the method of close reading, I address the question of the model of womanhood that was presented in the pages of the weekly. In this regard, I examine selected articles that appeared in the surviving issues of Dānish, distinguishing three dominant thematic areas: the education of girls and women; marital relationships; child rearing, hygiene, and health care. By putting the journal’s discourse in the context of the discussion on ‘women’s issues’ that was ongoing in the press during the Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911), I reflect on the relationship between the agenda of the early Iranian women’s movement and the discourse of constitutionalist nationalism.