kourosh saberi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by kourosh saberi

Speakers of Persian, like speakers of other languages, utilise Routine Politeness Formulae (RPF) ... more Speakers of Persian, like speakers of other languages, utilise Routine Politeness Formulae (RPF) to negotiate central interpersonal interactions. RPF in Persian have not received any systematic description as to their forms, their functions, their typical conditions of use and their discourse structure rules. Bridging this gap, for the first time, RPF from five frequentlyused speech acts-namely, greeting, leave-taking, apologizing, thanking and requesting-are documented in this thesis. Data were derived from Persian soap operas and from role-plays with native speakers, and were entered into a database for further analysis. The analysis is qualitative and the data are conceived of as phraseological units to be represented as dictionary entries. The study of the aforementioned speech acts and their related array of RPF reveals the dynamics of interpersonal polite behaviour among Persians, reflecting the following sociocultural values prevalent in Iranian society: (i) its group-oriented nature, (ii) a tendency towards positive (solidarity) politeness, (iii) sensitivity to remaining in people's debt, (iv) sensitivity to giving trouble to others, (v) a high premium on reciprocity in interpersonal communications, (vi) the importance of seniority in terms of age and social status, and (vii) differentiation between members of the 'inner circle' and the 'outer circle'. This thesis also reveals the dominance of the strategy of self-lowering and other-elevating. Almost all RPF in Persian allow for the use of this pervasive strategy, which is also manifested by two further sub-strategies: (i) a propensity to exaggerate favours received from others, and (ii) giving precedence to others over oneself. Finally, it is suggested that Islamic teachings have significantly influenced the formation and use of certain RPF. The dictionary resulting from this work can serve as a resource for researchers in sociolinguistics and pragmatics, and for the teaching of Persian to non-Persian speakers.

Persian has an elaborate politeness system. Speakers of Persian utilise routine politeness formul... more Persian has an elaborate politeness system. Speakers of Persian utilise routine politeness formulae (RPF) to negotiate central interpersonal interactions. Iran’s cultural, social and religious norms are reflected in this domain of its phrasal vocabulary, and this has resulted in an astonishing variety of routine politeness formulae. RPF in Persian, including leave-taking formulae, have not received any systematic description as to their standard conditions of use and their ‘sequential dependencies’ (cf. Kuiper, 2009). This study offers a comprehensive description and categorization of Persian leave-taking formulae and presents discourse structure rules for their usage. The data upon which this study is based is primarily taken from approximately 400 hours of Persian soap operas screened on Iran’s national television. To generate more comprehensive data in places where the soap opera data failed to adequately provide representative examples, native speakers of Persian were asked to...