A Sociopragmatic Analysis of Compliment Responses in Persian (original) (raw)
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A Comprehensive Review of Compliment Responses Among Iranian Persian Speakers
2021
Given the importance of complimenting and responding to compliments in everyday interactions, several studies have investigated the strategies used to compliment and also to respond to compliments. This systematic study offers a thorough review of research on Compliment Responses (CRs) in the Persian language conducted over the past three decades. It outlines the theoretical frameworks, the categorization schemes used, and the main findings of the reviewed studies. The bibliographical search on this area yielded a database of 35 studies on Persian CRs for this systematic review. We provide a synthesis of the research conducted in this area, the theoretical frameworks, and the methodologies used in different studies, including data analysis and data collection procedures. We then scrutinize the studies conducted on compliment response patterns in Persian, addressing similarities and differences and any emerging trends. Based on the review of the existing literature, recommendations are provided with guidelines and directions for future research in this area.
An Investigation into the Speech Act of Compliment Response in Persian
International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 2013
The purpose of this study is to investigate the compliment responses in Persian language. Drawing on Herbert's (1986), Mile (1994), Rose and Kwai-Fun (2001), and also the data of the current study, 18 types of compliment responses were identified. Based on different compliment topics [such as appearance, ability, possession and nationality], the researcher along with 12 others as assistants who were instructed how to give compliments got engaged in conversations with different people to compliment them. They complimented people from various professions, contexts, cities and educational levels. The majority [67.6%] of our corpus of 756 naturally occurring compliment responses fell into the main category of "agreement". However, the absence of the compliment response "no-acknowledgement", the high rate of two or three part appreciation token along with a significant portion of " making offer" attest to the culturallyspecific Iranian features such as modesty and Ta'arof. Additionally, no significant differences were found between males and females in terms of compliment response types, or the degree of modesty or Ta'arof. Nonetheless, there existed significant differences with regard to topics of compliment in a sense that most of the compliments given on nationality (89%) were accepted while in the case of physical and mental domain, it was not that much high. Like other studies in pragmatic area, this study also indicates that compliment response is cross-naturally varied, different, and hence warrants more attention in instruction and material development.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2016
The present study aimed at investigating the effect of the social variable of education on the use of compliments and compliment responses in Persian. To this end, a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was administered to 200 native Persian speakers from different educational backgrounds. In general, the results revealed that participants tended to use explicit unbound semantic formula as well as non-compliment strategies to give compliments the most. However, they used future reference, contrast, request, and…
Compliments in English and Persian interaction
2016
sociolinguistics. To date, many models of politeness have been put forward in the literature. In this study, Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) politeness model was used to carry out a comparative analysis. The compliment response behavior of native Persian speakers was compared with that of native speakers of American English to see if it can provide evidence for applicability of Brown and Levin-son’s universal model. The data were taken from a corpus of 50 hours of record-ing the live interviews from the Persian and English TV channels. The results show Persian and English speakers use different strategies and culture has an im-portant effect on speakers ’ speech act performance. The results also demonstrate the inapplicability of Brown and Levinson’s model for cross-cultural compari-sons.
A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Compliments and Compliment Responses among Young Saudis
Arab World English Journal, 2020
There is a lack of awareness of the use of compliments and compliment responses in the Saudi Arabian context. This research investigates, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the speech acts of compliments and compliment responses as realized by eighty Saudi students who study English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It aims to identify the semantic and structural formulas used by the participants to express compliments and to respond to compliments. The study also examines the roles of the topic of conversation and the participants' first language in the realisation of compliments. Furthermore, the study investigates gender differences with regard to the use of compliments and compliment responses. A discourse completion test (DCT) consisting of twelve situations was used to collect data from the participants. The analysis of the responses found that the dominant form of compliments used was unbound semantic formulas that were not influenced by the social relationship between the participants. Topics that are socially delicate result in the use of more implicit compliments than explicit compliments. The religious norms require politeness in the interactions between people, and this is reflected in the prevalence of implicit compliments. There is a wide range of compliments used with no fixed pattern of usage. Compliments tend to be given using adjectives rather than verbs. Gender did not appear to affect the nature of usage of compliments and responses. The research suggests that the cultural influences of the English language and western culture may be influencing how young Saudis use compliments.
Journal of English language Teaching and Learning, 2020
Compliments (Cs) and compliment responses have been a prevailing topic of study in pragmatics due to their pivotal role in effective intercultural and transcultural interactions. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of research on compliments in the Persian language conducted over almost about the past four decades. It summarizes key findings of compliments in the Persian language used by Iranian speakers of Persian, discusses the significance of these findings, and speculates the future directions of research on complimenting studies on Persian language. An extensive bibliographical search on studies on this particular area yielded a database of nine studies on Persian Cs for this systematic review. After a brief exploration of the background of compliment studies done by prominent scholars in other languages, we provide a working definition of compliments. We then examine studies to date of complimenting behavior in Persian, highlighting similarities and differences, and any emerging trends. We provide a synthesis of the research conducted in this area, the theoretical frameworks, and the methodologies used in different studies, including data collection and data analysis. Based on the review of previous studies, we speculate on some possible directions for future research in this area.
A Pragmatic Study of Compliment Responses in Northern Kurmanji
Academic Journal of Nawroz University
Compliments and compliment responses are considered as one of the most common linguistic phenomena in all languages. People use compliments and compliments responses in everyday interaction in order to make a conversation go on. However, the strategies of complimenting and responding to them may differ from one culture to another. Such strategies are realized in terms of order, frequency, formulas and responses. The study aims at investigating compliment responses in Northern Kurmanji with reference to English. It tries to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of responding to compliments syntactically, semantically and socially. The study is based on some hypotheses, the validity of which required designing a questionnaire to find out the responses used by speakers of Northern Kurmanji in different social contexts. The questionnaire consists of written discourse completion task (DCT) with four situational settings (appearance, ability, possession and character). About 80 Kurdish college students in the Department of English/ College of Humanities/ University of Duhok during the academic year 2014.2015 participated in this study. Finally, the data are analyzed using Holmes' three categories of compliment responses (accept, reject and deflect/ evade). The analysis of the data has revealed that the native speakers of Northern Kurmanji use different strategies in responding to compliments. Moreover, native speakers of Northern Kurmanji seem to be polite in their responses to compliments.
Cultural schemas in L1 and L2 compliment responses: A study of Persian-speaking learners of English
Journal of Politeness Research. Language, …, 2008
This paper explores the relationship between speech acts and cultural conceptualizations by examining the degree to which compliment responses produced by Persian speakers in their L1 and L2 (English) are informed by the Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi 'modesty'. The schema, which appears to be rooted in certain cultural-spiritual traditions of Iranian society, motivates the speakers to negate or scale down compliments, downplay their talents, skills, achievements, etc., and return the compliment to the complimenter. The schema also encourages the speakers to reassign the compliment to a family member, a friend, God, or another associate. In this study, a Persian and an English version of a discourse completion test (DCT) were used to collect data from a group of Persian speaking learners of English in Iran. The participants completed the English DCT first and then received and completed the Persian version after an interval of two weeks. The results revealed that speakers of Persian instantiated the cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi, in varying degrees, in their responses to compliments both in their L1 and L2. A significant finding of the study was that even where this cultural schema is reflected in a speaker's compliment response in his/her L2 it may be absent from the corresponding L1 response. The findings also suggest that the schema may be instantiated differently according to the context of receiving the compliment. These observations point to the dynamic nature of the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations. The paper ends by presenting a discussion of the implications of the findings for the teaching and learning of English as an International Language. lar aim of the study was to explore the degree to which these responses reflected the Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi. As a preamble to the report of the present study, the following section elaborates on the notion of "cultural schema", and then explicates the Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi. The later sections of the paper present the methodology and the findings of the study. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the notion of English as an International Language.
Compliment Responses: A Comparative Study of Native English Speakers and Iranian L2 Speakers
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014
Responding to compliments is intellectually demanding on the part of the receiver since a balance should be made in order for not rejecting the addressor's compliment and not praising one's self. In this study an attempt has been made to shed light on compliment responses produced by Iranian EFL speakers as well as by the native speakers of American English in oral communicative contexts through naturalistic role-play tasks and retrospective interviews. The results revealed that the L2 participants differed from native speakers in different aspects. In addition to the shortage of cultural background, the lack of knowledge on linguistic forms could be regarded as the factors impacting the way the participants responded to compliments.