Sahragard, Rahman (2000). Politeness in Persian: A cultural pragmatic analysis. PhD thesis, University of Leicester.
This exploratory study attempts to analyse some features of Persian politeness, in particular the central term of تعارف ta’arof. This important central concept is highly elaborate and complex, and it is often mentioned in Persian conversation, yet surprisingly it has received very little attention in pragmatics.
Using questionnaire, interviews, and discourse completion tasks, this study elicited information on تعارف ta’arof from native speakers: their views and perceptions of the meaning and functions of تعارف ta’arof, the distribution of تعارف ta’arof with regard to age, gender, social class, and familiarity, as well as the language and strategies involved in a few controlled situations. Based on these results, five important components of تعارف ta’arof were identified. They are ادب adab, احترام ehteraam, رودربایستی rudarbaayesti, تواضع tavaazo, and مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi. حیا hayaa, شرم sharm and کمرو kamru are brought up as part of the discussion around رودربایستی rudarbaayesti. The various component concepts, and تعارف ta’arof as a superordinate concept, were then analysed using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as an analytic framework for cultural pragmatics. As a prior step, it was necessary to establish the Persian exponents of NSM primes (referred to by means of the old terminology primitives). The resulting 38 exponents were then used to formulate explications for تعارف ta’arof and its five subcomponents. Conventional descriptive methods of giving explanations were also used.
Another aspect of the study is its investigation of the performance of Iranian EFL learners in polite language situations in English, using a discourse completion questionnaire. The results show that these learners tend to transfer their native تعارف ta’arof norms of being polite in their English responses. EFL teachers in their interviews had suggested this trend. This calls for the adoption of techniques to help learners become aware of the sociopragmatics of being polite in English.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
