Tag: (E) adab ادب

(2000) Persian – Politeness

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

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(2004) Persian – Politeness

Sahragard, Rahman (2004). A cultural script analysis of a politeness feature in Persian. In Kyung-Ja Park & Michiko Nakano (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics (pp. 399-423). Tokyo: PAAL Japan. PDF (open access)

Many writers have identified the Iranian system of politeness with a complex concept called تعارف ta’arof. In fact, any description or analysis of the Iranian politeness system without reference to this concept will be deficient and incomplete. This study takes a cultural script approach to describe the Persian concept of تعارف ta’arof. As far as is known, this is the first attempt at analysing and accounting for a Persian concept using this approach.

This study demonstrates that تعارف ta’arof is a part of the culture of being polite in Persian (ادب adab). It is manifested in both verbal and non-verbal communication. The language and the strategies involved are controlled by تواضع tavaazo (humility), urging individuals to lower themselves in self-references and raise others instead. Power, distance, social class, and age are very important in its use. The direction of the frequency of use is from the lower to the upper for all of the above variables. This points to the fact that Persian culture places great emphasis on having احترام ehteraam (respect) for superiors. Having restraint and limiting one’s wants and wishes in front of others is another aspect of تعارف ta’arof usually referred to as رودربایستی rudarbaayesti. تعارف ta’arof is also shown in receiving guests warmly by being polite and respectful and serving them with the best possible refreshments (مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi). Thus, تعارف ta’arof can be seen as the manifestation of ادب adab, احترام ehteraam, تواضع  tavaazo, رودربایستی rudarbaayesti, and مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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