Linguistics, Vol. 12 No. 1, 2011.
Original scientific paper
Compliments in English and Persian interaction: A cross-cultural perspective
Amin Karimnia
orcid.org/0000-0002-1312-6249
; Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan
Akbar Afghari
; Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan; Sheikhbahaee University, Isfahan
Abstract
The study of compliments has attracted the attention of many scholars (e.g.,
Goffman 1971; Lakoff 1973; Brown and Levinson 1978; Amouzadeh 2001; Gola-to 2002; Sharifian 2005) and has become a major issue in the area of interactional
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.
Keywords
politeness; American English; Persian; cross-cultural studies; com-pliment responses
Hrčak ID:
72534
URI
Publication date:
15.7.2011.
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