Teaching English Language

Teaching English Language

The Persian Cultural Pragmatic Schema of mehmân-navâzi (Hospitality): Rituals and Linguistic Formulae

Document Type : Original Article

Author
English Language Department, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran
10.22132/tel.2024.446310.1575
Abstract
The aim of the present paper was to explore the cultural schema of mehmân-navâzi (hospitality) in Persian. An ethnographic approach was utilized to collect data from a number of resources including online and naturalistic data gathered from movies and daily conversations. The constant comparison method (Creswell, 2013) was then employed to analyze the data for the rituals and linguistic formulae used to enact the schema. The results indicated that the rituals in the practice of this cultural schema can be divided into three categories of welcoming, serving, and leave-taking. The examples of linguistic formulae and expressions used in the enactment of the schema revealed that the realization of this schema was closely associated with other cultural schemas underlying many aspects of communication in Persian including tâ’ârof, âberu, rudarbăyesti, shekastehnafsi, adab va ehteram, and tavazo’. The findings were then discussed with reference to the implications the study has for intercultural communication and more specifically, cross-cultural politeness research, as well as for teaching English as an international language.
Keywords

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Volume 18, Issue 2
July 2024
Pages 407-431

  • Receive Date 29 February 2024
  • Revise Date 27 May 2024
  • Accept Date 09 September 2024