More on the Analysis of Politeness Forms in English and Persian

Language reflects the context in which it is used. We adapt our talk to suit our audience and talk differently to children, customers and colleagues. We use language differently in formal and casual contexts. And all these are also dependant on our speech community. This study examines the understanding of politeness phenomena in Shiraz, a city in Iran, between native and non-native speakers of Persian. Accordingly, two speech acts namely, request and apology are studied to see the participants ’ perception and interpretation of the linguistic actions. These speech acts are selected due to their common occurrence in every day human interaction. A socio-pragmatic approach is used in this study, one which according to Leech (1983) is described as “the sociological interference of pragmatics ” (1983: 10). The analysis shows that the English speakers use positive politeness more, while the Persian speaker prefers the negative politeness