A Socio-Pragmatic Comparative Study of Routine Invitations of Female English and Persian Speakers

With regards to globalization and the increase in international interactions, the investigation of conversations has been the focus of attention of a great deal of projects and studies. Central to the most underlying approaches to the study of conversations are conversation(al) analysis and discourse analysis. In reality, conversational analysis is related to analyzing natural conversation happening in daily life and discovering the linguistic features of conversation. As a matter of fact, we use language to meet our basic needs such as apologizing, requesting, inviting etc. within certain contexts. The main focus of this report was analyzing the invitations in interactional contexts. In simple terms, the ongoing investigation was carried out with the aim of describing and comparing the features of Persian and English female native speakers’ routine invitations in terms of pragmatics. Invitations are usually viewed as arrangements for a social commitment. As a type of politeness strategy, invitation plays a very important role in daily social life of individuals. A total of twenty female participants (ten from England and ten from Iran) were considered as the study subjects. A descriptive analysis of the invitation of the females of both languages revealed that native English speakers were cold and unenthusiastic and less serious compared to Persian ones. Ta’arof, one of the most complicated aspects of Persian culture and language, was a central concept in Iranian female interactions. It means repeating and insisting others in doing something by unreal words. This was more common among Iranian native speakers. The data was obtained by means of direct and indirect observations. All in all, the structure of invitation differed from Iranian culture to English native speakers but goes by the universal norms

Keywords:

conversation , invitation , pragmatics , Ta’arof , female persons