Exploring cultural differences of complaint speech act in English and Persian based on Trosborg’s model

This study focused on the analysis of complaint speech act in Persian and English. To this end, 40 movies, 20 Persian and 20 English, were chosen. All of the movies were Oscar and Fajr festival winners or nominees having family genre. 1030 complaint speech acts, (490 produced by English speakers, and 540 produced by Persian speakers) were gathered and analyzed. Trosborg’s model was applied to analyze the data. He has divided complaint speech acts into 4 categories (hint, disapproval, accusation, blame) and 8 subcategories (annoyance, ill consequence, direct accusation, indirect accusation, modified blame, blame (person), blame (behavior)). The results were summarized in tables and charts in order to compare, synthesize as well as generalize the data about complaint speech acts in English and Persian. The findings showed that Persian complaints are different from those of English. English speakers used more direct complaints like accusation and blame, but Persians preferred more indirect complaints like annoyance and indirect accusation.

Keywords:

Complaint Speech act , Trosborg’s model , cultural differences