An investigation of complement response strategies in Persian: effects of age, gender, and social position

This research aims to investigate the effects of three social factors age, gender, and social status on compliment response patterns in Persian. To this aim, an open-ended written discourse completion task (DCTs) was developed including eight situations in each of which the respondents received a compliment for their appearance, character, ability, or possession: once from a friend (equal position) and then from someone of a higher social position (unequal position). The DCTs were completed by ۴۰۰ native speakers of Persian (۱۰۰ boys and ۱۰۰ girls aged between aged ۱۵ and ۱۸, and ۱۰۰ male and ۱۰۰ female teachers aged above ۳۰). The collected data were coded following Herbert's (۱۹۸۶) model with a minor modification proposed by Yousefvand (۲۰۱۰) and were then analyzed to obtain the frequency and percentage of different types of compliment responses and to see if the effect of the social factors is meaningful. The results of the study not only emphasize the difference between different response patterns to compliments among various social groups but have some educational functions, particularly they help non-Persian speakers respond to ccomplimentsconsidering speakers’ culture and social factors.

Keywords:

response to compliment , gender , Persian , age , speech act , social position