A Rapport Management approach to studying the speech act of invitation across Iranian EFL learners and Persian natives

The present study explores the nature of invitation making across Iranian EFL learners and Persian natives from a pragmatic point of view. It aims at delving into this new model by (spencear–oatey2008) rapport management via focusing on the realization of politeness in the speech act of invitation. In this study, three major aspects of inviting were examined: inviting to higher, lower, equal state. The sample is composed of 60 participants. For data collection purpose, a DCT with an emotion scale was analyzed by descriptive statistics, emotion scale included trustiness scale and the importance scale, Concerning this, while the Persian speakers had chosen very important and not important at all more degree, the EFL learners’ choices were mostly important, neutral and not important. Concerning the honesty issue, the two groups were not significantly different in terms of their honesty assessment of each invitation sentence (p>0.05). The study has shown that Persian society has slightly more different patterning of inviting than EFL in relation to higher state .The results of the study have implications for intercultural. Communication, and applied linguistics