Mohammad Hassan Ghaane - Fars Department of Education

People express their feelings toward each other by using expressives. Expressives are conventional patterns and formulas which people use to be polite. They play an important role in understanding the social rituals and in producing a good relationship between people. This article seeks to find, describe, and classify expressive expressions in Persian and in English. They are divided into three categories with their own subcategories. As far as possibe, the structures, meanings, and functions of expressives in the two languages are compared and contrasted. Also, a detailed analysis is presented after each part. In a quantitative analysis, the differences between female and male in using some of expressives are examined.This paper argues that the expressives are not intended to get information or to convey information and thought. For example, some scholars believe that even the most literate speaker of English doesn’t know that good-bye is a contraction of God be with you. So, the meanings of the words in expressives are not of great importance. But the whole expression is used to associate and convey something more than the literal meanings. This becomes clear when we notice that expressives are used based on their functions in both English and Persian.

Expressives, phatic talk, greeting, farewell, apologizing, well-wishing