COMPLIMENTS IN PERSIAN-SPEAKING COMMUNICATION: UNIVERSAL AND ETHNOSPECIFIC

Abstract

Background. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to develop the appropriate sociocultural competence of students studying Eastern languages in Ukrainian universities. Compliment is one of the ethno-specific speech acts (SA) functioning in the Persian linguistic and cultural area. Discovering the strategies which Persian speakers apply when giving and receiving compliments will help to understand the specific features of the cognitive mechanisms underlying their communicative behavior, and to make certain conclusions about their axiological world's image. Methods. (i) Comparative – to analyze the views of Western and Iranian researchers on the nature of compliments and responses to them; (ii) discourse analysis – to identify various social, mental, cultural, etc. factors that influence the complementary behavior of Persian speakers; (iii) intent analysis – to identify actual, explicitly non-expressed intentions of participants in Persian-speaking complimentary interaction. Results. It has been established that the compliment SA in Persian-speaking communication is closely related to the cultural schemes šekastenafsi 'modesty' and ša'n 'dignity' – integral components of the Persian politeness system ta'ārof. When responding to a compliment, Iranians tend to downplay the object of the compliment, raising the status of the initiator of the compliment instead. Also they apply this strategy when communicating in English, which demonstrates how valuable it is and how deep it is rooted in the Persian linguistic consciousness. Conclusions. In both English-speaking and Persian-speaking communicative behavior there is one common element – the desire to respond positively to a compliment, yet avoiding self-praise. Functioning of Persian-language compliments demonstrates its ethno-specific nature in the following cases: 1) when the reaction to a compliment on a thing of the addressee becomes a counteroffer to accept that thing as a gift; 2) when women are complimented on their appearance or personal qualities by men they don't know well; due to cultural restrictions, such compliments are perceived as insincere comments or even sarcasm, so they are ignored or regarded with disapproval.