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Differences in people’s social, religious, and political status make them tend towards a specific way of speaking. As a result, speakers always try not to threaten the status and face of the person to whom they are speaking. Accordingly, believing that the Almighty Allah enjoys the highest status in the universe, Muslims, too, resort to specific strategies in speech to maintain His exalted status. Therefore, the question this paper is to deal with is what these strategies are and how they are applied when Muslims are praying. Thus, using an analytical-descriptive approach based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, the paper explores some of the strategies used in Shi’a supplications to maintain Allah’s face and status. The results show that, when making a request of Allah, people make use of “self-lowering” and “other-raising” strategies and try to praise Allah by mentioning His good qualities, and despise themselves by mentioning their negative qualities at the same time.      

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Apology is an important social-pragmatic phenomenon in politeness field of study. This paper explores the apology strategies in Kurdish language by qualitative and quantitative methods. It sheds light on analyzing the data collected with the discourse completion task from 120 Kurdish subjects, supported by 24 interviews during 2016. The participants are divided by gender into 60 males and 60 females in the DCT data; 12 males vs 12 females. The results show use of similar apology strategies by both gender groups over situations, but with proportionally different frequencies, except in certain situations due to gender differences. In addition to gender as a striking social variable in Kurdish culture, the study also explores the significance of age and social status of subjects in conceptualizing apology acts. The study also displays the effect of the apology recipient’s social features on the subjects’ conceptualization and their obligation to apology. The clear significance of the apology supporting sub-strategies is also revealed in the study. The findings of the study are not consistent in many cases to those of other researchers, mainly western ones, with regard to the effect of gender and the use of responsibility strategy as an essential strategy other cultures. the study shows the collective features of the Kurdish culture which make them apologize differently, in certain situations, from other cultures. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the diversity of the apology strategies is based on the nature and severity of offence that can vary according to social norms prevailing in Kurdish culture.

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Politeness phenomenon is one of the subjects which have been observed by researchers of different domains , e.g. psychology, sociology and anthropology. Politeness has also been investigated in the area of pragmatics. One of the concepts following politeness is linguistic impoliteness. Different people such as Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson (1987), Bousfield (2008), Culpeper (1996;2003;2011) and  Rudanko (1996) have worked on (im)politeness phenomenon. . In spite of the large amount of investigation on western culture, less research has been worked out on this notion in Persian. So, the aim of this study is investigating the function of this notion through describing it in  Sayyadan drama of  Ruye Sahneye Abi series written by Akbar Radi. The data was investigated through the five strategies proposed  by Jonathan Culpeper (1996; 2003) on linguistic impoliteness and the notions, e.g context, social norms and emotions, he added later in 2011. The most frequently  used strategy was positive impoliteness and the least used one was mock impoliteness. The synthetic ones were at the second level and negative impoliteness was at the fourth level. There was no withhold politeness among the‌ data. Finally, new cases were introduced.                                                                                                                     

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Subh al-A'sha, written by Ahmad al-Qalqashandi 9 century (H.), elaborating official letter writing styles in Mamluk period is a valuable source for historical politeness studies. Based on Leech's politeness maxims and Beeman's approach to politeness, this paper tries to unravel the politeness strategies in official letters of the Mamluks, which depend heavily on power relations. The results show that strategies adopted in these letters are in line with Beeman's "self-lowering" and "other-raising" elements. They also confirm Leech's maxim 3 and 4, out of his six maxims, whereby individuals do their best to praise the other party during the communication. Thus, strategies applied in these letters include "exclusion," "raising the addressee," and "praising the addressee." Using a religious discourse, whose lack would be offensive, is another feature of Mamluk official letters. Finally, social discourse was also adopted in these letters through which the writer acquired his dependent / independent identity.   

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 Importing the pragmatic theories of ‘politeness’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and ‘impoliteness’ (Culpeper, 1996) into the domain of literary studies, this article intends to investigate politeness and impoliteness strategies used  in ten highly acknowledged Persian youngsters’ novels published from 2002 to 2012. For a novel to be included in the samples it should not be translation; most of its events should be narrated through dialogues; and that it should have won the majority of prizes for youngsters’ literature. This article addresses two central research questions: (1) How is the characters’ uses of politeness and impoliteness strategies in peer-group and non-peer-group vary? (2) In general, which strategies (politeness strategies or impoliteness strategies) are more frequently used by characters in Persian-speaking Youngsters’ Novels? The results, came by Chi-Square test, demonstrate that the characters in Persian youngsters’ novels are more inclined to using impolite strategies in peer-group interactions compared to non-peer-group interactions and that characters, in general, make more use of politeness strategies than impoliteness strategies.  

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Focusing on Persian language continuum of styles, this research aims at studying the stylistic variation of Persian language according to the native speakers’ judgment of the formality of some Persian sentences that are related semantically, and conveys the same proposition, but considered to be different regarding the number of formal or informal and colloquial words, phrases, and syntactic features in them. Therefore, this research is categorized as a research in perceptual dialectology. The main goal is to analyze the relation between the lexical and structural features of formality with the native speakers’ perception of the degree of formality of the sentences.The main questions this research tries to answer are as follows: Is it possible to define the degree of formality of a sentence according to the linguistic features? And, which phonetic, lexical and structural features exert more influence on Persian speakers’ judgments?
 The research hypotheses are as follows: It is possible to define the degree of formality according to some linguistic features like how close the pronunciation of a word is to standard language, the use of some formal or informal words and expressions. And, the use of some lexical items and expressions or taboo words affects the native speakers’ judgment more than other features.
 A researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 15 sentences which communicate the same proposition was used for gathering data on speakers’ judgments. Informants were 70 men and women in three different age-groups, 20-30 (n=35), 30-40 (n= 20)and 40-50 (n=15) who analyzed and graded the sentences, according to the degree of formality, on a continuum from the most to the least formal, based on their intuition. A descriptive – analytic method was used to analyze the data quantitatively and qualitatively. The topic and theoretical frame work of the research are the innovative features of the study.
The results show that it is possible to measure the approximate degree of formality of a sentence by counting the stylistically marked linguistic features. Nevertheless, the speaker’s judgment on the degree of formality does not necessarily depend on the number of these features, and some lexical items and terms that are marked due to observing politeness will affect their judgment. In general, lexical choices and some phonetic changes seem to have more influence on the speakers’ judgments than structural features.

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Language usage is one of the most prominent social distinctions among men and women, which is often manifested in speech. In terms of “social norms”, linguistic politeness is regarded as a completely standard behavior in society. Each culture has its own behavioral norms, and the behavior that conforms to rules is politeness. Some of the social norms can be found in folklore and oral literature, including proverbs. Therefore, by choosing Taleshi language, spoken in Minaabad region of Ardabil city, the researcher tried to study the linguistic politeness and different types of face threatening acts to answer the following research question: is there any relationship between the gender of speakers and the usage of different kinds of politeness in the proverbs of Taleshi language. For this purpose, the researcher first interviewed the old and middle-aged men and women, and then collected 180 proverbs and examined them based on the existence of politeness and verbal violence. The data were analyzed by Log-linear analysis in SPSS software. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that there is a significant relationship in the usage of different kinds of politeness and verbal violence in the proverbs of different genders in Taleshi language, which, due to the community expectations, has also led to a difference in their social behavior.
Introduction
Research background
Locher and Bousfield (2008, p. 3) describe impoliteness as the “behavior that is face-aggravating in a particular context”. Women and men have different roles and functions in specific areas according to the social expectations. There have been many studies on the change of social behavior which, in turn, affects the linguistic behavior. Brown and Levinson (1987) conducted a study on the language of men and women in a Mayan community in Mexico to evaluate the hypothesis that women show more politeness than men. They believed that the level of politeness in a spoken interaction depends on the social relationship between the speaker and the listener, and that the signs of being polite showed social relationships. According to Leech (2014, p. 139), apart from being manifested in the content of conversation, politeness is also seen in the way the conversation as a whole is structured and managed by its participants. This means that the conversational behavior itself can be interpreted as being polite or impolite.
Fasold (1984) studied the gender differences in doing compliment. He called the phenomenon of compliments a bilingual phenomenon in which discourses 1 and 2 relate to social, communicative, and temporal situations.
In the field of combinatorics on words, many studies have focused on English. For example, Lakoof (1973) found that women use politer words, but most men do not use such words in their daily speech. She also believed that women use more adjectives with adorable, seductive, sweet, sacred, and beautiful meanings compared to men.
Goals, questions, and assumptions
Various researchers such as Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson (1987), Bousfield (2007), Culpeper (1996), and Culpeper et al. (2003) have investigated the category of politeness and impoliteness in language studies. While the positive face represents the need to be connected, the negative face represents the need to be independent (Yule, 2010).
Although this theory has been the basis of much research in different parts of the world, it has not been explored widely in different dialects spoken in cities of Iran. So, the researcher, according to the Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987), and Goffman’s face-threatening acts (1967) attempts to answer the question of whether there is a difference in the types of politeness and violence used in the language spoken by male and female Taleshi speakers. Other sub-questions to be addressed include:
1. Is there a meaningful relationship between the proverbs used by men and women in terms of the level of politeness and gender of the speakers?
2. Is there a significant relationship between the proverbs used by men and women in terms of level of violence and gender of the speakers?
3. What kind of politeness is most evident in the proverbs used by men and women?
4. What kind of violence is most evident in the proverbs used by men and women?
Discussion and conclusion
Based on the results of the data analysis, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference in terms of the proverbs used by men and women based on the variables of politeness and violence. In this study, which compared the content of the proverbs used by men and women to test the original hypothesis, it was significantly proven that there is a close relationship between gender and the usage of politeness and violence in the proverbs. These results are in line with those reported by Lakoof (1973) and Tannen (1990), but are inconsistent with the results of Spender (1980). Factors contributing to the development and continuation of these linguistic conditions include the violence resulting from the geopolitical situation of the region due to cultural and historical deprivations in the political and security terms that have influenced the manner of speaking and violent speech, since language is significantly a reflection of the culture and historical situation of the speakers.
Log-linear test was also used to test the secondary sub-hypotheses of the study. Confirming the first sub-hypothesis of the research using the Fi test, the findings showed that there was a significant relationship between the level of politeness and gender of the speaker, so the gender of the speaker influenced the politeness level of the proverbs used. The results of this study are in line with those of Brown and Levinson (1987). Among the factors that should be noted in relation to the emergence and continuation of this linguistic feature in this particular region and in this particular sub-dialect is the naturalization and acceptance of this linguistic status by the women of the community and the indirect efforts to promote and disseminate it. The influence of neighboring cultures and other ethnicities in Iran, where this situation is also widespread and prevalent, may be some of the other contributing factors.
By confirming the second sub-hypothesis of the study, it was found that the frequency of the types of violence used in men's proverbs varied. The results of this study are in line with those of Mohammadi (2016) and Mohammadkhani et al. (2006). Factors that indicate exclusively the emergence and in particular the persistence of this linguistic violence in this particular region can be traced to the long-standing traditional-patriarchal family system and its continuation up to the modern times.
By examining the third sub-hypothesis of the study, it was shown that in terms of proverbs used by men and women, the percentage of politeness used by women was higher than men. On the other hand, the informal politeness used by women was more than the other types of politeness. Also, the percentage of proverbs used by men was higher than that of the women, while the use of words by men was higher than women. The results of this study are in line with those of Jannejad (2001), and Hamidi and Ameri (2015). The reasons for the emergence and continuation of these conditions include the fact that from a socio-linguistic point of view, women of high social class refuse to use impolite terms and expressions because they are always concerned with preserving their prestige and social status in the community.
In general, it can be said that men and women have different roles and functions in specific areas depending on the social expectations. This not only does make a difference in their social behavior, but also affects their linguistic behavior. Men of all ages use more slang terms when talking to males and females. While women try to use interactive strategies in their daily interactions and conversations, they do not want to feel superior to one another. In their conversations, women try to minimize differences of opinion in order to reach an agreement, and this agreement improves and guarantees their relationship, even if they are not fully satisfied with the final decision. Thus, it can be concluded that gender is one of the components of individual and social identities, and therefore, the relation of language and gender is a subset of the relation of language and identity. As a result, in the studies of gender related linguistics, language and linguistic behavior are considered as the symbolic capital of the expression of sexual identities.
 
References
Bousfield, D. (2007). Impoliteness in interaction. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness, some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, J. (1996). Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 25, 349-67.
Culpeper, J., Derek, B., & Anne, W. (2003). Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 545-79.
Fasold, R. (1984). The sociolinguistics of society. Basil Blackwell.
Goffman, E. (1967). Stigma notes on management of spoiled identity (translated into Farsi by Masood Kyanpour). Markaz Publication.
Hamidi, F., & Ameri, P. (2015). Creativity and modernism in the deconstruction of mystical and conversational languages. Women in Culture and Art, 7(3), 389-404.
Jannejad, M. (2001). Language and gender; social linguistic research in linguistic differences between Iranian male and female speakers in conversational interaction. PhD Thesis, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Lakoof, R. (1973). The logic of politeness; or minding your p's and q's. In papers from the ninth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago Linguistic society. 292-305.
Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford University Press.
Locher, M. A., & Bousfield, D. (2008). Impoliteness in interaction. John Benjamins.
MohammadKhani, P., RezaeiDougah, A., Mohammadi, M., & AzadMehr, H. (2006). Prevalence of domestic violence patterns, its experiential commitment in men of weights. Social Welfare Quarterly, 21, 225-205.
Mohammadi, M. (2016). Violation of courtesy in Farsi-speaking social networks. Master's Degree in Public Linguistics, Hamedan: Bu Ali Sina University.The Power of Talks Who Gets Heard and Why, Harward Business Review, September.
Yule, G. (2010). The study of language (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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The definition and concept that every human has of the phenomena, while being specific and individual, is connected to the common spirit of the group and leaves a mark and memories of the group. Thinkers and critics of humanities have placed this common collective spirit and general thoughts in the category of implicit concepts. Implicit concepts that are the same as myths from a point of view.

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The present article is intended to investigate the face making/ threatening linguistic behaviors of the characters in Pellekan, a play by Akbar Radi, based on the Terkourafi’s model (2008) which divides linguistic behaviors into five categories of unmarked politeness, marked politeness, impoliteness, unmarked rudeness and marked rudeness. Its effort focuses on specifying the most frequently used linguistic behavior in the play, finding the dominant linguistic behavior of the superior characters as well as determining how the main character behaves /is behaved in superior/inferior positions. The findings based on the research data show the prevalence of the marked rudeness in Pellekan; there is no tendency on the part of the superior characters to save and construct the inferiors’ faces which are threatened by the frequent use of marked rudeness on purpose. The Linguistic behaviors of the inferior characters are more varied and they make use of unmarked rudeness more than the other linguistic behaviors. Furthermore, the main character’s linguistic behavior, moving from inferiority to superiority, changes from impoliteness to marked rudeness; the more superior position he occupies the more his use of marked rudeness will be.

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1. Introduction

Pellekan is a play by Akbar Radi, one of the most famous playwrights of Iran, wherein the reader is encountered with “clear-cut faces of close and distant relatives” (Radi, 2000, qtd. in Talebi, 2003, p.49). Moving from the lower-class of the society to the upper-class, Bolbol’s language behavior changes ostensibly which merits scholarly attention. It is investigated based on Terkourafi’s (2008) model which discriminates among different language behaviors, namely: unmarked politeness, marked politeness, impoliteness, unmarked rudeness, marked rudeness. In marked and unmarked politeness, face construction is the focus of the attention; in impoliteness face threatening is accidental whereas in marked and unmarked rudeness face threats are regarded as intentional. It is hypothesized that the linguistic behaviors of the characters are tended toward rudeness in general and to the marked one in particular. The more the main character goes up the ladder of power and wealth the more he is willing to be markedly rude.

  Research Question(s)

1.         Which linguistic behavior is more predominant in Pellekan?

2.         How the superior and inferior characters are differ in terms of linguistic behaviors?

3.         How is the main character treated in inferiority positions and how he treats others when he goes up the ladder to superiority?

 

2. Literature Review

Literary texts are the main venue to represent characters in interaction and in fact it is this part that drew most attention. Brown and Levinson’ Literary texts are the main venue to represent characters in interaction and in fact it is this part that drew most attention. Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness (1978, 1987) was adopted in Brown and Gilman (1989), Jucker (2016, Bouchara (2009), Rossen-Knill (2011), Chun and Yun (2010), Chikogu (2009), Simpson (2005) and …Culpeper (1998, p. 83) believes that “impoliteness generates the disharmony and conflict between characters which generates audience interest and often moves the plot forward”. Furthermore he (2005 and 2011) contended that impoliteness was committed to amuse and interest the audience. Chapman and Clark (2014) have focused on pragmatic stylistics in films. They were mainly concerned with impoliteness as a linguistic means of characterization, plot developments and characters’ intentions. In Persian, Rafie-Sakhaei focused on characters dialogues in Iranian plays based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. Investigating (im)politeness among in the Persian youngsters’ novels, Rahmani et. al. (2016) concluded that the youth characters made more use of impoliteness strategies among peers and of politeness strategies in talking with other characters. Namvar (2019) focused on verbal impoliteness patterns in Madaraneh with Culpeper discourse theory framework. Mahmoodi Bakhtiari et. al. (2016) found negative impoliteness as the dominant linguistic impoliteness pattern in Sayyadan. Rahmani (2018) studied characters reactions to impoliteness based on Bousfield (2008) impoliteness model and found out that men and powerful characters react more offensively, while women and less powerful characters react defensively.

 

3. Methodology

3.1. Terkourafi’s Division of Linguistic Behavior

Terkourafi defines unmarked politeness as making use of an expression in a context in which face constituting behavior is expected. “It constitutes the addressee’s face (and, through that, the speaker’s face) directly – that is, without first recognizing the speaker’s intention” (Terkourafi, 2008, p. 69). She defines unmarked rudeness as a conventionalized expression which is face-threatening. “It threatens the addressee’s face (and thereby constitutes the speaker’s face) directly – that is, without first recognizing the speaker’s intention” (Ibid.p. 70). Marked politeness “occurs when the expression used is not conventionalized relative to the context of occurrence; it constitutes the addressee’s face (and, through that, the speaker’s face) following recognition of the speaker’s face constituting intention by the hearer” (Ibid.). Terkourafi’s marked rudeness or rudeness proper is an intentional face-threatening expression or action perceived by the hearer and which is not conventionalized to the context. It threatens the addressee’s face as well as the speaker’s face. In her definition of impoliteness the addressee’s face (hence that of the speaker) is threatened unintentionally.

 

3-2. Method

The dialogues of the play are investigated to find out each character’s frequencies of the linguistic behaviors identified by Terkourafi, and then they are inserted in special tables prepared for this purpose. In order to specify the dominant linguistic behaviors of the characters in inferior and superior positions, those dialogues were chosen wherein a participant was either in power position. Their relative frequencies were inserted in different tables. Using the data in the tables, the questions are answered. 

 

4. Results

After investigating Pellekan based on Terkourafi’s (2008) model of linguistic behavior, it was found out that the characters made use of marked rudeness more than the other types (marked rudeness=47, unmarked rudeness=26, marked politeness =7, impoliteness=6 and one unmarked politeness). Generally, the superior characters’ dominant linguistic behavior is marked rudeness while those of the inferior characters are more varied, still with an inclination toward unmarked rudeness. The characters in inferior positions made use of unmarked rudeness when they are encountered with their superiors’ marked rudeness. Their use of marked politeness behavior is an indication of their inclination to construct their superiors’ face. The dominant linguistic behavior of the protagonist of the play is impoliteness in inferior position and the more he goes up the ladder to power, the more his linguistic behavior tends towards marked rudeness.

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The authors in the present study attempt to investigate the speech act of compliments and its semantic boundary engagement with other speech acts of positive assessment of the speaker from the listener such as "approval", "praise", and "flattery ". The hypothesis of the present study is that the semantic boundary of speech acts containing positive assessment of the speaker depending on the verbal culture of the speakers of Russian and Iranian verbal environment is different,  and it is open to change in such a way that if a face expression in the Iranian cultural verbal environment is complimented, that expression may find the color and smell of flattery in the Russian verbal environment; in other words, an action with a positive assessment to an action with a negative assessment of the listener towards the speaker is interpreted as flattery. Furthermore, the compliment structures in each verbal culture have gender differences and characteristics (male and female). That is, the group of formulas used for men is inapplicable for women and vice versa.

Iranian literature and compliments are interpreted as politeness in international research. Goffman (1955, 1976), Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), and Leech (1983) were the founders of these studies (Faika, 2016, p. 109). In other linguistic works written about Taarof, it has been interpreted as ‘compliment’ (Alavi & Zeinali, 2014, p. 139). Evidently, the lack of linguistic equality in other linguistic cultures indicates the absence of linguistic phenomena or their difference in the target linguistic culture. In such cases, ‘Taarof’ is an unequal Iranian cultural phenomenon in other cultures. It can be interpreted neither as compliment nor ceremony nor politeness. Taarof in other cultures should be considered as an untranslatable national cultural phenomenon and presented as the term ‘Taarof’ (Izadi, 2018).
In the verbal environment of Iranians, inappropriate compliments are considered a reprehensible practice. Hence, the Iranian proverb ‘reduce the compliments and increase the money’ referring to a situation where one is expected to pay a wage or do something, but instead, the audience witnesses ‘compliment’ and eloquence of the speaker in the concept of ‘Taarof’ and ‘praise’ of his action and performance.
Compliment in Russian verbal culture does not have an emotional and expressive tone and rhythm. Such an action is interpreted more as flattery by the Russian listener. However, the predominant feature of Iranian verbal culture as an Eastern culture is an exaggeration in the act of ‘compliment’ and the boundary of the compliment formation from flattery is clear, and the listener has no difficulty in distinguishing the two. However, in most cases, ‘praise’ is used as a tool to form ‘compliment’ in this linguistic culture, and therefore in Iranian verbal culture, the actions of ‘compliment’ are combined with ‘praise’. However, this does not mean an overlap between the two boundaries.
The following semantic and situational classifications can be considered in a compliment: 1) Gender: male and female; 2) personal and administrative; 3) Description of the external and internal qualities of the audience; 4) appropriate and inappropriate compliment; 5) compliment with an emotional tone.
In the Iranian verbal culture, using expressive speech acts represents politeness and even Taarof with the help of complimenting the audience. Using these speech acts, the speaker shows his attention to the audience, expresses his sincerity in ‘compliment’ and ‘praise’, while in ‘flattery’ there is no element of intimacy, and it is the result of hypocrisy. Depending on how ‘approval’ is used, it can indicate the role of a communication channel, i.e., using approval as a sign of listening carefully to the speaker; or answering his question from the point of view of correct logic. ‘Compliment’ and ‘approval’ can be on the horizontal or vertical axis of socialization, while ‘praise’ and ‘flattery’ can be seen only in the vertical axis of the age hierarchy or social administration. For ‘compliment’ speech act, we can somehow determine expressive and verbal tools in some verbal situations, namely, complementing the appearance, referring to the freshness and youth stability of the audience, meeting after a long time etc., while such a classification is impossible for flattery and praise.
 

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The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the addressee’s power and gender on the choice of the type and number of encouragement strategies employed by Persian male and female university students based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory.  A number of 60 M.A. students (30 males and 30 females) from the University of Sistan and Baluchestan participated in this study. Discourse completion test and role play technique were utilized as two data gathering instruments. The data were analyzed using the Chi-square and Independent-T test (p<.05). The results indicated there was a significant relationship between the addressee’s power and the type as well as the number of encouragement strategies employed by male and female university students. The most frequent strategy type was the “negative politeness” giving deference for the addressee with higher power (the professor). As to the number of strategies, the most and less frequent ones were the combination of two and nine strategies, respectively. The addressee’s gender had an effect on the type of the strategies used by male students in three situations; while it didn’t have any effect on the number of strategies used by male students and also on the type and number of strategies employed by female students. The most frequent strategy type used by female students was the “positive politeness” and the combination of three strategies for male and female addressees; by male students: “positive politeness” for male addressees and “negative politeness” and the combination of two strategies for female addressees.


1. Introduction
Interpersonal interactions and how they are formed play a significant role in human social life. One way to interact is through using different speech acts. Many factors can involve in making use of politeness principle in interacting and communicating. In life and social interactions, human beings use various speech acts such as request, agreement, disagreement, swearing, giving advice and encouragement in order to express their meaning. One of the most important and effective theories in pragmatics field is Austin’s speech act theory. He believes that every sentence may have a performative feature and also it has an action within it; therefore, every sentence should be considered within its context (Austin, 1962). Employing the speech acts depends on various factors such as language characteristics and socio-cultural frameworks. Among these factors, politeness is one of the crucial factors in interpersonal communications in different societies and cultures. Politeness can be represented in various aspects of behavior based on the factors such as the addressee’s social status, power, and gender in using speech acts. One of the most widely used speech acts among their various range in interpersonal interactions is the encouragement speech act. If this speech act is appropriately used in the right context, it will have important effects on relations between individuals as well as on saving face based on power and gender of the addressee. Thus based on what is mentioned and according to the importance and impact of the encouragement speech act in every person’s social life, the type and number of encouragement strategies and the effect of the addressee’s power and gender on the use of this speech act by Persian language male and female university students can be investigated and analyzed based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. The research data were gathered via two data collection tools including discourse completion test (DCT) and role-play technique. The hypotheses of the present study are as follows:
1. Due to the addressee’s power, there is a significant difference in the useage of the type of encouragement speech act strategies among Persian-speaking male and female university students.
2. Due to the addressee’s power, there is a significant difference in the usage of the number of encouragement speech act strategies among Persian-speaking male and female university students
3. Due to the addressee’s gender, there is a significant difference in the usage of the type of encouragement speech act strategies among Persian-speaking male and female university students.
4. Due to the addressee’s gender, there is a significant difference in the usage of the number of encouragement speech act strategies among Persian-speaking male and female university students.

2. Literature Review
By considering linguistic, cultural, and social characteristics of language, different speech acts have been examined by many researchers. Rahimpour and Yaghubi Noutash (1999) investigated the impact of gender and subject on speech act in English language learners. Amou Ali Akbari Najafabadi (2007) has conducted a research to examine the Social-interpersonal power and politeness strategies in Persian. Pishgadam and Rasouli (2011) examined the persuasion speech act strategies among Iranian language learners by considering speaker’s gender. Zeynali Dastuyee (2012) studied the effect of addressee’s power and gender on the type and number of apology and refusal strategies employed by Sarawani university students. Shafaghi (2013) investigated the promise speech act and the use of promise in political discourse. Pishghadam and Attaran (2015) studied the speech act of argumentation in English and Persian advertisements. Azarparand (2019) has investigated changes in addressing strategies based on Brown and Levinson's Politeness theory. This case study research has been conducted in Tehran University among Iranian lecturers and students.

3. Methodology
In the present study, the effect of the gender and power of addressee variables on the choice of politeness strategies in encouragement speech act in Persian language is investigated. This study is a descriptive-analytical research. A number of 60 M.A. students (30 males and 30 females) from the University of Sistan and Baluchestan participated in this study. Their age was ranged from 23 to 34 years old. They had an average age of 25 years. All subjects were randomly selected, were monolingual, and Persian-speaking postgraduate students who were studying in different fields of study. Discourse completion test (DCT) and role play technique were utilized as two data gathering devices. The questionnaire which was used in the study was a researcher-made one. The data were analyzed using Chi-square test, Analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Independent T-test.

4. Results
The present study examined the encouragement speech act based on two determining variables including the power and the gender of the addressee in different contexts. The findings of the study show that the addressee’s power can be an important and effective factor in the selection of the type and number of the encouragement strategies. The most frequent strategy type is the “negative politeness” strategy. In addition, the addressee’s power has an effect on the number of the encouragement strategies employed by male and female university students. As the power of the addressee increases, the use of more complex strategies becomes more and simple strategies are utilized in dealing with the addressee with low power. As to the number of the strategies, the most frequent and less frequent ones are the combination of two and nine strategies respectively. The results also indicate that the gender of the addressee affects the type of the encouragement strategies used by male university students while, it doesn’t affect the number of strategies used by male students. It also doesn’t have any effect on the type and number of the strategies used by female university students. Also, data analysis reveals that there is no significant relationship between the addressee’s gender and the number of the encouragement strategies. In other words, the addressee’s gender has no effect on the number of the encouragement strategies used by male and female university students

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This study aims at ascertaining a framework that would account for the Persian data. We scrutinize all data occurring in the selected corpus, and describe how they usually work on the basis of the two following variables: power and intimacy. According to our investigation, the use of terms of address in Persian is affected by age, sex, occupation, ideology, political and social position of the interlocutors. These variables can be stated as a result of the investigation of older material – such as qualitative analysis of observations followed by unobtrusive note taking of contemporary use, a corpus of several plays, travel accounts, interviews, TV, radio and careful observation terms used to address today. The above-mentioned variables indicate a strong relationship between social structures and address terms in Persian.

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511 commercial emails from four Asian countries, namely China, Pakistan, India, and Iran have been analyzed in a mixed-method design. The focus of the study is on the two features of politeness and intimacy. In the quantitative analysis, the model proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987) and that of Coulmas (2005) which have drawn upon the features of indirectness in requesting and the length of letters as the indicators of politeness are used. In the qualitative and descriptive analysis formality in salutation and opening clause as well as the use of abbreviated forms are taken into account. The result shows that Iranians use the most polite style in their business letters, while Chinese use the most intimate discourse. On the other hand, Indians use both the least polite and intimate style in their business letters. Pakistanis’ use of polite and intimate style is not as conspicuous as that of Iranians and Chinese respectively. The findings are hoped to help better inter-cultural understanding, especially with respect to written rhetorical characteristics.