Abstract
One of the important concerns of communicative way of learning is to be able to convey meaning and not just physical words in a language. The study of speech acts could possibly help achieve this. When using speech acts, one should take into consideration the conversational rules of the language and in order to establish a safe and harmonious conversation, it is better to use certain strategies to eliminate their possible threatening effects. Attempt is made in the present study using a mixed-method design, to investigate the employment of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), among the interlocutors with different power relations in English and Farsi novels, when using the speech act of refusal. The speech act of refusal addressed in this study is a face threatening act (FTA) (Brown & Levinson, 1987), which may be used differently by speakers of different languages, with different power relations, in different situations. The materials used are five English and five Farsi novels written by native speakers of English and Farsi. The taxonomy of Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) were employed in order to categories different types of refusal. The frequency of their use and their percentages were calculated manually. The results indicated that even though reflecting two different cultures, the similarities among the English and Farsi novels regarding the use of both speech acts, were more than the differences. The differences were more obvious in the employment of politeness strategies. The findings of this study will probably give insights into the pragmatic and conversational rules of both languages.
Highlights
Teaching a language is not just teaching its syntactic or semantic properties which deal with the formal structures of language out of context
An attempt will be made in the present study study to investigate and compare the use of different types of refusal identified using the taxonomy of Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) and employment of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) face saving strategies to mitigate its threatening effects by different characters with different power relations in English and Farsi novels
Gratitude/appreciation In order to investigate the strategies that characters used to mitigate the damaging effect of this speech act, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) four politeness strategies were employed as framework of analysis: 1. Bald-on record strategies: they are more direct ways of expressing something
Summary
Teaching a language is not just teaching its syntactic or semantic properties which deal with the formal structures of language out of context. Rules which help the learner to take into consideration the person whom he is talking with, pay attention to the situation, act in the way that it requires, and choose the best way of conveying his message so as not to destroy the self-image of others. The power status of the speaker in relation to the hearer mostly decides for the way he (the speaker) uses a certain speech act. Whether he conveys his message directly or uses mitigating strategies to diminish the amount of imposition put on the other person depends on the power status of the opposite side
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